Autistic kid wants friends but refuses to compromise...

Post Reply New Topic

This sounded like me when I was your son's age only my obsession was cats, the other kids didn't like me talking about cats all the time luckily I grew out of it, your son might grow out of it too it sounds like he understands when you talk to him about it but then when he's with the other kids he forgets and does it again.
It could be because he's out of his comfort zone.

There's a computer company here in Melbourne called "Geeks to you" they fix peoples computers so the word Geek is now a term of endearment.

I hope I'm not too intrusive, but if you're willing to say, KoR, are you able to find friends?

1. Does your son have any other interests besides Batman?
2. Do you know any moms of same age boys, preferably some in his class who you could ask to find out what they're interested in/obsessed with? If there's some particular books or video games or movies, you might hit gold. Then he'd have something to talk about that others would like to talk about too.
3. Is he too old for a play date thing with some boys from his church/temple/soccer team or whatever? You could take them to a movie or a museum. Then they'd have a shared experience to talk about.
4. Does his school have any after school clubs or activities? My elementary school had a few, my middle school had a bunch, and my HS had a ton.
5. I don't know how he is the rest of the time, but could he volunteer with a food bank or something? Ex: at the one I used to volunteer with, younger volunteers would help pack boxes of food for distribution.
6. Is there any chance at all of getting him involved with Scouts?

Immediate thing you could do that would probably help:
Write out a script for him to follow. Something basic he can improvise on. He probably doesn't know what else to say, so defaults to talking about Batman even though he knows that's not going to work.

I wonder if he truly understands or is he just parroting what you tell him? I find just because someone knows what you said and can repeat back what was said or what they have been taught doesn't mean they understand.

I understand about behavior very well and am "famous" for the advice I give on a couple of big teen forums.
But I am unable to put most of it into practice in my own life when it comes to social interaction etc.
Not unwilling, just unable. At least so far.

It was my son's idea to go to the dance, if anything I had discouraged him from it. I had told him I would only take him if he was going to participate and dance.

Perhaps that was wrong of me. I was also conflicted about whether it was right for me to pull him aside and try and intervene sometimes like I did. I just found it so hard to stand there and watch someone get angry with him. It was certainly rude of him to just get in the way of other kids who were trying to dance.

I am doing my best to try and encourage him to try other social activities rather than going to dances (or the like) which are obviously going to lead to unsuccessful interactions.

What blows my mind is how my son has recently started rejecting other kids who might have similar interests. He was invited to a birthday party of another boy that was held at a comic book store, and everyone was playing a variety of fantasy games and such like. This is exactly the kind of thing my son could get into. However, he just complained about being bored the whole time.

Like I said, it's as if he's decided he wants to try and be friends with "cool" kids. This seems completely futile seeing as how my son has very little in common with them. I wish I could just get him to try reaching out to kids who had similar interests.

I don't think there is any wrong. You are just tryng to find what will work.

Reach out to him where he is. Which isn't easy when he is complaining, but may break that cycle and help him respect himself and the other kids who may not be the most popular but might become friends with him.

I'm curious, do you mind saying how is your son's ability to dance?

When he was trying to dance he didn't seem to be particularly worse than most of the other kids.

Interestingly, my son really likes a drama camp he goes to in the summer where the kids put on a play every week. They often do choreographed musical numbers at camp that my son seems to do quite well. I find it kind of strange that he can do a pretty good job of getting into different characters for a play, but he can't figure out how to interact well with other kids on a social basis.

Sniglet, was your son aware of failing socially while he was talking to the other kids? He may have thought it went fairly well: he went to a dance and talked about Batman to other kids. In other words, it may have been far more painful for you than it was for him.

Having the right kind of friend may be much more important to him than "having friends", and if that's the case, it may just take a while for him to tumble to the fact that "popular ordinary kids" and "kids who want to talk about _________" are not the same set of kids, and aren't going to be the same set of kids.

As a child I was like your son, OP. I really wanted to be friends with the pretty, popular girls in my class but I would do things like recite the class rules to them and pointed out when they did something wrong. I'd also go on about my interests (which were pretty typical and mainstream) and ask annoying questions. I continued to do this even after I was told that people didn't like it. My mum said that I didn't realize when people were annoyed by questions.

One thing I wanted to say is that I don't think your son understood that he was standing in the way of the kids wanting to dance and that was annoying them. As a kid I just completely missed these non-verbal cues. He said he'd tell a kid to "get lost" if he wasn't interested in what they were talking about but he might not understand non-verbal signals that mean get lost and/or might not be paying attention to them. He knows that the cool kids don't like batman but he doesn't see how annoyed they are with him a when he talks about it and how much they want him to go away.

Another thing is he doesn't get that common interests are necessary for friendship (at-least in his case). Perhaps you should explicitly explain to him that he basically has three options 1) try to get interested in what the cool kids like and talk about those things and not his interests and try to join their group, which still may or may not work 2) continue to happily pursue his interests and join kids who are interested in comic books whether they are geeks or not or 3) continue to pursue his interests alone , have no friends and maybe one day meet a kid that he considers cool enough who also likes comic books. Option 2 seems the healthiest choice to me. If he wants to only pursue his interests and talk about them then he can't befriend the kids who can't stand him talking about batman.

Maybe this is just a phase he is going through. He has some socially awkward "geek" friends whom he has recently decided he doesn't want to hang out with much anymore. Maybe he is just realizing there is a difference between "cool" kids and other types that didn't really register before and he is now trying to get into the "cool" crowd.

I can only hope this phase will blow over and he will get back to preferring to be with kids he has things in common with.

Funny you mention that. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with choreography and all things choreographic. To me. It just make things flow better, Like it was fulfilling some kind of stim. I did drama and theater in school but that was to try to improve my social skills and force myself to get over the fears of being around other people.

You might want to see if your son does have some kind of obsession with choreographic things.

That's great! I think the idea of choreographing may make a huge difference. He likes it, and is able to do it.

So for your child, can you try approaching social interactions as the choreographed performance they are to many of us? It's a lot of work, but the difference I think is for learning the musical numbers, there is no expectation the children will intuitively know what to do. Each step is directly taught. You could plan social interaction with him telling him it is like learning a song, pause here, wave there, say this, say that.

Then, he can follow that script so to speak and feel successful, have something to lean on. It may not work, but I think it could help. And that you can learn so much from what you try that goes wrong that can help you. Please don't be discouraged!

I think its simply a matter of gathering experiences. Sooner or later, because of your experiences, you simply see it as a fact, that you either can be for your own, try to fake another personality to please the "normal and cool people" or be yourself and discuss with some rather embarassing nerds the pros and cons of the new "Shield defense rules for paladins, according to the new rule edition 5.91 for Warhamster ^^".

And then it simply depends, what is more important to you and gives you in more oppinion more pros. If its so much more important to be accepted by everyone, then the faking personality stuff will benefit you more. If its more benefitting to you, to please yourself, you will simply learn to give a f**k about what other people think, and enjoy convincing that stupid nerds about your one and only true oppinion about paladin-defense. ^^

Yep.

That was painful to read.

I'm not sure what you could have done better.

He said he understood that the dance was a group activity. He should have not started talking about his interests and made more of an effort at the group activities. He probably was interested in having a "captive audience" where people "had to" socialize with him...when really, they did not have to.

Frankly, if he did understand that he was there to do what the GROUP wanted and not what HE wanted, then you should have considered taking him home after he failed to grasp the concept on the second try....preventing him doing more damage to his public reputation among his peers. I can't vouch for how well he would have taken that, though.

***

Then again, to this day when I attend "group functions," I pretty much sit on my own and listen to others talk because I really have no interest in what they want to talk about, and they likewise have no interest in what I want to talk about. I've tried to be more involved in conversations, but other than offering snippets of information on what's the topic of the moment, I don't have deep conversations because I have no interest in the topic. It's helped me to be interested in a diversity of things so that I can at least feign interest better. A guy I know who's not that bright is an excellent listener, and his reasoning is that he loves to listen to others because he never knows what he might learn that he didn't know before...even if he really doesn't understand all of it.

Heck, as a kid, I wanted to joint the Cub Scouts so badly more because I thought it would be a place where the other boys in my "troop" would have to be my friend. I practically dragged my dad to the table to sign me up. The chapter never got started for a lack of interest (an auditorium full of young boys and not enough were interested in joining...really?). The next year, the chapter had no problem getting started. To this day I wonder if I was the reason it didn't happen. I was a social pariah throughout school, and yes, people would refuse to be part of something if I was involved.

I'd like to say I grew out of it, but I really have not. Granted, this was before learning about AS, but I had a group of ADULTS tell me we were having our monthly get-together at one place just to ditch me while they went someplace they knew I would not approve.

1. Your son needs to be "stimulated."

You think he'd have a good time at a party held at a comic book store. However, as a guest, he is there to celebrate another person's birthday. You don't throw the party so that the birthday boy is entertaining the guests. You throw it so that the guests are helping the birthday boy enjoy the party.

A NT (but selfish) child would want it all to be about them and not care about others. A kid with AS would only be invested if the birthday boy was a friend he wanted to do something for. Just because it was held someplace he has an interest would not make it enjoyable. It's like being in a computer club, and when they go out to have pizza think that talking about C++ is going to be a good meal topic when it really is not (learned that the hard way).

2. Most NT kids will not be friends with the "cool" kids.

I don't know a better way to say this. Your son will always have more in common with the geeks, nerds, freaks, etc. than he will ever fit in with the "cool" kids. You should know this from your personal life (unless you were one of the "cool" kids). No matter what Madison Avenue says is fashionable, the cool kids decide what's in and what's not. Less than 10% of the school population rule the playground because they are the attractive ones. Everyone else are further down on the social food chain.

It'll be hard, but he needs to accept that it is unlikely that any of the "cool" kids will accept him. If it makes him feel better, the vast majority of NT kids are just as socially rejected for any number of reasons.