Two questions

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I have a six year old son with AS. He recently came home from school upset because a friend had gotten mad at him. The friend said "I don't want to be friends with you any more because you do things I don't like."

Unfortunately, my son has no idea what he did wrong. I suggested he ask his friend, but he told me he didn't think he could remember to ask. Since I wasn't there, I have no way of knowing either. My son seems pretty upset about it, and I was hoping someone had a suggestion.

I have another question -- my son often gets very upset and cries if he unexpectedly has to stop doing something he enjoys or if something he is looking forward to gets cancelled. My wife and I try to give advance warning of things like this as much as possible, but it isn't always possible for us to know about disappointments in advance. Have any of you with AS found effective strategies for helping yourself to feel better when things like this happen?

Thanks in advance for any help!

What helped me most is not something you would want to teach a six-year-old.

I've learned to say to myself "I am teflon." Then I imagine a big bucket of liquid teflon
in front of me with a big brush. I pick up the brush and paint myself all over with
teflon. It hardens, forms a slick surface, then no matter what other people's words
or actions are, they can't hurt me. I just have to be true to myself and not worry
about what other people have done, or will do.

But this technique does not help with making connections with other people.

I think even NT primary schoolers will have many experiences of this type. The most
important thing is to try to help your child understand not to focus on just one person
as a friend. Let him know that nobody can be the perfect friend all the time, and it's OK
for people to have more than one friend. Maybe an analogy he could understand is that
everyone is walking on their own path, and sometimes the path runs side-by-side with another path,
but then the paths get father away from each other for awhile. But that does not mean the
paths will never come back together again. And there are other paths coming closer.

That was a lesson I did not learn in grammar school, so I spent most of my recesses sitting on a rock by myself, reading.

About adjusting to disappointment, again I think some of this is normal for any six-year-old, and all I can think of is using a timer or five minute "hour glass" to mark the transition period, and maybe having another temporary enjoyable activity to mark the change (You need to put your toy away in three minutes, then you'll have a cookie before we go pick up Nana at the doctor. ) Hope that helps.

I don't have much to offer. I had similar experiences in school and isolated myself as well.

Bea's advice sounds good, although I can't say anything about it from experience. I just know that lots of folks gave me the "it doesn't matter what they think" advice growing up, and while it may be true and work well for non-autistic children, at least in my case (and I imagine with a lot of autistic kids) it can be problematic because of our tendency to isolate. So it seems like a much better plan to focus on trying to encourage him to understand that having lots of different friends is good and that there will be bad days or bad moments with all your friends, that these moments pass, people change and get better, and that's why we have lots of friends.

I would also recommend getting a book called Mindset. I haven't read it yet - it's still on my list. But from what I've read on the subject, it seems like the content might be really useful not only in this situation but a lot of other situations as well.

Here's Mindset on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psycholog ... 1400062756

Not AS but son is (same age as yours BTW).

Ah yes everyone's favourite, "transitions".

We, and the people that have been working with him over the years, have slowly desensitized our son to unexpected and/or unwanted changes. He has managed to get to the point now that most of the time the worst outbursts are for 10 or 15 seconds and often will self-talk himself to regaining controlling without prompting. Early on, besides giving him the sensory environment most soothing to him practical in that situation, there were Planned Surprises. Sometimes on his daily agenda at pre-school there was a '?'/Surprise PECS in one of the time slots. So it was a planned surprise, theoritically the safest way to get one because he could steel himself for it. Then he moved onto games with random chance like dice, memory card games, and such to desensitize himself to rolling dice or flipping over a card that he didn't already know the contents of. At first he wanted to place the die down on a side of his choosing. Patience and flexibility for him to engage balanced with pushing the envelope a little at a time. Getting him to roll once or twice for the entire day was a big first step, seriously just letting go and having the die fall where it may was that tough. Try not to overdo it .... I know, kinda fuzzy description but if it's hurting him and his progress you'll likely notice ... if you get to a big meltdown you've gone too far. Just short of the meltdown, so he can feel the anxiety but overcome it himself is about the sweetspot. Whatever the case making sure he had a safe place to retreat to to recover was important.

Having some sort of coded slogan also worked well for my son. For him all sorts of rigidity is still, years later, dealth with using "It's OK if ...." based on book he really liked, "It's Okay To Be Different" by Jack Parr. He also latched onto "maybe tomorrow" or "maybe later" for things he wanted to do but didn't work out at that time. Note that "tomorrow" wasn't literal for him. This short, familiar slogan had a MUCH better chance of getting through to him as he was starting to experience the anxiety. In time he started telling himself these out loud as he began melting down. Turned out he liked it so much he started using it in return for things he wanted to avoid. Turn about is fair play I guess? Find the slogans that would work for him was all largely a matter of throwing stuff at the wall.

Another couple things that helped was the old sales trick of giving him two choices, both of our own choosing. Eventually they figure this out though. Another, because he's somewhat hyperlexic, was use written word and visual stuff (dial timers are good) instead of verbal for those tough things. Schedules were very helpful dealing with planned changes. A very detailed countdown is good too. At one time he needed a minute countdown from 10 minutes, and then even a second by second countdown from 30 seconds. He liked counting so that worked for him. Now he's usually good with "5 minutes" though a bit more detailed if it's a highly preferred activity.

Oh, and we let him haggle with us (inside of safety and practical boundaries). A simple exchange would go like: "10 minutes till bedtime." "NO! 15 minutes till bedtime!" "OK, 12 minutes till bedtime." "OK, 12 minutes till bedtime." It was actually he that first initiated this, we just rolled with it. I imagine it gives him a better sense of control of his destiny? Just make sure to have in your mind before your priorities, ready to horse trade on different terms or bring new terms into the mix, and make sure you've left yourself a bit of room to negotiate.

Mostly though it was just trying to make sure he had space, time, and sensory to come down himself. As he slowly mastered the skills he's melted down less, not gone as far, come back sooner, and not needed the perfect sensory conditions.

Good luck.