Peer Difficulties-Advice from other parents appreciated

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My daughter is almost 8. She has come a long way! However, we are having some extreme difficulties with certain situations with getting along with peers. I think it may be a certain "personality type" of child that is the problem but I wanted to get some advice from you veteran parents who may have some insight on this issue.

There is a certain girl in my daughter's class that my daughter has extreme issues with. The girl is somewhat dominant and aggressive and my daughter has just made up her mind that the girl is "evil" and all interaction with the girl is negative and causes my daughter to become highly agitated. We try to keep them apart as much as possible but of course it's not always possible. My daughter is extremely attached to a certain girl in her class and if that friend plays with the other girl my daughter becomes extremely upset. This can escalate quite rapidly until my daughter says or does things that causes everyone upset and causes the other peers to dislike my daughter.

Also, my nephew is visiting for a few days (death in the family) and I've noticed he is also provoking these same behaviors from my daughter. If I direct/moderate their play things go ok, but they cannot play on their own. My daughter becomes extremely agitated and starts to melt down when my nephew tells my daughter to "back off" (my daughter can be very "in your face" at times). She just doesn't understand the give and take of play and I know this is part of the AS but how do you deal with this? Do you always moderate play with the peers that cause difficulty?

I cannot figure out how to mediate and calm these situations and most times it leads to a full blown meltdown in my daughter and causes further animosity between the two. I wish there was some way to help her stay calm in these situations where the more aggressive children do not bend to my daughter's type of interaction/play.

Thanks for any insight, I hope I've been descriptive enough!

Yes. Structure to the time together in the form of a visual schedule made beforehand and sticking to the planned activities, constant supervision and quick decisive adult intervention when and if things start to escalate, and if at all possible a short duration to the time that must be spent in each others company is what I would do/have done in the past.

Edited to add that we have also done social stories and practise role playing when it comes to dealing with difficult peer behaviour, and this also helped immensely.

Have you tried a moderated discussion which includes the "evil" girl and her parent plus you and your daughter? Could a school administrator (someone besides the teacher who would be too close to the situation) hold such a meeting? I don't know if that would be possible or fruitful. Maybe something concrete that is bothering both of the girls would come to light and then it could be addressed. The other girl may also be stressed by their interactions though if she is NT it probably is no where near as intense as it is for your duaghter.

As to the home situation with the nephew - I agree with alice, you have to supervise. My older son is NT and younger is ASD. There are days when I just don't allow them to be together unsupervised at all. I am seriously afraid at times that the younger one is going to hurt the older one badly enough for a trip to the ER. The older one is starting to become more aware of his brother's escalation signs and we are trying to teach him to remove himself from the situation when he sees these signs. If your nephew isn't old enough to understand how to do this, then you are pretty much left with keeping them separated or being cloes by.

We have had a meeting with both girls, all parents, and the teacher. The meeting consisted of the other girl complaining about how my daughter "bullies" her while my daughter just tried to bury her head in my lap. She would not "participate" in the meeting and found it very uncomfortable. I disclosed in the meeting that my daughter has AS, but these parents (and most definitely the child) don't really care about the "why" my daughter reacts the way she does. They don't feel they should have to change how their daughter behaves due to my daughters issues. Unfortunately, the teacher seems to side with the girl (or at least that's how my daughter perceives it and what I have witnessed at field trips).

For instance: my daughter reported to me that this girl constantly complains about my daughter in front of her or within hearing and my daughter feels that "calls her out" or paints her negatively to the class. On a recent field trip my daughter became upset when the girl came up to her (I was there to witness this) and told her to "stop hogging" the other girl (that my daughter likes and always wants to stand next to, sit next to, etc). The girl forcefully inserted herself between my daughter and the other girl and this caused my daughter to really melt down which she now really hates when it happens because she gets out of control and feels somewhat "embarrassed" after the fact.

All good suggestions here...

Does your school have a pragmatics class? My daughter not only has that but also 'friendship club' and other school sponsored social skill groups for her to attend. Also, putting her in Girl Scouts has helped immesely because she has learned to make friends with lots of girls instead of focusing solely on a favorite one or two. Taking that intense focus off of a single friend really helped.

I don't think children can generally be expected to play together nicely without adult supervision. It's nice when it happens, and I love it when my kids do it, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Of course, that helps more when a cousin is visiting than in school.

I have found that when supervising play, it helps to keep track carefully of what the kids are doing even when one isn't actively participating. When I watch carefully, I can usually figure out when a fight breaks out what the respective viewpoints of the two kids are. For example, one kid might think a toy is community property while the other kid thinks of it as hers. The intervention can then help set the stage for more copacetic play in the future: either "that's a community toy, you have to share", or "that's so-and-so's toy, she can share if she wants but you can't take it if she wants to keep it to herself." Of course, you also take on the burden of keeping track of whose toys are whose ("okay, which kid did I give the cream teddy bear to, and which the brown teddy bear....")

Obviously, that doesn't help so much when the issues are at school rather than at your house.

One question: what about the third girl? How do she and her parents feel about all this?

Well the third girl is a very easy going, calm, quiet type girl. Her mother and I get along and the girl seems to like my daughter. I have witnessed her telling my daughter to "leave her alone" at one time or another when my daughter shadows her too much but my daughter takes it well and responds very well to the girl. The teacher has placed my daughter's desk next to this girl as a "peer" model for her and that further deepens the dependency my daughter has on her. My daughter does become somewhat "obsessed" with kids she likes and tends to obsess on them and see nothing but them and this further complicates the situation.

My daughter goes to a private school so does not have in school services but she does have OT and Speech therapy outside of school which includes pragmatics which we are really working on such as nice voice vs mean voice, have to's vs want to's, etc. It's a process-slowly developing and obviously my daughter is quite behind her peers socially which quite ahead of them intellectually.

I agree with all the suggestions about supervision and structure, especially where the nephew and any other "at home" issues are concerned, but based on your description of the 'at school' issues, I'm not entirely sure that situation CAN be handled by your daughter in the currrent environment. I think your daughter has some valid concerns when combined with AS traits, and you may need to do some much more aggressive advocacy with the school for her.

I did. For years. It is an investment in building positive relationships for your child. The unobtrusive way to do it is to take the children out of the house on an outing because then your presence is expected, and the guest doesn't notice that you are actually moderating your child's interactions. Since you've been there to observe, you can break down the interactions later and help your child understand them, and how certain things might have been handled differently. Later, for the next outings, you can develop signals to use with your child when they are doing things they've agreed to work on. And so on. It was quite effective. My son had a great time during those years, loved all the outings, and felt good about his friendships.

Of course, there comes an age where it simply is no longer socially appropriate to do any of the above. But even while your child flounders more, kids seem to remember the warm fuzzy stuff from past years, and will go a little easy with it. So, the investment pays off on more than one level. Its just a shame that you can't be there forever, because even though they grow wings, they sill can be quite rickity.

As for the girl at school - - your daughter needs to understand that she cannot expect her friend and this other child to stay away from each other. Your daughter gets jealous because she rightully feels threatened (the girl may well be meaning it as a threat - girls can be horrible), but anything your daughter does to react to that threat will backfire. So you keep making playdates and keep strengthening the relationship and simply hope that if that child is ever forced to choose, she will choose your daughter. Help your daughter identify the feeling of threat or jealously, and give her some steps she can use to self-calm when she's in that situation. All JHMO, of course, but that is how I've been handling it with my NT daughter who has been in many similar situations, although she's been more adapt at keeping it under the radar from teachers and kids.