Is counseling/social skills training needed??

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My teen functions at a high level and wasn't diagnosed until 15 yo. He has never received any social skills training and entering high school was tough though he has made the adjustment pretty successfully. However, while is grades are better than ever and a ton of kids seem to know him and like him, he spent most of the summer at home and doesn't seek out friends after school. We think he has a girlfriend but he doesn't know where she lives, her b-day or anything of substance about her although he spends a lot of time with her. Email, Facebook and Texting are his most effective communication tools.

I feel like he has a great life and he doesn't complain about it. I just wonder if it is felt that he needs to add a more personal dimension to his social life. Is he connecting with others enough to be a happy, satisfied, successful person in life? Is therapy of some kind needed to achieve that?

He sounds a lot like me at that age, minus the girlfriend part. Never quite got that whole dating thing. Anyways, I dont think he absolutely needs any help. I know that I never received any help yet I turned out fine. I attended college, got a job as an engineer, and now live independently. I did recently get laid off, but that is more due to my companies lack of work then any failure on my part. Anyways, what I am trying to say is that often times expensive therapies, treatments, and counseling is often times over hyped in these situations.

It may indeed be helpful for some, but I highly doubt it is as necessary as many people seem to think it is. I would ask your son if he is interested in perhaps going out more, or getting any social skills classes. If he is interested, and it is offered by his school, then I would say go for it. But if he isnt interested, and is relatively happy with his life as is, then I say let it be.

When I was young and doing some house repair with my father, he taught me that perfection is the enemy of good enough. If you try to make everything absolutely strait, level and perfect your just going to create a huge headache and lots of problems. Often times reality doesnt let you make everything strait and level. You sometimes need to bend and just get things to the point where they are good enough. Likewise, you may want your son to be getting strait As, have many friends, be popular, and do everything perfect. But trying to force it with counseling is trying to force perfection when you already have achieved good enough.

well, socializing will look completely different in the future that we are used to. online stuff and virtual realities will be major. i already know a couple that met and married that way. your son sounds like he has a grip on these future skills. one good friend/girlfriend is great, although you need to make sure that he knows that online scams and lies are possible.
otherwise i am more worried about us, dinos.

Leave the kid be.

Your son sounds like an older version of my son - if he wasn't diagnosed until 15, then he's probably adaptable enough to get by. Having said that, I've gone back and forth on this myself. My son also told me he didn't want to be part of any group that worked on social type stuff. Ok, fine. But having had to work for adults who never developed these skills and knowing he will likely have to deal with roommate issues in college, I certainly don't want to ignore it - it's like any other skill you teach your child. My latest tactics are to pull him into social service/community work that I do (he is willing because it has a very specific purpose/goal) and to ask his high school teachers to pay more attention to his decorum in the classroom. Does he greet them and look them in the eye? Does he apologize if he bumps into someone? We've also taken him to formal settings where certain social skills are expected. If he wants to avoid these settings later in life, that would be his choice, but since many non-labor jobs involve these settings, I feel it is my responsibility to make him aware that if he enters into these settings, certain behaviors are expected. We have a ways to go...

Your son seems very like me. I never get a DX because I was "too intelligent to be a problem". I'm 27, I'm a physician, I've a wife, 1 children and another one coming, a pretty good work and a few "strange" but good friends.

I'd say: let him live as he want, at 15 y-old expecially if he is intelligent and don't have too much external problem (frequent meltdown in public, repetitive behavior that are a great empairment, etc..) he will learn ALSO to cope with people growing up. One things you can do is "information", take a DX-like book and start telling (without too much emphasis), "do you think that you can understand when people lie or talk, are you good at body-language" and if he is not but it's interested in understanding people better he can read some books.

15-y-old guys are terrible, actually I'll probably be happier if my sons will not socialize with them^^

Your son sounds a bit like me....I have always had extensive networks and known lots of people and been well liked at school and work. I would consider myself pretty successful, I have a master's degree and have had good jobs for most of my life (out of work right now but that's more a result of the fact that my particular "obsession" is finance and economics..not exactly a blooming field of opportunity right now). But I really don't have any friends outside of work. I met my husband playing an online video game, and 9 years later we still play online together, sitting next to each other and typing a lot of our conversations. As a matter of fact, we tried to stop playing the online game and after a couple of months we decided to turn our accounts back on because we weren't communicating....it's just easier for us to sit next to each other and type:) (Hehe when my daughter was dx'd there was no mystery about where these traits could have come from!)

I think for me I have always done great at work/school because I picked a career in line with my interests. This means that I read and study about it both at work, and at home, and it's fun to me. Since I also have great memorization skills, I remember almost everything and can talk about almost any subtopic, and give people the most current information and theories in my field. So when people get stumped or have questions, they come to me to get their questions answered and I almost always know the answer. And they actually want to hear about the topics I'm obsessed with! People at work have always described me as the "smart one" and they appreciate what I have to add. Friendship types of relationships are something I can/do do without. Most people don't want to go to a bar and talk about derivatives, and find me boring in a social settings. And when other people start yammering about the things that they talk about in a social setting, I'm bored out of my mind and usually end up spacing out and thinking about numbers or economic theory. Plus I find that after a day full of talking to co-workers and clients, I need the down time to be alone or with just my family or I feel very stressed out.

Am I what most people would consider odd or eccentric? Yep. Am I happy with myself this way? Absolutely. I have a great husband and daughter, and am pregnant with a son. I've had a successful career. I'm happy. To me, trying to get social skills training at this late stage in my life would be like asking me to take a class in underwater basket weaving. Might be useful for some people but not something I deem worthy of my time. That said, I DO have my 6 year old in a social skills group because she is still at the stage in her life where she desperately wants friends and doesn't know how to do it, so I'm giving her options. I think the question of whether or not to join one of these groups is dependent on whether the individual wants to be able to do it and wants to learn, or if they are perfectly happy with life as is. If it's not a topic of interest, it's not likely to reach an Aspie or get paid attention to anyway:)