Can social skills really be "taught"?

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I often cried when I was emotionally overwhelmed at that age as well. Usually it was centered around conflicts, like why I made a bad grade or why I didn't finish an assignment, or why I didn't join extracurricular activities, etc. I still break down like that when I'm faced with an overwhelming situation. The activities he's involved in make me wonder why you want him to be more sociable. If I were in plays, sports, and band, my mother would have been bouncing off the walls with joy.

Skills can certainly be learned. You'll find many people on this board are able to function very well socially. Speaking for myself, I function more than adequately, especially when I'm around people I know, and the smaller the group, the better I do. How I learned is somewhat more complicated. For me, it was a lot of observation, trial and error. For example, I used to watch television comedians, and imitate their tone of voice, inflection, volume when I was trying to be funny. I also imitated the mannerisms of the few real friends I had. To be brutally honest, it was a matter of monitoring my behavior and seeing what different behaviors I generated in others when I altered things. School was easy for me so I spent most of my intellectual effort on this stuff. If he's acting in plays, and teachers are thinking he's good at it, he may already be doing this.

I've become something of a social chameleon since I've gotten older. I can get along with almost anyone, from traditional rural American country folk to the more sophisticated intellectual types. I can argue both sides of most political, social, and economic issues and thus appear to be "one of them". I know the usual likes and dislikes of various groups and what not to say to what people, what shows to reference, etc. I can do all this because I spent a lot of my teenage years just watching other people interact. The trade off, of course, is that all this self-monitoring and hyper-vigilance is taxing, so I get tired after a lot of socializing. Further, a large group that's very diverse and people I don't know well make this much more difficult. I also have a very limited ability to adapt to things I didn't prepare for. For example, if I arranged a study session with a girl, and she started to try to flirt, I'd either be totally oblivious, or if I did realize what was going on, it would be nearly impossible for me to transition to this other kind of interaction in anything like a graceful manner. Those are the sorts of limitations anything you teach will probably have. You can teach a blind man to get around by memorizing routes and terrains, but it isn't the same as being able to see.

If he's like me, he'll never get childhood and teenage socializing, because it's based too much on things he won't understand, like herd mentality and doing things to fit into the group. Aspies just don't have these instincts. This is both good and bad. The good is that it will be easier to keep him away from bad influences like drugs, alcohol, gangs, etc. The bad is that he won't fit in, he may be bullied, and he will miss a lot of adolescent social growth milestones. My parents didn't know about AS, but if I could ask them to do one thing differently, it would be this. Don't push me to do things that I'm not comfortable with. If he doesn't want to join activities, sports, etc., don't press the issue. He'll probably fight the way I fought my parents. He'll get nothing but frustration from it and some of that will be directed at you. Instead, focus that energy on explaining the way the adult world works and how to succeed in it. Try to get him to think in the long-term, to the future, and take some concrete steps to prepare for that. Things like making eye contact in a job interview, social networking, the importance of teamwork in the business world, etc. I would much rather have had mom pester me about that than why I didn't want to join the debate team or go to high school football games. If this seems a bit premature for a 12 year old, it isn't. He'll have to learn enough to function in a world of mostly sociable extroverted people that won't understand him and won't want to.

Above all else, don't push him to form relationships with people his age if he doesn't want to. This will fail, I give my personal guarantee on that. When I was that age, I was mostly interested in talking to adults, and that got more pronounced in high school. I can't remember the names of 5 people from my senior class, but I can name almost every teacher I had from grade school on up, because those are the people I actually interacted with on a personal level. I just didn't do the kid stuff at all. The adults were way more interesting. For example, if he likes football, you might see if the coach could explain some football plays in depth or something and see if he's interested enough to be a coach. You said he's in a play. The same skills that he's using there will be the ones he uses to compensate for lack of social instincts. Get him thinking about the adult world as much as you can. The adolescent world, unfortunately, is not likely to be a pleasant one for any kid with AS. Try to get him to see that there's a bigger world out there after that.

ZurDarkstar--
What a wonderful, insightful post! It speaks much to what I think is happening here. I'm a pretty instinctive, intuitive parent (even though I know I get it wrong sometimes). I have already raised three NT daughters to successful adulthood as I'm much older than my husband and that's how I came to have a 12yo stepson. So, succinctly, I know I can do it and this whole "teaching him to be social" thing doesn't seem like it's a good idea in this case. Our latest assignment is for me and him to have a give-and-take conversation every day. We did it last night and he can talk to me pretty well.
Naturally, his dad has Aspergers, which he has never realized and never received any help for. He suggested that I sort of mediate conversations between he and Josh because they usually devolve into mutual snark and disrespect from not being able to contain the tension or anxiety between them. That sounds like a good idea, too, as one of the things I've been working on with Josh is being disrespectful to us. I think that attitude was rampant among all the family members in his previous home life.
I've been tempted to stop counseling but Josh likes his counselor and I didn't want to be premature. I may agitate more in that direction in the new year. Also, I'd like to print out your post and give it to his counselor to read, if that's okay with you.
It's a good thing I was able to become a SAHM when his dad and I married. Raising these two is a full-time job! ( I say that with the utmost love and kindness because we all actually consider ourselves very blessed to have found each other.)

Sure, you can use it. Stick with the counselor, especially if he has a good relationship already. The adult interaction is probably going to be easier. AS children have been described as "little adults" for a reason.

The disrespectful attitude is standard with most kids that age. I was like that at times, but mostly with people who didn't "get it" and wanted me to do things the way everyone else did. I hated when the teacher told me to do problems a certain way. I'd get the right answer another way and be like, I got the right answer, why should I do it your way when mine is easier. When I finally got a teacher that respected me enough to explain the reasons for that teaching method like he would to another adult, it made sense and I conceded. Standing upon formal social authority will not work, no matter how much you believe in it, because it relies upon the proper function of social animal instincts that are absent or at least dysfunctional in Aspies. My suggestion is to teach him the proper way to argue a point. In other words, teach him that stating the reasons why he disagrees and backing that up with evidence in a calm and rational fashion is a far better way to get a point across. If he sees better results from different tactics, he'll drop the attitude. I learned this by trial and error of course. Also, for household rules about respect and such, be sure to explain why the rule is there, and to explain what the rules are in precise detail. Aspies are very literal, so there really is no such thing as "the spirit of the rule". He'll take whatever you say as literal truth, and more than likely use your exact words later on if there's a disagreement. I did "but you said X" many many times as a child.

My father and I had terrible arguments when I was a teen, because we were too much alike. He probably has AS, but I would never suggest anything of the sort to his face because he "doesn't believe in psychology". He's very inflexible, rigid, and bound to his routines (all AS traits). He gets upset if anything goes wrong and jumps right into anger. Does the father know what AS is now? If he doesn't he may be complicating the matter by a lack of awareness of how his behavior affects those around him. Unfortunately I can't help much here. I still don't get along great with my father. A fair amount of flexibility will be required from both father and son, and if both aren't willing to compromise, there's not much you can do.

My husband's father was much like yours as he explains it to me. They don't have much of a relationship and I've never met him. I don't really want to and they live several thousand miles away. He's a nuclear physicist and apparently spent most of his life in his study, only coming out to be angry sometimes. At least that's the way Jeff remembers things, which I'm sure isn't objective. None of us are.
Jeff is learning what AS is and has come a long, long way in his parenting in the year we've been married. He is one who is very empathetic and kind to me, but bristles when Josh gets mouthy with him. He tries now to stop himself and mostly does. (After I re-read those last few sentences I realized our interactions may sound way more fractious than they really are. We get along far better than most people who are all NTs and aren't a blended family.)
Our learning to live together is evolving in a positive direction and I think it will only continue to do so.
I firmly believe that we are all in this place at this time for a reason. Jeff was the answer to my prayers. I had always been fascinated with AS and had already read a lot about it long before we ever met. So my mission is to help all of us grow and live successfully as adults.

If they're both willing to work at it, progress will be made, that's the key. My dad is simply not very introspective or open to changing his behavior, so I just ignore his anger as much as I can. Your family sounds like a supportive one so I'm sure you'll work it out.