Begging the question ???

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i have been trying hard in threads on this forum to know the following : is the assertion that 3 year olds with " assumed " ASD are [i][u]absolutely required to play wth their peers[/i][/u] , an assertion of unquestionable truth, or is it begging the question ! !! !! . can you folks substantiate your responses through experience or confirmed research . many thanks .

I don't really understand what "begging the question" means , but I will say my son with AS did not play with peers at age 3. As a matter of fact, when a peer approached him, he would fall to the ground and go into a fetal position.

my son never really enjoyed peers. He ALWAYS liked older or younger kids. To this day, he has issues with kids his age.

I am really not sure what the question is either!

You should ask about this in the PPR forum!

Begging the question is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes what they're trying to prove. If you were to explain, for example, why babies cry, and you said that babies cry because they are infants, you'd be begging the question since what you did was no more than substituting a synonym for baby. Or if I ask my daughter why her older brother is crying and she says, "Cuz he's being a punk." Yes, we KNOW he's being a punk, but we want to know WHY.

I think what he is asking is, is it worthwhile to require or encourage a 3yo ASD child to play with peers.

To that, I would say that it's worthwhile long-term goal for your child to learn how to get along with others, but you will not be able to force any child to play if they don't want to.

It seems to me that you are asking if a child of 3-years-old must socialize? The questions following that might be: What would happen if they did not socialize? Are there negative repercussions? For a child who is struggling with socialization skills, is introverted, has no desire to socialize, then do the negative interactions of forced socialization result in negative repercussions?

I am not sure there are studies that hone in on that specific question, as the assumption seems to be that humans must socialize; Therefore we must teach our young children to socialize. This way they can develop the skills necessary to socialize appropriately as adults. The question then becomes, if we do not force our young (3-year-old) child to socialize, will s/he have the opportunity to develop these skills later on in life or will s/he fall behind with an ever widening gap that is difficult to fill? It has been found that early intervention on many skills for children with ASD results in the development of those skills at a better rate than children with ASD who don't receive those interventions until later (I don't have a reference, sorry). It would seem to be a natural assumption that early intervention for social skills would work the same way. However, I can see the concern if the child is having negative interactions repeatedly and only learning to dislike/fear socialization and further hindering future positive social interactions. So, it would seem to me if a parent wants to provide early intervention for social skills learning, care must be taken to keep/make those interactions positive and useful to learning skills.

This article is not a direct answer to the question, but has some interesting information about how to help young children socialize through positive interactions in parent play with examples.

http://humsci.auburn.edu/parent/socialskills.html

I think Eureka-C said it all pretty well. What I see most oftern here is that people are encouraged to try and facilitate social interactions with children this age and younger. I don't think I've ever seen anyone on this forum state that you MUST teach your child to interact with his or her peers or they will be scared for life.

It should be noted that even for NT kids, 3 is pretty young for development of interactive play. Most 3 yos spend more time in parrallel play than in actual interactive play with their peers. Typically, ASD kids are thought to be behind their peers in many developmental areas, socialization almost universally being one of those. So a 3 yo ASD child may have the social development of a much younger child. I think Eureka-C makes a good point about keeping it positive. I've said it before and I'll say it again, success breeds success. If your child can have a positive interaction with a peer, however brief, then he or she is more likely to want to try it again and more likely to have a successful interaction again. I believe the opposite is also true.

Encourage, don't force. Provide the opportunity for interaction to happen if possible and model positive behavior for your child. If your child expresses a strong dislike for being around other kids, wait a while and try again at a later time.

At age three, the focus for a child with ASD should be on basic communication, not socialization with peers. It is atypical for an autistic child to interact with peers at age three.

My daughter actually actively avoided any peers at age 3. Typical peer interaction has still yet to occur at age 8.