Any ideas why my son said this?

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It's not anything major but has me a little baffled.
Yesterday at kinder, one other little boy (Joe) was being mean to another child, to which Joe's mum reprimanded him and told him to apologise to this child. Joe, probably feeling embarrassed and betrayed, began to cry. T went up to him and said 'I am going to look at the little crying man'

When we were leaving I asked T if he knew who the child was that was crying and he said, 'Yeah mum, that's Joe" and I asked if he knew why Joe was upset, he said he was cross because his mum shouted at him - so he recognised the little boy and understood the dynamic of the scenario but didn't express this at the time - any ideas why I am just concerned that comments like are going to continue isolating him from the group

He said it to Joe who was crying? Maybe he was of the idea that Joe sees what he sees and can look at himself like your son can look at Joe and experience the crying not as the upset person? If that made sense?

In preschool my best friend was a girl and I was convinced she was a boy because of her haircut and wouldn't listen to any of the adults who said otherwise. I talked about her like she wasn't even there even though I was playing with her. I tried to tell people she shouldn't be going into the girls' bathroom and such. I wasn't doing that anymore by age 5ish. I think there's a very good chance your son will pick up on theory of mind for lack of a better term soon, I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

The age of reason is approximately 8 years old. All children before that age are bound to act and say things that don't make much sense to the rest of us. Also, kids do not simply enter the age of reason like throwing a switch, they enter it gradually, so don't be too worried about this and other similar events.

I remember often pulling the dog's tail hard until I was about 4, when it suddenly dawned on me that it might be hurting him, so he might not like it. After that I stopped pulling his tail hard any more. I have found over the years that dogs don't mind a gentle, playful tail tug,--they like the attention, and will often pull their own tails,--but never tug hard on a dog's tail. My furry friend was a nice, friendly mixed breed dog who was my playmate, until he died when I was 5.

Children will often say and do odd things, NTs as well as those on the spectrum, so don't worry about it. Just help them understand when they say or do something way off base.

Remember, we on the spectrum are all:

A Different Drummer

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
However measured or far away.

--Henry David Thoreau

He might have been upset that his friend was upset, but didn't know what to say. You can help him be prompting him with something like "Sorry you are feeling sad" so that he understands what he could say that would let Joe know that he cared about him being sad.

Not to be off topic, but that explains my niece so well. Luckily I have one more year to wait.

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Thanks everyone - he has made incredible strides in the past few months, I am so proud of him and I guess I also have some new stuff to learn Today he patted his only friend on the head and said, 'See you later, sweetie' (which is what I say to him when I am leaving) and again ensued a casual chat about what we should call our friends - poor little thing, he was only trying to be affectionate - I have recommended bud or mate (big in Oz)

That was my initial thought to your original post, that he was mimicking something he has heard someone else say in a different context. I agree with SC_2010 that such moments are excellent opportunites to teach him about other people's feeling and give hime some good options of things we can say when our friends are sad or hurt. Seems like one of those things that we (parents) think we don't have to expressly teach but with ASD kiddos we do.

My son is 6 and would say the same thing. He has to work on remembering other kids' names and using them, otherwise he just calls them by whatever descriptive words spring to mind. He used to shout, "Hey Kid!" at his classmates, but he is getting better about that. He was halfway through kindergarten before he could name one kid in his class.
He also calls me "sweetie-pie". I have noticed the girls in his class seem to like him better than the boys, and often shout good-byes to him as we are leaving the school. Perhaps he is calling them "sweetie-pie", too. If it makes them like him better, I'm not sure I should try to stop him. At least not at this stage...

These sound like pragmatic language issues to me; is your son in speech therapy? It might be something to explore, it has certainly made a world of difference for my son.

The particular aspect of pragmatic speech that seems to be at play here is knowing your audience (which is sort of an intersection between Theory of Mind and social speech.) My son grew out of using inappropriately adult-sounding speech, and now speaks just like a 10-year-old boy (his age) speaking to another 10-year-old ALL THE TIME.

For instance, he was asked to write a thank-you note to a business that had helped one of his service agencies, and he wrote "Thanks for your frigging gift." Sadly, probably appropriate (with the right level of amusement) for two ten-year-olds - if nobody else was watching. Not so much for a major financial donor.

He does better if we offer him appropriate social scripts, but it's a deeper issue and it's good that there's a therapy targeted just for that issue.

I agree that it sounds like a pragmatic language issue. I could totally see my son doing something like that. He probably was interested in the fact that the boy was crying, felt bad for him, but had no idea what you would say in that situation. My five year old son is getting better at this stuff, but my almost three year old daughter does a better job of conveying empathy than he does at this point.

He was in speech therapy, but that was because he was stuttering - before his diagnosis. It was the with the community health centre which we are no longer allowed to use as we are given $12,000 by the govt to assist with early intervention therapy. Since he was diagnosed two months ago, we have been seeing a child psychologist for a functional assessment to see where we got from here. He had an assessment also and will be joining a social skills group early next year also but yes, I am pretty anxious to get him back into speech therapy.
At what age did your son start speech therapy?

My son wasn't fully diagnosed until he was 10, but the speech issues caused major problems for him at around 8 years old; we had NO IDEA what was going on until it was suggested by his diagnostician. He has advanced functional speech, his only deficit is social, so it was well hidden.

The good news is that he is catching up rapidly, so the delay in getting services didn't seem to do any real harm (other than those years of frustration with his peers, but he seems to have recovered fairly well.) To this day, I wonder what our lives would have been like if this had been caught earlier (or what my life would have been like if it had been caught...EVER. Frustrating that adult diagnosis is so difficult.)

In other words, if they say it's too early or something like that, I would continue bringing it up and asking about it - but not worry too much about it as long as he gets it eventually - since it is a delay, sometimes other kids need to leap ahead in order for our children's deficits to show - all kids have social speech deficits at this age.

Make sure you use the words "social speech" or "pragmatic speech therapy" they are magic.

Thanks, Momsparky - I think because the idea of 'early intervention' is pushed so strongly, I kind of feel like we are just sitting around and waiting at the moment which doesn't help with my anxiety and also the fact that DS is having such a tough time at kinder (mainly with bullying). He was assessed to start a social group just after his diagnosis but they said he wasn't ready - and I can understand it because it is so hard to engage him (extremely high ability, extremely low interest..) But of all the therapies, I feel that speech is the one that will help him the most.

I think you're on the right track. Kindergarten is hard for all kids, and it makes it tough to tell what's AS and what's just due to general chaos; I get the impression that schools like to be conservative that year for that reason. I'd just keep poking at them about speech therapy - we found that bad pragmatics had a lot to do with my son being bullied (he was perceived by most kids to be a bully, himself)

Are you sure that your son knew the dynamic at the time? I don't mean to underestimate you nor your son--you know him best! I just ask because many people with ASDs experience a bit of a time lag when they process information about social situations (most of the time, I figure out what was going on after the fact, and it doesn't usually occur to me to differentiate between "what I know now" vs "what I knew then" when someone asks me about my understanding of a situation)....and if he didn't have a clear picture of the situation at the time, his words might have been intended primarily as a question for Joe (what he said might have been designed to elicit the same response as "I see you're crying--what's wrong?")

Or it could be that he hasn't figured out that speech can be used for self-direction or for communication....and was combining the two because he doesn't see that there are "types" of speech yet.

Another guess is that he might have been practicing the "narrative" type of speech (or using self-directive speech), knowing it was narrative (or self-directive), but without realizing that other people will pay attention to what he intends to say only to himself, if he speaks in the same manner as he would to communicate. (I didn't learn this until I was a young adult; A friend explained that they had a very hard time figuring out when I was talking to them vs talking to myself...and then--possibly because I had been surprised and a bit bewildered by what they said--made a habit of pointing out all the times when it wasn't clear.) Most children learn to internalize non-communicative speech in their primary school years but for some children it takes longer, or (as in my case) doesn't ever really happen...if a person can't internalize their self-directive or "practice" speech, the trick may be to just learn how to be discreet about it so as not to confuse or unintentionally offend others (and to avoid attracting the attention of bullies).