Seems miracles sometimes do happen.....

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By some unexpected chance my son became friends with a lovely young 15 yr old boy who lives in our estate.....This happened just a few days after we had this ruptions regarding his bad attitude and playing with kids with bad attitude and terrible manners!
It is as if our whole household has calmed down.....my son is friendly, obedient, calm....no biting his shirt collar anymore, ect.
This boy doesn't swear...is friendly, sharing and helps my son with ps3 ....teaching him new skate board trics....My son is only 8 yr old but interacts so well with this boy!
For the first time in months I feel a bit relaxed while my son is playing with some one....the only thing that I am conserned about is that my son is getting to attached to this new friend.
He is much more relaxed with this boy than with friends his own age! I think maybe because this child speaks with a deeper, softer voice and is a vey patient type of person....
Ok....I know it is still early days but I so HOPE it will lasts!

We have connected my 9 year old son with my friend's 15 year old son as a mentoring type relationship and it is working wonderfully. My friend's son is so patient and can get my son to try new games and activities. It is a relationship we will keep developing, it is a calmness within the social turmoil he experiences at school.

That's wonderful news! Congratulations!
Sometimes kids just magically turn a corner. At least it seems magical. It's sudden or unexpected after the years of everyone's hard work setting the stage for it.
J.

these types of relationships can be really great for our kids. one of the things i find more curious with autism is that the social struggles are generally peer based. a child will often do fine with adults and older or younger children, but be unable to develop those peer relationships with kids the same age. so sometimes having that older child to bond with removes some of the social difficulty and lets them form relationships that they cant with kids their own age.

Azure, you are on to something. Peer relationships have far more pressure on them and there are many differences betw them compared to other relationships. Certainly not all 15 year olds will be so good as to hang out with young aspies but it's certainly worth a try.

I have a mixed blessing for our neighborhood situation. Three boys about my son's age live right next door and across the street. One is an aggressive boy w/ anger issues. The oldest is only a year older than mine and is great. He's competitive but has natural leadership skills. When he is around, the boys play hard and fair. Fantastic for my son. When the oldest isn't there, it's a disaster. I have a terrible time trying to tell my son that he can't go over to the aggressive boy's house. He just doesn't get it.

An aside, I began to learn about the peer thing regarding language development. If you want kids to write well, they need great examples of oral language, not necessarily written language. In mixed age groups, complexity of language rises. Older kids want to impress the younger and vice versa. In peer relationships, oral language is very poor.

Lovelyboy, maybe there are other relationships to foster so that he doesn't become too attached to the one boy.

Great news lovelyboy!

Yes it's interesting the idea of different age friendships. When young I think I was more at ease with adults, although that changed when I became a teenager. Our daughter has made some suggestion of our son attending some of her clubs at university, but I don't think it would work for him because of the intellectual difference.