• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 72 subscribers
  • Views 215 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 in autism

Zoenut

My son is 11 years old, in year 7 and struggling. 

He is verbal, but has always struggled most with the social side of things. He has never made a friend, in primary school he was assigned friends by his teacher and he has kept those 3 friends ever since and only those friends. 

it is his birthday in a couple of weeks and we are taking him to London as per his request on the weekend to celebrate. For his actual birthday we have tried to allow him a choice of a few options on what to do.
- Option 1: do nothing (have a nice calm normal routine day) 

- Option 2: arcade and food with 1 friend 

- option 3: arcade and food with all 3 friends 

- option 4: have a friend over our house 

He has chosen none of these, now saying he wants to do the arcade with me and his mother. 

As lovely as that is, it makes us sad to think he doesn’t want to celebrate with friends as this is a common occurrence we are coming across.

He never talks to or sees any friend outside of the school setting now he is in secondary school and we are not as involved in setting up his social circle. His school report says that he is not a team player and doesn’t interact with any of the other pupils and that he comes across quite isolated from the rest of the year group. He doesn’t have any interest in interacting with anyone apart from us and I’m worried that this will only get worse as he gets older. 

As his parents, we know he has a different way of think than us, and we may just not understand his thought process. But we are so worried about his future. Creating connections with peers of his own age is so important, and me and his mum aren’t going to be around forever and can’t be the only people he is comfortable around.

We just feel a bit hopeless and at a loss on how to help him better. Thoughts and ideas would be lovely. 

Parents

  • I think one of the things that people around me (particularly my parents) found difficult to understand is that for me friends are very contextual like  says. I hang out with them in their 'contexts' so if it's a school person I only see them at school, a person at a club I see at the club, I just didn't see the point of hanging out with people outside of the context I knew them in, because doing that activity was the thing I did with them.

    Even now, I probably only have 2-3 people total that I ever seek out to meet outside of their contexts, and that took until I was at least 16-18. I understand you're worried about him not interacting with people, but it does take time. 

    Maybe leave the birthday for now (I always found birthdays very stressful) and think about finding activities he likes doing that he could join a group for. That's how I made all of my friends. 

Reply

  • I think one of the things that people around me (particularly my parents) found difficult to understand is that for me friends are very contextual like  says. I hang out with them in their 'contexts' so if it's a school person I only see them at school, a person at a club I see at the club, I just didn't see the point of hanging out with people outside of the context I knew them in, because doing that activity was the thing I did with them.

    Even now, I probably only have 2-3 people total that I ever seek out to meet outside of their contexts, and that took until I was at least 16-18. I understand you're worried about him not interacting with people, but it does take time. 

    Maybe leave the birthday for now (I always found birthdays very stressful) and think about finding activities he likes doing that he could join a group for. That's how I made all of my friends. 

Children
  • in reply to Fibonacci Squid

    Thank you, I really appreciate the response! We have recently learned from our son that he does categorise his friends and will interact with them on a certain basis so maybe there is a bit of this. It’s not something we had thought about before as we are still learning and trying to figure out best the best ways to help him navigate the world. 

    I definitely appreciate birthdays can be stressful and I think he may struggle because it’s a different routine. 

    We’ll give the idea of looking into a group for an activity he likes and see if he is comfortable with giving that a go.