best ways for parents to increase the social dimension

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hello, i am the father of a 3 year old daughter who was diagnosed a year ago as being on the autism spectrum.she has undergone cognitive and language intervention with some success in making her accept tutoring. i moved her 2 months ago to a specialist autism center and extra OT and language interventions at home,where she is improving day by day .she is verbally delayed but can express in speech all her basic needs in one or more word sentences and has understood vocabularly (around 50 words including verbs ,objects and animal names) but functionally uses may be ten words, she has social impairment towards her peers but generally not towards adults. could she be overdiagnosed ? and how can we as parents increase her social interaction besides the professional interventions ?

Sounds similar to my son. What, specifically, is the diagnosis?

I can't say anything about being overdiagnosed or not, but she does have some language impairment from what you've described. You say you want to help get her more socialable with other children but how is she now? Does she shy away from other children but comfortably interact with adults? Or is it communication with other children her age that she finds difficult? Does she engage (or try to) with other children if they are together? Does she have siblings or cousins or fellow children in the autistic center that she's familiar with?
I know there's alot of questions but helping her be more social has to done in steps. Getting her to engage with others would be the bigest challenge. Your best bet would be to talk to her center and ask about behavioural interventions that could help her with this.
If you find then that she is shy towards other kids then you try to get her used to it. Try set up a play-date with a child of a similar age, either a relative or other special needs kid from her school. Start so both kids parents are in the room and encouraging some form of play, then when they are engaged with each other or the game, slip out and let them be. Simply 'getting used' to playing with other kidss will help with shyness. That friend can also act as a springboard for more friends.
If comminication is the issue, which seems likely from what you have said, then set games could help. With her language intervention, see if you can guide her learning to vocabulary used to certain games (eg. board games, hide-and-go-seek, etc.). You can then get her used to using the vocab playing with you and other family. If she is comfortable with the games and enjoys them, you then introduce the other children her age to the game so she staarts socialising, but most of all enjoying socialising.

I hope this has helped you some way and not been TOO long!!

Coached play dates with a paired peer, run by an SLP, would be one option at this age. There is a social skills group in our area for 3-4 yo, but she may not be verbal enough yet. You might also look into the DIR/Floortime approach for ideas.

I'm not sure what you mean by asking if she's overdiagnosed? What is her diagnosis, and what parts of it don't seem to fit for you?

As for social coaching, try reading her picture books about social interactions. Libraries will often have a special section for books like these - you know, on making friend, about specific emotions (often like anger or sadness) etc.

Sometimes (and I am not religious, myself) Christian children's books in particular present prosocial messages (if you aren't religious, you do have to figure out how to deal with the religious aspects.) For instance, the Berenstein Bears books, Veggie Tales and maybe books by Richard Paul Evans or Tomie dePaola: (sometimes these books have a shaming quality you have to be careful of, so preview carefully) what can make them work for kids on the spectrum is that the message is extremely heavy-handed and didactic - so kids who don't get "subtle" social messages will benefit.

I'm not endorsing the particular messages of these books, choose carefully, but you may find some helpful direction there.

thanks for a fantastic response to my queries, will take them as a guidance to my future intervention.

can you folks help me find good online resources that can explain directly the actual core of the problems of ASD , and the good interventions ,mainly of course the social and speech delay. i have been searching the net for a while and i only found a few authorities i liked like Patricia Harkins , as her writings is fluid and goes directly to the point , my best regards

There's a sticky for recommended reading at the top of this board. I would definitely get to your local library and check out some books by Tony Attwood. Autism Hangout does a video series "Ask Dr. Tony" with him here: http://www.youtube.com/user/autismhangout?feature=watch

This book helped my son a great deal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSMw-noNcnY

As for online information, Autism Speaks has a lot of resources; check the links at the bottom of this page: http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism (Note that some folks here have had a problem with some of the political positions taken by Autism Speaks - but that position isn't present in these resources.) I particularly recommend the 100 day kit.

PBS has a good broad overview here: http://www.pbs.org/parents/inclusivecom ... tism2.html

Lastly, I've tried to compile an index of posts here, it's a little outdated but maybe just looking at the categories will help you: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166142.html

this isen't really advice but when I was a kid I found it a lot easier to talk to adults because my intrests where not exactly normal for a girl my age so the other kids where not to friendly when I would go on about things I read about or learned from reading. If I talked to adults about these things they seemed to be more intrested and responded more nicely.

So maybe its something like that in which case, you probably cannot force her to make friends with or be social with people who don't respond well to her, that would probably do more harm than good.

If you are looking for some ideas of where to get playmates, I have a few suggestions.

First, look close to home. Are there any neighbor kids near her age? If so, introduce yourself to the neighbors and ask if they would be interested in setting up a play date once or twice to see how it goes. Explain about the dx and the social problems and make sure it's supervised of course. You could get a chance to meet neighbors you didn't know before and make a friend yourself, and so could your daughter. If the kids end up hitting it off well, then you could swap out babysitting, as both sets of parents would be familiar with both children.

Also, check with your church or place of worship if you go. See if there is anything for kids, and if not why not organize something once a month?

A park set up for young childrens play is a great place for a quick playtime with other kids. I used to take mine to this one near our house around lunchtime. There were lots of moms and nanny's there with young kids. We would stay 45 mins to an hour, eat our lunch, they would play and we go home. Lots of folks coming and going so the playgroup changes.

Also, my last idea is a daycare. Not to put her in daycare, but find out how much it would cost to bring her for an hour or so once a week, and have a parent stay right there with her. As she gets better at it, you could increase the time and even eventually work it into maybe an all day thing once a week, etc.

If that's not what you meant, oops.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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