Increasing social difficulty - HFA son, 11 yo

Post Reply New Topic

My son, with HFA has always actually done well socially. Preschool-4th he had lots of great friends and was a strong leader. He could be bossy, but most of the kids allowed him to lead. In 5th grade, we switched him to a slightly larger school. He had a rough start there because he was in the middle of a horrible reaction to a stimulant med.

After things calmed down and he got switched to new non-stimulant meds, he did ok. He made friends but at this school, kids weren't tolerant of his bossiness, intensity during competition, and his often instigating/verbally aggressive talk.

Now a year later in 6th grade, he does have a few good friends that "get him". But I am heartbroken at seeing the NT kids, who leave him out. Our next door neighbor/My sons best friend, same age, who he grew up with, still plays often with my son, but now he mostly excludes him from his school friends. My son can be intense for other kids to take and I get that. But this has been very hard for me to deal with.

I still feel slightly that it is a reflection on me, but know that from everything I have tried that its not my parenting. But this struggle of his socially makes me so sad. As he gets older his being slightly different seems amplified and it's a bigger deal.

And because I didn't even know that my son had autism until last year, I am also feeling such a loss of going from what I thought was a child that was so gifted, but he just had emotional intensity to realizing your child has a disorder that tremendously affects how he sees the world and how he perceives interpersonal interactions. It's enough to make my heart pound with anxiety.

Any advice? How does scoail expectations continue to change through adolescence? What else can I do to help him? Any other parents feel this heartbreak?

Are there any soial groups, after school activities, clubs, etc...that he can get involved in and maybe make a few friends that way. I think few good freinds who get your son are better then a whole bunch of kids who dont. How does your son feel about his situation? Does he complain that kids dont like him, or wish he had more freinds?

We went through the same thing, although my son fell apart a bit earlier and it took longer for us to figure it out and get the help he needed.

Basically, what is happening is that social and language development in typically developing children has a couple of huge growth spurts: we were caught by the one in 3rd grade, but there is another in 5th and 6th grade that it sounds like your son is caught in. (Here's some NT development: http://www.education.com/reference/arti ... rs/?page=2 )

The first thing we did that helped DS immensely was have his speech tested. Our son was a precocious talker and had a college-level vocabulary in 4th grade, so I was completely floored when it was suggested that he needed speech therapy. Pragmatics can be a large part of social problems ( http://www.asha.org/public/speech/devel ... matics.htm ) Your child's school should be able to do the test and provide the therapy, which is usually combined with a social skills class.

DS is struggling along, but seems to be doing OK now - the therapies really helped, in fact one of the problems we're having with them is that they focus on major issues and now DS is struggling with fine-tuning his social skills, but in the beginning it was incredibly helpful for him to have a roadmap of how social interaction goes.

I will also second the need for socialization outside of school. The fact that your son has one or two friends is a good thing, and that NT kids he knows will play with him one-on-one is good, too. A social worker once told us that the kids who overcome social deficits usually have some kind of protection from friends outside of their school.

MMJ- He plays basketball, and does meet kids outside of school that way. He doesn't make too many friends that way though. You asked how my son feels, and I actually think its a much bigger deal to me than him. I'm trying to keep perspective.

Momsparky- funny you should ask about pragmatics, I just had that iep meeting on Friday. When tested in pragmatics, he had a very hard time with one of the subtexts on multiple meaning of emotions. He was asked to look at a picture and say what could be wrong and then say another thing that could be wrong. He could do the first, but not the second interpretation. He scored in the 4th % on it. He will be starting 30 min a week on pragmatics. He already gets 30 minutes a week for social skills, but the school social skills program isn't all that great.

I live about an hour from UCLA. And heard from our sons P-doc that UCLA's PEERS program is top notch. I plan on looking into that for the summer, though with two other kids (ages 8 and 3) I don't know how that will work.

I love that my son has NT friends that know and love him for him. Good to hear that is good for him.

Note that the UCLA program is featured on the front page of this site, and I've gotten very good tips from just the short series of videos they did for Wrongplanet. If I had access to it (we're in the Midwest, so I don't) I would make it a priority.

Our schools social skills classes at our school are not very good, either - but apparently pragmatic speech therapy is much more specific, and he got a lot more out of it (though we didn't find out until later that they were offered combined - keep an eye on how those services are rendered in the IEP and make sure that if they combine them you get the total number of hours and they don't try to get away with offering the two service simultaneously. Our school did - we were supposed to get 1/2 hour of social skills and 1/2 hour of pragmatics...and they combined them into a single half hour weekly session.)

Our experience with the pragmatics test: DS had about half the skills. When the school gave it to him (and I didn't know what it was) he scored a 52% and they gave me some line about him being above 50% and therefore not qualifying. I watched him take the test (I had to leave the room to prevent a meltdown) and was shocked to find that the 52% pretty much meant that he had 100% of half the skills and 0% of the other half - similar to your son. I remember there was a picture of an angry customer with a burned meal and a frightened waiter. DS was able to correctly identify exactly what was going on and what everybody was feeling, and then when the tester asked him what the waiter should do, he had a colossal meltdown. He had no idea that there were next steps after someone was angry! It was heartbreaking to watch him struggle.

Maybe leave it be then? If he hasnt mentioned it bothering him, then maybe trying to push the issue will create more pressure and stress? I am NT and have a few great freinds. I dont have a ton of freinds, but those I have are there for life, understand me and are worth their weight in gold. I am very happy with things this way. I know people who have a ton more "friends" but its all superficial.

Hang in there, its our jobs to worry about our ids, but it sounds like your son is doing fine!

I would agree that one good marker not to worry about something is whether or not it is worrying your kid.

That being said, if there is a definite social skills deficit of some kind, I would consider it worthwhile to make sure he has an appropriate toolbox of skills for when he does need it (say, when he's looking for a job.) Easier to get that gradually over time when he's in school than it would be for him to have to figure it out when he's an adult. The good news is if he's happy, there is no pressure.

Momsparky - When we did the IEP with the new pragmatic goals, we made sure the language was clear that he was to have 45 minutes, per week, split into two sessions. The sessions would cover his work on making the "L" sound in conversation and work on pragmatics. He also receives 30 minutes a week of social skills, but that is taught by the Sped teacher, so like you and I both noticed, it's not a great program. I will for sure look into UCLA PEERS. Likely for next year, when he's in 7th grade. (The program says its for 7th-12th)

MMJMOM - I guess what bothers me isn't that he doesn't have loads of friends, I too, only have a couple of very close friends and am content with that. I think I am just sad to see that he's missing out on the social experience (flirting with girls, hanging out and going places with friends - like the mall, the movies) And I know he doesn't care about that stuff, so of course, neither should I, but I guess seeing that he really is different makes his struggles a reality for me. I don't know if that makes sense. I didn't think it was that bad. I actually thought his complaints about the other kids in his grade were justified, but in reading the recent observations of my son in unstructured environments at the last IEP meeting and hearing from his best friends mom (this is a boy who my son has spent nearly every day with for the past 10 years - they are such fantastic friends and we are so lucky to have him as our neighbor), that said that sometimes her son just wants to be with his school friends and not my son because he can be so intense, I'm just sad that the reality of my son's teenage years is not going to be what I had originally imagined.

He is oly 11, give it time. I dont know many 11yos who hang out at the mall or the movies (unless with parents or an adult). Maybe when he is a few years older those things will interest him and his freinds more and they will do them together.

In any event, if he is happy, thats what matters the end of the day! My son's version of fun is completely different then mine, but he is happy doing it. We just have to figure out how to accept it!

good luck!

I think that at this age it is often more us than them. If they don't care about the friends, then we shouldn't.

As I posted in another thread, this is the age when kids start having more divergent interests, and your son may well soon find the conversations that the NT kids choose to have do not appeal to him at all. If there are no shared interests, it is tough to want to be friends. My son was very close to a popular kid in elementary school, and still friendly with him in middle school, but started drawing away from him because he found the boy only had interesting conversation with him when they were alone and my son was in control of the topics. When around other kids, the boy and the other kids all chatted about stuff that my son found really boring.

I have to warn you, though, that it could get worse before it gets better. 7th grade was the most difficult for my son because that was when the boys that he did share interests with got insecure about their own relative positions in the school social order, and started scapegoating kids like my son as the reason for not being higher up. It will be the socially awkward kids you end up having to worry the most about for a while. It is just a phase, it sorts itself out, but it is a rough phase.

Stay focused on the fact that your son probably does not need volume, he just needs one or two people to be available for specific purposes. If you can help him with that, he'll stay happy.