Any suggestions to help my son's social anxiety? Struggling!

Post Reply New Topic

My son is 10. He's great. He has aspergers and he's clever and funny and fabulous. However his particular manifestation is that his social communication skills in relation to greetings and 'chat' are particularly poor. He's not particularly rigid or obsessive though he has enough difficulties in this area to be diagnosable. He does okay with his peer group - or with a small group of 'friends' - and funnily enough with total stranger kids too, if we go somewhere for the day he will always end up striking up a friendship with some kid there. It's like, if he knows it's going to be time limited he can handle it.

However, kids who are present in his life but not his designated 'friends' (like, other kids in his class) get ignored or brushed off - like, if one offers him a sweet or makes a social overture he will reject it or ignore them even though he wants the sweet and doens't dislike the person. And adults in authority positions or who he doesn't know also get ignored, blanked, or grunted at unless they ask a work-related fact based question. For example, he could answer a question on a topic they were doing in class, or a maths problem. But if the teacher said hello or asked him if he needed any help he would ignore her. Recently he's been getting into trouble because if he doesn't have all the equipment to start the task he just sits there (he doesn't have an aide and is academically very bright) rather than approach the teacher and tell her. When he was younger he would hold his pee all day rather than ask to use the toilet. If he witnesses an incident he ends up frustrating the staff immensely because he cannot say what he saw.

School have tried giving him cue cards with sentences on (such as 'I have a problem', 'Ive lost something') but he can't bring himself to apporach the teacher to use them. The teacher has also tried asking what the problem is but he can't say, though if she gives a list of options he will nod if she gets the correct one.

Does anyone - maybe if you've been there yourself -have any good ideas as to how to crack this? Our newest strategy is for him to tell a 'friend' peer (he has no issues talking with them) who can come with him to see the teacher as 'moral support', but G has to do the talking...I don't want another child to speak for him as then G will not be moving forward in his ability to handle this situation. We have yet to see if this one works!

And how do you get a kid to greet people appropriately? I'm not talking hugs or even eye contact, just a 'hello' and 'goodbye' unprompted?

Thanks in advance for any ideas!
Claire

Hello Megamum.

I can sort of relate to this scenario your son is going through.

Although I can only speak from my experience of being socially awkward, I hope the information helps you.

He's at a stage where he maybe wary of his surroundings, not knowing how to respond to others or knowing whether they are acceptable or not so does what he thinks is the right thing.

When I was about 10, I didn't know what I had and assumed I was being normal being indirect in my responses, but as I grew up, I kind of became self aware about how I react towards people even if in my mind it was the right thing to do.

My advice would be to help him develop the courage to tell his peers what is wrong, as he may either not tell them his problems or he may give them too much detail (I went through a phase of telling my family everything...even parts they didn't understand what was upsetting me). The peers need to be understanding if he does spill the beans of his problems or any questions he has...and I assume he'll adapt to being more open to people as he grows older (or at least know when to respond to others...even those he does not know).

I hope this information helped...and even I have problems expressing myself sometimes and preferring not to say anything to upset anyone....but I have learned to let people know my thoughts whether I would like something to happen or not.

I think people need to say Hello to him first from my experience....a smile here, a greeting there...I always respond as I know it is rude to not do this. Your son will probably think the same and will swiftly respond if people greet him and wave at him.

I suggest you try rehearsing situations with your son. You may have to do this a large number of times, but it might help because it will provide him with scripts of behavior and phrases to use in each rehearsed situation. People on the spectrum tend to do better when they have a script of behaviors and phrases to follow for different situations. You should start by having your son watch you and at least one other person act out the situations, with you taking the roll of your son, so you can show him how to act and what to say in the situation being demonstrated. after you show him, then you can have him try it. Although it will take a number of rehearsals, I do think this may help.

Part of your son's problem is shyness. This is common amongst us on the spectrum. The scripts help deal with it.

Good luck and tell your son Questor says hello.

Can this idea be used with him simply picking out a card and setting it on his desk? He may be too shy to get out of his seat, knowing that other kids and the teacher will be looking at him. It could be that students sitting near him can raise their hands and inform the teacher when he has put a card out.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful responses.
Crazystarlight, do you think that he does what he thinks he should do? I'm never quite sure with G because when he's at home with me he is able to give all the 'correct answers' as to what he should have done. The bit he seemingly can't overcome is the *initiation* with an adult in authority - and then he can't handle being 'in the wrong' which he knows he is when the teacher asks why he hasn't done any work. So it like compounds his two worst things - social initiation and being caught being wrong.

I'm asking because if you think that in the heat of the situation he genuinely thinks he is making a rational choice that it's 'better' to not do any work for an hour than to tell the teacher that your pencil is missing, or whether climbing the mountain of a 'negative initiaion' where he is at a disadvantage (because he has lost something or doesn't know something) is just too much for him? The reason I'm asking, if you have been there, is because I am wondering if a social story would be helpful. I haven't really used any with G because I tend to find that intellectually, the social understanding is there - it's handling the social situation that he can't manage. But maybe I am wrong?

Questor, thanks, I'll tell G what you said. I agree he's very shy and will give role play a go. I wonder if there is anything else though that will give him the confidence to actually put the scripts into play? The cue cards were kind of scripts, but he couldn't handle the social initiation. I tried giving him a red puffle to carry (small furry toy creature) because red puffles are brave - but it didn't work. How did you overcome your shyness, was it just through scripting?

Nicole - thanks for the suggestion, we are kind of working on a modified example of this where he has an 'I'm OK' kind of card that he can fill in and leave out. Early days yet, so far no-one has asked him or reminded him to complete the ruddy thing! I'm not too sure about overusing peers as I want to kind of gently force him out of his withdrawal, but maybe I'm wrong about that?


In positive news, his tecaher actually gave him the timer I provided her with today for two tasks - both of which he completed and didn't miss his recess for once, even came home with a sticker!

Claire

I would say so from what you have written, but I can't be so sure.

Well...being at home is different to being in an unknown environment.

At home I am very normal and give normal responses to my family, but elsewhere....I am not the same in responses...I think this is normal.

Maybe he is nervous of such a role exists...I don't like the idea of them myself, but I know there must be an adult with authority for things to run smoothly and you do have to talk to them sometimes.

In my experience, you may have to confront the one in charge and explain the situation that your son may not act in the right way at first but if he is into contact with the same person often he will slowly but surely become more talkative with them as well as the fellow peers. It's usually the change that we hate the most, so being in the same scenario each day (not exact but I am sure you knew that) would put him at ease.

As for "in the wrong", maybe he thinks he is "in the right" and may see nothing wrong with his way of thinking. I can't exactly explain it myself, but on occasion I sometimes do the wrong thing and don't see it as wrong. I personally think he will learn slowly when he has to answer the correct way and will show less of what he shows now as he gets older.



When some scenario happened to me that was similar, I was too scared to ask anyone for some help (I still am, but I do it as I have to or else things won't get done at my job) or I was too proud to ask for help thinking it is "nothing" when clearly we can't handle the scenario since it's a confrontation of someone.

In your son's case, it could be either, or both...if he's too scared to confront someone about a problem he is having, no matter how small...he needs to learn to confront a teacher if a pencil has broke or he doesn't know a word.

If it's the latter, it maybe hard to ask him that help is not always a bad thing (since it means a lack of independence), but there has to be a happy medium where he needs to think "Can I do this by myself without asking?" and if he can't, he has to ask someone...no matter how scary they may look or not very confrontational.

I apologise if this isn't helpful, although I hope it helps you come one step closer to solving your son'd problems.

I can only speak of my experience of deciding not to ask for assistance and not being very confrontational of a problem or to a person I do not trust.

I do think personally that your son will learn to make these hiccups less frequent and hopefully will be a confident teenager when it becomes only niggles in his life.

I'm not too sure about using the peers as suggested. That can go either way. It may bring your son out of his shell more and in a wonderfully dramatic way, or it may add a layer to the shell that currently keeps him separated from the teacher. If he learns he never has to interact directly with the teacher, that would be the wrong lesson for him to learn, especially as things change from this year to the next and his peer group in class also changes. If you use the peer option, don't let it become a permanent crutch.

Dont know how helpful my thoughts would be as they are based on my own experiences. I can identify with the gist of what you have written however not to that extent.

1. Does he know how to handle such interactions? Like what it means when someone offers him something, how to respond etc. With me somethings that are obvious to other people need to be explained for me to understand along with how I should respond.
2. Maybe he is not generalising the skills/processes/scripts that he uses with his friends to other people? Ie maybe doesnt realise that a response that would work with his friend that he knows well would also work with someone he doesnt work well.



3. Does he understand why they are asking such questions. I am often confused about why people ask questions that are not obviously directly related to the work at hand and tend to brush them off with short default answers. E.g. my physio normally asks me something like how my weekend went etc. I couldnt see the purpose of the questions, how it related to the physical issue I was seeing him about and couldnt identify what information he wanted or how to structure a response. I therefore didnt know how to respond and my standard answer was 'ok'. After he explained what information he was trying to obtain and why I became able to identify an answer that meets his objective. Obvious to others, but needed to be explained to me. It is hard to find an answer to a question when you dont understand what is being asked and for what purpose. Work related questions tend to have a clear purpose and clear information request - can also be a more familiar structure to the answer.

4. There needs to be a purpose (goal, objective) to paying attention to someone (or doing anything for that matter).

5. I dont understand why he might ignore a question such as "do you need any help?", however if that question is known to lead to more difficult questions then it may be percieved to be best avoided. I would like to ignore questions I dont want to answer however people in my life are just to insistent. Around people who I know will let me ignore questions, I do ignore - however I still hear and think about what they say - I prefer these people, less stress.

6. Ignoring "Hello", yeah I can identify with that. I didnt and still dont fully understand the purpose of a greeting. I still ignore now sometimes, it is also usually followed with boring small talk. At ten I thought well I can see the other person is there, the other person can see me, we both know why we are here - what is the point of greeting? That and I dont like talking.

7. Open ended questions can be difficult to identify a structure for a response. Simple open ended questions can cause big problems for me - problems way out of proportion with the question being asked, even if they are a common question. See the thread in the general discussion forum "Help answering big vague questions", its on pg 4 at the moment for more info. I struggle with not wanting to give an answer that might not be 'correct'.



8. I cant imagine making him feel he is in trouble is a good way of dealing with it, he has challenges other people are not understanding. Feeling like he is now in trouble seems unlikely to improve the situation and likely to build resentment?

9. Does the teacher respond positively to requests for help in a way that he can deal with easily? I often dealt with teachers who brushed off my requests for help becaues they couldnt understand why I couldnt do something that they thought I should be able to do. The result was I stopped asking for help and sat in a silent, frustrated and stuck state. Also I am sometimes wary that a conversation that starts off ok can get too difficult for me to handle - ie. maybe it is not the act of telling the teacher he has a problem that is the issue but the subsequent interactions that flow from it, maybe the teachers response is too hard to handle (for me if I am frustrated and people start asking perfectly reasonable questions I can get very frustrated because they dont see that what they are saying is making things worse for me and the response I *need* is different from the one they are giving me).



10. Can be hard to identify when the teacher is available to be approached. To me teachers always looked busy and probably due to issues reading body language I was often unsure as to whether or not it was ok to approach them. Maybe need to explain how to identify when the teacher is approachable.

11. Again is the response to the cards a response he can handle. Can he predict what response he will get and know it is one he can handle?

12. Maybe pictures may be easier? Do the cards require some filling out or further explanation? It could be that they need to explain the situation further so as to avoid word use all together. Eg. an 'ive lost something card' plus a 'pencil' card, handed to the teacher always result in a search of sons desk or a new pencil given or some other consistent response.

13. Asking what the problem is is an open question that could be difficult to formulate an answer for under stress. Maybe try a consistent sequence of closed questions (have you got a problem -> do you understand instructions->have you got your pencil, pen, paper etc..), perhaps this could be represented on a flow chart along with proposed course of action for your son to follow through himself.

14. Does he know how to explain the problem? Ive had problems that I couldnt explain but when someone else has put it into words I can go 'yeah, thats the problem' but couldnt identify or explain myself. Sometimes when stressed/tired/overwhelmed I default into visual thinking so will nod, etc but find it hard to talk.




15. Hope my thoughts are of some use. In summary the big barriers for me re: asking for help are not being able to identifying the approachabilty of people, not knowing how to explain the problem and not knowing I will be able to handle their response. Also maybe not knowing whether it is ok to have the problem in the first place. Yeah and scripts are good, knowing if I get into situation X, the best response is Y and the other person will understand and do X.

16. From my perspective the idea of another child being involved raises issues with me however I cant figure out how to explain them.



17. Explain why it is important to the other person and how it will help him to your son maybe? Yeah, quite honestly I prefer not to greet people, but recognise its importance so do it when I think it is necessary. Some people know I wont greet them and thats ok with them, some people I compromise and give them a nod but not a verbal greeting, others I go into the whole 'Hi how are you fine thanks hows your week been' routine.