Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships

Temple Grandin, Ph.D. and Sean Barron

This book is co-written by authors Temple Grandin (Thinking in Pictures, Animals in Translation) and Sean Barron (There’s a Boy in Here), two individuals diagnosed with ASD as children who are now independent adults with fulfilling jobs and personal relationships. The authors discuss how ASD impacted their social relationships as children and adolescents in markedly different ways, and how each of them developed their own unique path to social understanding and ways of relating to people. They also describe how individuals with ASD experience the world with a completely different set of thinking patterns, and how they might benefit from a cognitive-behavioral approach to social skills training (a method that links thinking and emotions in ways that can help people understand and modify their behavior in the context of social expectations). In the second half of the book, the authors present in detail the 10 unwritten social rules that they believe every child and adult with ASD will benefit from, regardless of age, function level, or social setting. Filled with numerous personal stories and extraordinary psychological insights, this one-of-a-kind guide will help neurotypical people gain a greater understanding of the individual differences in social perspectives among persons with ASD, and it will also help parents and professionals recognize the unique social skill challenges of each child and young adult on the autism spectrum.