Do your kids do this? How do I deal with it?

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I know I ask lots of questions, but its the only way to learn how best to deal with something or if in fact I'm worrying about nothing.

J currently has approx 2-3 kids to play with at break times. Yay. However, my understanding of what he is telling me (and I'm only getting bits and pieces) is that they only play his way. Games that he has made up. A lot like sceans from pc games etc. The kids get told what they have to do, what they have to say etc, J has full control.
When asked if he ever plays the other kids games, he says no, just my games. They never asked him to play their games, and anyway he doesn't like their games or understand them.
I have observed this full control over his games twice now. Both times he physically put the kids in the positions he wanted and instructed them on what they should be saying. eg, he'd made a star wars ship out of paper and took one boys hand and physically made this boys hand fly threw his ship. On another occasion he instructed the same boy to sit in the lotus position, the boy did then the boy started to make his own humming noise, but no J told him to make a different noise because his was wrong.

I'm waiting for the shite to hit the fan so to speak. the other kids are going to get sick of this sooner or later. It's not good that he is touching others either I would imagine.

The other thing I'm starting to notice is that there isn't really much difference in the way he treats pear aged kids and much younger kids. He seams to expect the same responses from 3-4 year olds as he does from 7-10 year olds. Is this normal for AS should I be worried about it? Of course he gets frustrated then extremely upset
when the responses are different or if he has accidently hurt a little one and its pointed out to him. If I dont remind him that these kids are little he doesn't seam to notice.

Yes, my son does this and yes, it's based on video games (Nintendo characters usually). He doesn't physically force them into positions or make particular sounds, though. It's usually a battle scene or damsel in distress scenario.
He was able to keep them in make-believe land but in the past week, a kid (or more) has been getting him to physically hit other children. He'll be this kid's "ally" or soldier and take orders to hit other kids. Then he gets in trouble. I'm not clear if he is involving uninterested kids or if they are lying about it to get Pop in trouble. He claims that they are all agreeing to play and joining in the hitting and kicking.
Unless there is organized sports, he will not play other children's games other than tag or whatever.

I know all thru my growing up I was very bossy and always had to have the final say. Needless to say people do get sick of this and when ya get older things can get rough.

Its definatly a lack of understanding others feelings, empathy I suppose. I always felt the need to keep control of the environment, and not regarding anyone elses feeling felt I had to even dominate those kids around me. I got into my teens before I learned this was not cool.

Hope you have better luck.

Hi aurea - Being excessively controlling and hyper-vigilant is an ongoing part of being autistic. It's very much in relation to the 'safety of self". We are either in control, or you are. There is no in between. Controlling change,means we can keep up more easily with the world around us, and not slide into panic-mode.

Breaktimes can cause anxiety-driven, obsessive and controlling behaviour due to the lack of structure. Unless staff provide set activities at break times, managing the boundaries, your son will continue to exert control through his favoured role playing activity. He's not learning anything new or useful, if he's controlling everyone. He's simply trying to stay afloat. Your son needs successful social experiences, but this is not the way. His 'friends', regardless of age, are essentially objects in his role playing at this point. It would benefit all involved, if an aide assisted with breaktime communication and interaction by providing a range of play experiences promoting the concept of group membership(i.e. to be aware of himself as part of a group), turn taking, waiting his turn and following the rules. This could be by way of a board game(indoors or outdoors), a sporting activity, outdoor art(eg. painting a mural),trays of cars or lego provided outdoors or indoors in a designated area. With organised breaktime activities to look forward to, alongside others, he will be able to relax, focus his attention on learning skills and activities(at his intellectual level) that fit with being in a social setting, and be free to enjoy himself.

I was an Aussie child, and I self managed by using the school pool and then gymnastics, morning, breaktime and after school wherever possible throughout primary school. Breaktimes are unpredictable and downright scary to an autistic child. A changing setting is an unsafe setting. The transition from classroom to playtime alone can be enlikened to jumping across an abyss and very frightening without clear knowledge of what's to follow. Without structure, autistic children create their own, and in some cases, that's not always a good thing.

Yes, my son likes to play games based only on his areas of interest and games that he controls -- although he doesn't physically move people around, he does yell and tell them what to say and do. He generally tantrums when they do not comply. He is almost 7.

His 4 year old sister is wonderful at inventing games based on his interests and slowly changing the details of existing games to broaden his comfort with other types of play.

My oldest does this with the younger siblings, become ULTRA bossy, and ULTRA upset if they can't understand what she wants them to do or refuse to do it. She usually acts out things from her Cat Warrior fantasy books(she has a collection of stuffed cats too) or World of Warcraft or a collaboration of the two- she's created her own comics based on cats and WoW. LOL!

At school she usually just plays sports with the boys. It's organized already and she just joins.

When she was 6-7, she would always direct play with friends. She and a group of 3 other kids played cats, karate cats, superhero cats, etc all year long. They all insisted on crawling on the pavement and we went through about a million pairs of jeans that year(school dress code was no ripped or torn clothing, including knees on pants) and she scuffed and destroyed all the toes of her shoes. I kept wondering what the heck she was doing to ruin her clothes, but she wouldn't tell me. I finally figured it out about halfway through the year. LOL!

Yes, this is/was typical of my son, and it can lead to problems because the other children may tire of the play, but for now count your son lucky to have willing robots!

Meanwhile, start preparing him for the give and take of interactive play, so that the first time one of those children insists on something else won't be a shock for him. It is something my son has had to consciously work on, to try out other children's ideas, and play what they want, instead of just what he wants.

Still, since my son is so good at creating game ideas, he can get willing participants quite frequently. The better he has gotten at creating the ideas, the easier it has been to get others to buy in. Basically, he has had to learn to take into account the interests and desires of others, in other to keep that control. My son is generally competing, at age 10, with all American favorites like football and soccer, so his ideas HAVE to be good, or no one will play. And he has learned to go with the flow and sometimes actually play football, lol.

Short term, as long everyone seems fine with it, you don't have to "do" anything about it, in my opinion. But, it is good to start an on-going dialogue about play, and what might happen in a different scenario. With my son we have done a lot of talking over the years about why one should try to sometimes follow someone else's idea, and why other children might not always buy into his script, that he can't control everything and everyone, that just isn't life. Of course, one of the reasons we talk so much about it is because I am simply unable to conform to his instructions (I am very visual, and have a lot of difficulty following verbal instructions), so he long ago learned that mommy isn't much of a playmate, lol. Which I think is good for him to understand, that everyone's brains work differently. How well he does with it really depends on his overall level of stress. When he is relatively happy and stress free, it is easier for him to go with the flow on a few things. When he has been under a lot of stress, his need to control play is stronger. In those situations, I tend to break away from the immediate issue of play, and deal with the stress instead, encouraging him to do something that is calming.

my son has lost numerous "friends" due to this bossiness............

one way to address it is to have him involved in some other sort of social group where he can practice working and playing together with others ( on something that he doesn't get to lead)......scouts can be good.

I agree with ster -- scouts is a good situation to be in, where the play is lead by someone else.

My oldest son used to do this same thing when he is was kindergarten age, and he played very odd made-up games (before video games). He did grow out of this fairly quickly, and I'm sure that much of it was because after a while, nobody wanted to play with him anymore.

Kris

I used to do this sort of thing in school all the time. Most of the kids liked it. We did a lot of group activities, like write a play and act it in a mythological setting, and everyone wanted to be in my group because they would get good grades like that. Unfortunately we didn't do many group activities past middle school, so after that it was not something that helped me at all. I don't know of any way you can change this behavior, but I think in time it will wear out the same way it did with me.

I just wanted to add (since I agreed to having a son with this problem but had no advice); my son has attended various clinics for teaching social skills and he still has this tendency. IN one school/clinic they were modeled after Pamela Wolfberg's "INtegrated Group Therapy", a fancy name for structured and directed game playing. This taught my son (at ages 4-6) basic turn-taking, sharing, communication and following rules and following others' lead.
Of course, he doesn't carry that knowledge to the playground unless there is a directed sport. When I was a kid, after 4th grade, we organized our own games that didn't rely on popularity or agility.