• Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 33 subscribers
  • Views 830 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Friendships

NAS83248

Hi, I’m new here. My 14 year old son has just been diagnosed with asd/dyspraxia. 
I suppose I’m just looking for abit of advice on how to deal with friendship groups breaking down. He’s been slowly pushed out for being the weird kid (breaks my heart) and now his only long term friend has started blanking him too. It’s souls destroying to watch. 
I don’t know how to bring the subject up without making him feel worse, Iv tried getting him to make new friends and his teachers have put him intouch with a nice group of kids at school but once school finishes he’s abit of a recluse… he says he doesn’t speak to his friends after school and that’s just the way it is. He’s very black and white with stuff and school is school and home is home  so the two don’t cross over. 

im not really sure why I’m here or what I’m asking to be honest it’s all abit of a whirlwind at the minute and I feel like I just need to vent

  • in reply to Autonomistic

    I did well, enough, at school. But I can see, as clear as day, the issues my contemporaries had. It created an entire generation with an axe to grind.

    I did what I was told; it got me f**king nowhere!

  • Many autistic people can only take social interaction in small doses and need a lot of quiet 'recovery' time afterwards. It could be that the amount he has in school is his limit and he is doing well to be able to recognise that himself. As long as he is happy with the amount of social interaction then that is all that matters. His online friends may well provide all he needs or wants outside of school and without the associated sensory overload.

    The fact that group of kids he has been put with are 'nice' doesn't automatically mean that he will be able to connect with them. Are there any other autistic children in his school, who he could maybe find more in common with? Alternatively look at what he is interested in and see if there any local or after school clubs related to that specific interest.

    Personally for me school was a sensory and social nightmare. At primary the teachers would have to physically escort me into the playground and leave me with a girl who looked after me. Once I got to secondary school I tried hanging around at break times with this same girl and her new friends. However I didn't have the slightest interest in anything they talked about and couldn't join in with any of their conversations. Playground chatter is very different in the teen years compared to primary school.

    Their constant chatter was sensory overload for me but I endured it because the alternative was worse. I soon found that if I was on my own at break times and lunch times I would quickly become a target for the school bullies. I tried hiding inside the school, but would usually be found by a teacher and sent outside. As I got older I would leave the school premises completely during those times, so that I didn't have to interact with anyone either at school or at home.

  • It could be that distinction is a coping strategy to deal with the exclusion he feels at school. I struggled so much with friends and never felt like I really fit in.  I was rarely invited to other people's house or to parties. I told myself "that's just the way it is" because I knew it wasn't going to change. 

    But in time I was introduced to the goth scene and found other weirdoes like me and made some connections. Is there a Games Workshop where you live? Sometimes they put on role-playing game sessions for kids and he might find other nerds in a structured setting outside of school easier to deal with. 

  • in reply to Martin

    I think you are absolutely right! It effects me so much more than him and I need to remember he does prefer his own company or his online friends that he has common ground with. 
    He has willingly taken himself away from his friendship group because of a boy who wasn’t very kind to him and I am super proud of him for doing that. 

    Thank you for replying. 

  • School is a very stressful place for autistic children, I have not come across a single autistic person who ever said that they liked school. I am still in touch with quite a few people I was at school with and when they say they enjoyed it, I wonder if it was really the same school. I fully understand your son's unwillingness to let school intrude on his home life, which is safe and comfortable, in any way.

    Autistics are often quite happy with their own company, I wonder if you are more distressed on your son's behalf, than he is himself? Of course many or most autistics do crave friendships and relationships, but we need the people we interact with to be relatable, accepting and non-judgmental, and we are not well equipped to recognise such people, or to initialise relations with them.