6 Year old social issues

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Friends...

My boy is now 6 years and we have known his challenges for last 4 years... he has been slowly but steadly picking up stuff like numbers and alphabets and words, etc...however I want your help in understanding few things.

He is aware of everything and I am sure understands most of the stuff which happens around him. When he is with his friends, he imitates them to the core...like if there is a bat and ball to be played, if his friend is holding the bat, even my boy will look for another bat. If by any chance he falls down, then even my boy wantedly falls down...

1. this is happening for more than 2 years and i am sure, when we talk to him, he gets it, but as soon as he sees his friend, he ignores all instructions and does imitate. Now this will sooner or later irritate his friend and my boy will be sad. I want to avoid this showdown. Can anybody of you can help me work on this?

2. he just doesnt want to talk what happens in his school...we talk to teacher and she has some good words on his learning abilities, but my boy doesnt want to talk anything about that part of his world. we want to know, to understand and provide any help if necessary, but he doesnt understand.

3. ipad/ internet doesnt work, then he has to throw a tantrum...he loves watching few youtube videos and he knows that things once in a while dont work, but he will throw a tantrum, i think it is uncontrollable for him, can you guys help us to help him?

4. how to help him with cleaning himself after potty, he is potty trained since his 3rd year, so there is no bed wetting situation, but we wipe him off, sooner or later, we want him to do it all himself, do you guys have any helping tipe?

5. he is a very smart kid and since he doesnt talk much, we dont know, what is his core interest...this i guess nobody can help, but if you all have been in similar situation, can let me know your ways.

thanks
smannar

It took about a year to teach my son to wipe himself when he was 5-6. You really have to break
it down into teaching the skills of reaching around behind (this was tough for some reason), getting "way up in there", and checking the paper to tell whether to wipe again. A mirror us also helpful for checking.

thanks...
please help me with other points too

My opinions, which are just my opinions:

1. It's a fun game and he is trying to learn. Unfortunately, he is developmentally behind his peers with this and, you are right, it will start to annoy them. But if it isn't an issue now, I wouldn't be in a huge rush to end it. Perhaps spend time pointing out to him how his peers and older kids no longer do this, and encourage him to act more "big boy." Keep it gentle and positive; let it sink in slowly, in his own time. As a trade off, tell him that you will play the game with him at home to his heart's content.

2. He's a boy. This is normal. The worlds are completely separate to him. I suggest you just accept it, and use small, unobtrusive ways to get some of the insights you want. OK, I just advocated spying, but in some ways we all do it, and for positive reasons - we just want to be in the parts of their lives we don't get to see. Normal for us to want it, normal for them not to share it. But what you let yourself see is just for you - acting on it would disrupt trust and feel like an invasion to him.

3. ASD children have extra trouble with the unexpected, and things that don't work are unexpected. Help him cope in the moment, but also keep an open dialogue about how sometimes things don't work, and we have to learn to bend like a tree in the wind with it. Also, learn more about stress and meltdowns through our other threads on the topic in this forum. See the parenting index thread.

4. He'll take it over when he is ready. This seems to be a common developmental delay but he should eventually learn. My son loved to use what we called "auto-wipe," ie letting the underwear eventually rub it off, and it drove me nuts, and I told him that it drove me nuts (joking about the auto-wipe when we did laundry) and insisted on helping him wipe when he was home to keep the amount of soiling to a minimum, which he wasn't very fond of. So ... I guess we nagged but with a light touch, and eventually he simply decided to care. I think there are other threads on this forum on the topic with more ideas. Check out the parenting index.

5. He may not have a core interest. Not all ASD children do. Or it could be as simple as lining up patterns in all the things he sees around him. Time will tell.

Hi. My son age almost 12 is finally able to not totally freak out when his video games and computer don't work as they should. Understanding he has options, and understanding there is nothing to be done (like when the internet is down) have helped. And I think it helps him for me to use a simple statement such as "I'm sorry, I know it's very frustrating when blah blah blah. I was trying to send some important work emails and now I have to wait until later too! Let me know if you want help starting something else while we wait." Then I just kind of leave him to cry. If he gets violent with stuff I tell him he won't be allowed to be on the computer/whatever and he has a list of coping skills (that my son has actually never used, even though he developed them with his counselor - he refuses to use them when he's upset) such as punch the pillow, color, watch a tv show instead, run up and down the stairs, etc. We have them actually posted in places around the house.

As for annoying his friends unintentionally, this is very common. I've found that having a limited time to the play session helps, as does having some interactions be with younger children who don't notice my son being odd, and also limiting free play and instead doing things like art class where there is structure.

Talking about his day, this has been a huge struggle for us. I very rarely feel like I'm getting information from my son that I actually was hoping to get. He'll go on and on about his special interest but that's about it. I used to pick out some school work from his binder and ask some specific questions. Always things like this would happen:

me: Was it fun making this?
him:
me: Did you have this orange crayon or did you have to borrow it?
him:
me: I bet that crayon was in that pack we bought at the beginning of the school year.
him: And then she said NO, that it was not the right one, and then she ran off.
me: Who said that?
him: The door was closed.
me: The door she ran to?
him:
me: Explain that again.
him: [goes running off, will never talk about this again, despite prodding]

Sometimes I could gather enough bits and pieces to get some idea what he was talking about, but mostly not. His annoyance at my attempts I guess are what made me just not worry too much about it after a while. I learned I can tell a lot about how stuff is going for him just by his demeanor. And talking to his teachers. I started homeschooling him in the fourth grade so now I know all that's going on.

I also modeled a lot for him how to have a conversation that made sense, by giving him an introduction and then a detail and then a summary. Such as "I want to make the garden look more pretty. I'm going to plant a flower. That will help it look pretty." He sometimes gives appropriate background now but still sometimes doesn't. But it's easier now to get more info. Now that he's almost 12 he'll say out of the blue "Greenie isn't going to be on at 9 PM tonight" and I'll say "uh, can you back that up a bit" and he'll say "Oh, right, sorry, Greenie is a guy in mine craft and we usually meet at 9 but tonight he has boy scouts."

I think writing assignments have helped a bit too, even though we do a lot of them orally. Your son could maybe start some very simple ones and maybe call them conversation starters or something. What I do is say "here is a topic sentence, and you give me a detail for it - Dogs make great pets." And he'll say "Dogs are very friendly to humans." Now that he's older we can go in the reverse direction too, where I'll give a detail ("Organized sports can be fun too") and he'll come up with a topic sentence ("There are lots of things kids can do on summer vacation.") This is VERY hard for him but he seems to like it. I had to model and model and model, like giving the topic sentence and two details and several suggestions for a third detail before he could come up with something, but it's getting better. He just finished sixth grade and he's supposed to be able to write a five paragraph essay - yeah, not really even close.

As for potty, my son started wiping himself at age 10 and at first it was a disaster. I had really pushed for it and he was reluctant and still wanted my help but things like going while we were out helped convince him that he needed to learn, since there are times I won't be able to help. I just tried to grin and bear it when he wasn't very good at it, and I gave some specific instruction. He has grip issues and can't clean up spills so cleaning himself was very hard. I smeared shaving cream on the counter and showed him how hard to press with the tissue. He got to where he could wipe but he wouldn't keep the tissue balled up - he sort of let it trail out in between wiping and looking at it, and he'd leave little poop prints all over the toilet and himself. I told myself it could be worse. He does a great job now after two years of practice.