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Where to find support for a child to develop friendships/better social skills?

NAS75373

My 12yo son is feeling the effects of not having friends to socialise with during the school holidays. For a long time he has said having hardly any friends doesn't bother him, but he has now admitted it does.

Does anyone have experience or knowledge of support groups, ideas for improving his interpersonal skills, techniques to be more tolerant of other people's ways of thinking that might differ from his own, as that is a real blocker for him. 

Thanks! 

Parents

  • Hi! I think all of the things you’re looking for are really dependent on your local area. I know the NAS website has a services locator tool which for my area shows things like charities that do social clubs specifically for autistic teens. Something like that might be useful, as autistic peers tend to get on better with each other than autistic and neurotypical peers (though of course, not exclusively).

    In terms of learning social skills, do you know if your son’s school does anything like this? I work in an additional needs team in a mainstream school and we run social skills classes which aim at supporting all of those skills. But I know parents don’t always know about it, as we had a parent contact us towards the end of last year because their son was struggling but had been masking it lots at school, but the parent didn’t realise the school could offer anything to help, especially without a diagnosis or EHCP, so they hadn’t contacted us sooner. So sometimes I think there’s not so much awareness about what schools are doing. It might be worth looking into.

    Finally, have you looked into clubs that your son is interested in? This can take the focus off of making friends and let it happen by a shared interest, taking some of the perceived pressure off!

Reply

  • Hi! I think all of the things you’re looking for are really dependent on your local area. I know the NAS website has a services locator tool which for my area shows things like charities that do social clubs specifically for autistic teens. Something like that might be useful, as autistic peers tend to get on better with each other than autistic and neurotypical peers (though of course, not exclusively).

    In terms of learning social skills, do you know if your son’s school does anything like this? I work in an additional needs team in a mainstream school and we run social skills classes which aim at supporting all of those skills. But I know parents don’t always know about it, as we had a parent contact us towards the end of last year because their son was struggling but had been masking it lots at school, but the parent didn’t realise the school could offer anything to help, especially without a diagnosis or EHCP, so they hadn’t contacted us sooner. So sometimes I think there’s not so much awareness about what schools are doing. It might be worth looking into.

    Finally, have you looked into clubs that your son is interested in? This can take the focus off of making friends and let it happen by a shared interest, taking some of the perceived pressure off!

Children
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