Child upsetting others

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Hi

I've been paying very close attention to my daughter's interactions with her peers and a couple of incidents concern me.

I volunteered to help walk her school year group to the local church. When we were coming back, one of the girls tripped and cut her knee. My daughter kept saying to her, 'You shouldn't have been jumping, that's why that happened'. The little girl was upset at the cut knee and cried every time my daughter spoke to her. I kept telling her to stop talking to her as she was upsetting her even more, but she just kept on going.

Then yesterday, she was playing with a little girl who lives nearby. The girl was trying to get a fly to move off the slide. My daughter loves nature and she thought the girl was being rough, although the fly was OK. She gave her a lecture and her friend was in tears. But, she just kept on going, even when I pointed out how upset her friend was. Why does she do this? This girl is her only friend.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I made my best friend cry once by telling her off for not using the other side of the paper to draw on... I still feel kind of bad about it.

Maybe set down a 'rule' for your daughter that she's only allowed point something out once? (it could backfire 10 years later... everything does)

Perhaps you should explain to her that it upsets other children when she does that, and then explain why. It is very possible that she doesn't even understand that it is upsetting people by telling them what they do not want to hear....

Tell he:

It hurts friends feelings when you tell them what they did wrong, its better to talk about how to solve the problem next time. We never do that when someone is crying. When someone is crying we try to make them feel better. If we can't think of something that will help, we ask if there is anything we can do to make them feel better.

I have found that with my children (as and nt) I must always tell them what I do want rather than just telling them what I don't want, they won't be able to figure out the replacement.

For example, with the little girl who scraped her knee, when telling your daughter that she was upsetting the girl, the conversation might have gone better like this:

See honey, she is crying more when you point out that she made a mistake. Why don't you ask her if there's something you can do to help. Or, if you think that nothing would be helpful, you could say, can you run and get me a tissue (band aid or anything) that is a redirect, without causing more friction.

How does your daughter react when she makes a mistake?

My daughter gets extremely upset when she makes mistakes and gets very distressed. We modelled that as an example for interacting with other kids. 'How would I feel if '... after about three years, my daughter does pretty good at recognizing the feelings of others - at least the big obvious ones. And she is teaching herself more all the time from tv show modelling. She watches these shows and will sit there and dialogue with herself - explaining why Carly knew Sam was upset with her, or why Spencer was upset or sad.

Your daughter is simply expressing the logical observations in the moment. It doesn't sound like she recognises emotions in others. She's not being mean or cruel in any way - she simply doesn't understand the tears on her friends face as the feeling of being hurt. Think of her as a blank slate - you may need to teach her how to identify her own emotions and then teach her what those emotions look like on someone else's face.

It's really not unusual for children to be critical. Whether they have AS or not, a lot of children, let's say under the age of 11 to account for the late bloomers, can understand mistakes, and problems and their sources, but don't have the capacity to empathize with those who made the mistake.

Your daughter has acquired the ability to identify that tripping is bad, and how one might avoid tripping, and as a human, feels a strong obligation to share this information, but does not yet have the skills or empathic abilities to relay it appropriately because she can't think "Hey, that's something that can happen to anyone," and can't be forgiving of mistakes.

If you watch young children play, you will see they tend to be very hostile and critical to a child who makes a mistake, or who is doing something wrong.

A lot of children learn tolerance and forgiveness and compassion for mistakes, and empathy for the individual through experiences of their own in which they are the one who made a mistake.

There used to be some after school specials here and they would give examples of how children could respond in situations like someone making a mistake, and would show different outcomes for different responses. For example, one was a scenario in which a boy in the cafeteria accidentally spilled the contents of his tray on another boy. In one scenario, he tries to apologize but the other boy is too upset, calls him a few names, shoves him, and a fight starts. In another scenario, the boy apologizes. The other boy says "That's ok. It was an accident." And together they clean the mess up.

What you might do with your daughter would be some critical thinking exercises next time something like this happens. For example...

You: "If you tripped and hurt yourself you would you want someone to yell at you?"

She might say no, she might say yes, she might not say anything, but it doesn't matter, because whatever she says you say...

"You'd want them to be nice to you because it was an accident and you didn't mean to trip, right?"

And then you say "Next time someone makes a mistake I want you to imagine you made the mistake and treat them how you would want people to treat you if you made the mistake instead of them."

Thanks everyone for your replies. I do have a major problem trying to talk with my daughter. She refuses to speak about some things and she takes a lot as criticism, even when I'm not trying to blame her for anything. For example, if I say, 'I think those trousers are too short for you now', she says, 'It's not my fault'. We have an appointment with Speech and Language Therapy in a couple of weeks - our first step towards an assessment. She doesn't have any problems with speech, in fact, she was a precocious speaker. But, I've been told that they might be able to help with her understanding and hopefully makes things easier for me to speak with her. I'm also reading 'Parenting a Child with Asperger Syndrome: 200 Tips and Strategies' and intend starting an emotions book, as the author suggests.

Thanks again