The 'I made a friend at Social Skills' Naughty Chair

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My son Joshua, (a 6 year old with a diagnosis of Autism) made 2 friends today, at a 'Social Skills' class. Hurrah, you may think? Apparently not. Instead of being celebrated the boys were all put on 'Thinking chairs' for 'playing each other up' by 'running around and being silly.' Am I very mistaken or is this not how 6 year old boys tend to make friends?
To quote the Social Skills homework page, 'It is okay to use words when I feel angry, I can say 'I'm angry!' or 'That makes me mad!'' Well, I don't quite feel angry, but I do chuckle to myself when I think of the irony of 3 cute little 6 year old boys in a line, all giggling sitting on 'Thinking chairs' to 'Think about what they had done', namely make friends in a perfectly playground- acceptable, age-appropriate way that unfortunately failed to fit in with the neatly structured curriculum of the Social Skills class.
Valuable as scripts and cues can be in learning useful ways to interact when interacting is difficult,as it can be for my son, today shall remain fixed in my mind as a lesson of why the child should be the teacher, the adult the facilitator, and how sometimes, we just need to let go of what we hold dear, and get out of the way, to let something rather more brilliant take shape.

I totally get what you are saying. Totally.

What the frack? They were punished for that? Why are they so focused on structure? You would think that if a social opportunity presented itself they would just help them interact smoothly if they needed it.

Every now and then I contemplate social skills class for my son. I would not want one like this.

The instructors of this class need to take a page from their own book and apply a little flexibility. I think it could have been possible to work with the boys exuberance instead of squashing it.

Welcome to the educational system and how it fails male children.

Men and women are equal, but we are not the same. Society may try to teach us that, but it is not true. We are equal, but not the same.

Our educational system punishes males for being males. Young boys like to run and play and touch and manipulate things.

Instead we force them to sit still at desks for hours, and learn the same way girls learn and then when they can't, we label them with ADHD and medicate them.

It's one of the ugly secrets of the educational system. No one wants to admit it because people will claim they believe men and women aren't equal.

I found out today that one of the boys was actually crying and not giggling as Josh had said, which makes it more distressing than ironic. What harm we can do when we fail to be flexible ourselves, as if making friends can be compartmentalised effectively!
I have seen DIR Floortime social skills groups which provide fun equipment, skilled facilitators who wait and see what evolves and cheer and support from the sidelines, now that's what I call helpful.

Do you know who the other boys are? Can you invite them over for a short playdate, or to a park? In other words, get them into a normal, fun environment? (I'm not ignoring the fact that one boy was crying... but you don't know why.)
J.