Should ASD kids be discouraged from trying to make friends?

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WOW -

What I have learned on this journey is that most "rules" regarding child development don't apply with my aspie and I need to meet him where he is. He is desperate for friends yet doesn't have the skills to maintain them. Therefore, meeting him where he is, we are trying to help him get some skills.

One thing I would like toadd.... my DS doesn't have a realistic picture of his skill set SO where he may think he's cool with social skills, unfortunately there's a reason he doesn't have friends.

I sometimes wish that he didn't care. It would make life infinately easier. He already has appropriate manners, so is fine out in the world. It's relationships that are the problem.

From what I have observed of my son, he really doesn't care at this point about not having any friends. He does enjoy going places and I encourage interactions with other kids. But how do you create the desire in another person to make a friend? I certainly don't keep him isolated, but at the same time, until he WANTS to make a friend, I don't see it happening.

For our son, we realize, we NEED to help him if he wants a friend or a social outing/gathering. It's not natural for him.

We decided to home-school our son prior to his diagnosis partly due to the fact that he doesn't "get" other children his age. He used to ask me to "translate" for him between the ages of 1.5-4.5yrs old. He couldn't understand how kids could be walking but weren't "talking proper English". This certainly made my socializing difficult with other parents at various infant/toddler classes or story-times near impossible.

At age 2, he also would LOUDLY say, "Look at that special child. She can't talk English and she poops her pants. Poor thing!" or "This girl sure is a tall baby!" He didn't understand when told "That girl is older than you are. She's just not talking yet. Or "She's just not potty trained yet." It was about that time we realized he would not do well in a conventional school.

Now at age 5.5 chronological age (approx 18-36 mos emotional age/10-15 IQ age) he says "I just want ONE friend". His bestie is a girl whom we think is also on the spectrum. Other than her, he's completely content spending time with his special interests.

We consulted the OASIS bible in regards to this. Mostly to keep family/friends off our back in regards to the whole "home-school socialization question" everyone feels compelled to ask. We sum up the opinion on their website and in the various books/pamphlets we have by saying: "Our son prefers to learn without the distraction of other kids. Often he prefers to learn with minimal instruction. He is LITERALLY A GENIUS (we sometimes have to give people examples, because they make light of this fact) and prefers to learn something then move on. (i.e. he HATES review, such as a school structure provides)."

People, including kids our son's age, do not understand that questioning his intelligence is belittling to him. His best friend likes to show him what she learned in school during the week. Our son often says "I don't want to hear it".

We tend to encourage him to seek social involvement by teaching him polite conversation with local store owners/waitresses/etc. We don't discourage social interaction. We certainly do not want to teach him avoidance, nor do we want to allow his world to shrink.

My husband was NOT encouraged as a child. He often shared friends with his brothers. His parents never pushed him socially at all. It was difficult once he was on his own. It certainly made his interactions at various jobs difficult.

OP, i think you make some false assumptions here.

"social interaction is not necessary for them to live meaningful lives, as it is for NTs"
"the person with ASD will be happier alone"
"NTs find it imcomprehensible that people can be content without social interaction but that is the case with those with moderate to severe ASD"

some NTs do perfectly well with minimal social interaction. some asds desire social interaction. an impairment in the ability to socially interact does not equal a lack of desire to socially interact. there is no clear cut line between the two, both groups have introverts and extroverts who require varying amounts of social interaction for optimum happiness. it is monumentally erroneous to assume someone needs huge amounts or no social interaction based solely on their neurological status of autistic or non-autistic.

there are also more options than 1) pushing children to make friends and 2) discouraging them from making friends. you can encourage it, support it, be neutral and do nothing.... this also is not an either or situation. you have to figure out what the childs individual requirements are, and try to guide them to that point. easier said than done, tho.

I second this. My son has autism, he was once what you would consider severe ASD. He is now considered high-functioning, but he can now express himself much better and he wants friends he just needs a bit of extra help to accomplish that. He has his issues with social things, he wants to interact but makes mistakes like standing too close, not picking up when someone isn't as interested as he is, and getting frustrated when things don't go according to his plan. I myself am NT but as my husband recently pointed out I never really let people get close to me, I have a lot of people who consider themselves my friends but I see as more of acquaintances. On the other hand I know people who aren't happy unless they have a ton of friends, just as there is a wide spectrum for NT's as to the level of social interaction they desire, I would assume there is a wide spectrum for AS as to the level of social interaction they want. These message boards are evidence of that, if someone truly wanted no social interaction beyond what was necessary they wouldn't be here right?

No they should not be discouraged.

On one hand, I would have been more contented if I hadn't been pushed together with the other children all the time. I responded enthusiastically to social arrangements made for me (I remember when my mum asked me if I wanted to take one of my classmates to the swimming pool I bounced all around the house, I was excited) but didn't often initiate them, and I don't think I'd have missed out on an awful lot left to my own devices (as I was half the time). I also learnt more from the internet than from other people, because on the internet you get a valuable insight into people's thoughts and feelings, which you don't have access to in face to face situations. On the other hand, I think my level of nervousness and anxiety in social situations would be almost insurmountable now if I weren't used to having lots of people around me, whether I interacted with them or not. It's already pretty high now, and I can pretty much hold my own in a role playing situation or short amounts of socialising. In the end, there's a limited amount of success you can have if you keep an Aspie child in a cocoon for their childhood, because they'll have to surface at some point and it's good to equip them with whatever you can, much more than NT kids.

Cute Baby

I think one of the fine lines we always follow in parenting our kids (and I think this applies to all parents and all children) is to figure out when to push and when to back off and leave it alone. As a parent, I want my kid to learn about everything he's capable of, so that when he's an adult, he has choices and is able to find his own way to being happy and productive in the way he wants.

With a kid on the spectrum, you have the added difficulty of not necessarily getting helpful feedback: it's difficult to translate my son sometimes. For instance, when my son says "I'm bored:" it's said in exactly the same way each time, but one time it might mean "I'm upset and right on the verge of a meltdown" and another, "I'm perfectly capable of handling this but am mildly anxious about it and need reassurance" or yet another time it could mean that he's garden-variety bored and wants something to do!

Parents screw this up all the time, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, the answer isn't as simple as defaulting to "back off." It's also not about defaulting to "push," either.

The LAST thing you should ever do to your child Aspergers, ADD, NLD etc, etc or even NT is to discourge them from anything.

Including being alone, if that's what they want.

There have been some really good points made on here, including by posters who completely disagree with what I've said, and I don’t want to repeat what I’ve already said, but I will say this in response:

Attempts at friendships and romantic relationships, over the span of nearly thirty years, have done nothing but hold me back.
I have been far more productive in my life since vowing to be solitary.

I was given the impression growing up that without “friendships” I somehow couldn’t be a whole person, and this has proven untrue.

I completely disagree with the commonly held belief that we can learn social skills the same way a person can learn to read or write, or drive a car. People are not like machines; their arbitrary behavior defies all logic. Relationships never come naturally to us, and when put to the test over the long term, other people are almost universally too intimidated by the vast differences in our psyches to want to maintain relationships with us. Even if they don’t mean to they end up hurting us. And we probably hurt them a lot too.

Certainly a child with ASD shouldn't be discouraged from trying to form friendships, if that's what he (or she) wants. But he needs to be adequately prepared for rejection, and if he draws the conclusion early on in life that he would rather be alone, this decision should not be criticized, as it was with me.

If I were mentoring a child with ASD, the life’s lesson I would want to teach him the most would be, Love yourself. You, and not other people, are the key to your inner peace.

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Hmmm...I think you are painting people on the spectrum with an awfully broad brush.

I am fairly certain that both my husband and I are on the spectrum, like my son - we just happened to fall on it before it officially existed. However, we have a happy and satisfying marriage, and are slowly developing a somewhat odd social life that works for us.

I don't think anyone is somehow less because they prefer to be solitary - if you'd asked me when I was twenty how I thought my life would turn out, the word "hermit" would have figured prominently. However, things change, people mellow and become less judgmental, and one does learn a thing or two about how to manage over time.

Certainly nothing wrong with taking a break from things that stress you out, maybe even a permanent one if that works for you - but I think speaking in absolutes on behalf of all autistics is a bit strong.

My son was diagnosed as having Aspergers, just this year, at 8 years old. He has differences for sure, however, he LOVES being around people! He craves it and wants it 24/7! If wanting isolation is a feature of Aspergers, I'm starting to wonder if my son was misdiagnosed...?
When he's around his friends he does make mistakes, and his "friendships" are not what I would call "friendships." Basically he doesn't really know what a "friend" is and struggles with figuring out who his friends are. Friends are the kids that play with him - that's his definition. He doesn't need to know their name, they don't have to play regularly, he doesn't even need to recognize them for him to consider them a friend. (He has trouble recognizing people he's only met once or twice.) In school he has some friends that he knows their names and plays with them every day. He can even tell you what their likes and dislikes are - and he tries to accomodate them (some times too much!). What is markedly different - I think from an NT's perspective - is that he's not "attached" to friends. Sometimes it seems to me like ANYONE would do - as a friend - as long as they play with him.
So this thread has me totally confused. I would describe my son as VERY social with a STRONG NEED for people and companionship. The idea of engaging in his special interest is not his idea of fun... although he can get lost for hours in video games..... If he's playing a video game and a neighbor knocks on the door to play - he drops the game and out he runs!
Has he been misdiagnosed?

No, my son is the same - in fact, he has a notable knack for finding kids he likes and making friends with them. It's group situations with kids he's hung out with for some time (after everybody stops being on company behavior) or school situations where he gets lost and runs into trouble.

The hallmark of an autism spectrum disorder is difficulty with social communication - this can mean a number of things. While the following website offers the view of the particular doctors who run it, I thought it offered a good breakdown of the different issues that are looked at in communication disorders: http://www.pediatricneurology.com/autism.htm#The Skills Involved in Communication

This is more consistent with schizoid personality disorder.



NT parents certainly do stress over the fact that their ASD children don't seem to have the same set of priorities as they do, and do try to push their priorities on them, however most children or adults with AS do suffer from loneliness at some point. A parents should facilitate social experiences for their ASD children, however they should do so in the proper context. It is unwise to put someone in an operating room and expect them to just know how to operate, in an airplane and expect them to know how to fly it, in a bull ring and expect them to know how to fight bulls, and for children on the spectrum, in a social situation and expect them to know how to socialize. Most of the social trauma children on the spectrum endure, they endure it because they were caged into a social situation without any training first, because their NT parents expected they would just pick it up like everyone else.



This is your own personal experience and does not represent the experience of all of those on the spectrum. I don't have many friends in life but the ones I do have are good people and loyal friends.



Maybe part of the problem is you work too hard and have too many expectations of these friendships. Expect too much of people and they will let you down. Expect too little of people and they will surprise you.
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Check out my IMDB page![/quote]

My daughter is 5 and diagnosed with ASD. I took her to social skills classes for kids on the spectrum to make friends. To my surprise the group was made of 15 boys (no girls) all with aspergers. Just my observation but the asperger boys didn't seem all that friendly. We took her three times after which we cancelled when a couple of the boys became aggressive over toys.

I enquired with 4 other speech therapists who run social skills classes and to my amazement they seemed to attract the same cohorts of boys with aspergers. The feedback I got was there is very few high functioning girls needing social skills classes to make friends.

I've spoken with some developmental psychologists who have independently advised that social skills classes are waste of time as they are really designed for the parents to network with other parents rather than opportunities for autistic kids to make friends.

Just wondred what other peoples experiences were with social skills programs? Did their kids make life long friends? Why is it in Australia there is no girls with high functioning autism?