Friends, school-age kids

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I often get asked if my 9 yo has any friends. For years I've been giving a convoluted, qualified answer of yes. But as I grow to accept my "quirky" kid, it is dawning on me that the answer is really no. Not in the way NT kids have friends. Any other parents feel this way? Feeling

My parents probably felt similarly. As a parent, it's probably tempting to think you have the power to force your kid to make friends, and that you don't need to care about the intricacies of socialization among their peers because they're just kids. Well, it didn't work like that with me. What you certainly have is the power to make your kid a pariah, forcing them to try desperately to make friends without even knowing what that means, never to achieve any success, sacrificing other important goals in the process and being perpetually guilty for not complying with this unfulfillable duty you placed on them. But hey, you're still the parent, which means you have the power to decide you can't be blamed for anything, since you have the right to choose how you bring up your kids. In particular, my parents came to the conclusion that, if I failed to socialize the way I ought to, despite the great and unappreciated lengths they went to, it is because I'm so extremely mentally ill. Eventually, they gave up entirely on my ability to grow up into a fully functional and independent adult.

I was actually getting on here to ask about the same topic. I have two children who are both Aspies. They are in 2nd and 5th grade. I have always taken the attitude that people will always find their tribe if they have the chance to be around different people. I am a very social person, so I naturally invite over neighbors, friends , etc. What I have found with my kids is that they really only make friends with people if I do the work of inviting kids over, etc. My kids, honestly, are an afterthought for most other kids... because in group situations, engaging them requires actual work from the other kid.

I have sort of forced my son, who is now in 5th grade, to socialize with neighbor kids in the past only to have him bullied by the kids. I kept thinking that his problems with this group were due to his difficulty in interpreting the play... turned out, he had really good instincts about this particular group and I made him act against them. I felt really awful about that and promised him that he doesn't have to hang out with this group anymore. He coexists with them at school with no problem, but it is definitely understood that they are not friends.

I realized yesterday that my daughter, who is in 2nd grade, isn't getting invited to birthday parties. My son doesn't get invited either, but it seems to have just started for her. That's really bothering me. It's not because I think my kids need to be friends with everyone, but it's that my kids DO have a desire to be included, and noone really thinks to do so. Any friend making requires a TON of work on my part. And, you know, sometimes the kids click and sometimes they don't. So, a lot of times it is a lot of work with little return (or so it feels at times).

The closest family we have in our town are moving away in less than two weeks. They have a boy the same age as my son and a girl the same age as my daughter. They are NT kids and my kids and they get along SO well. They are best friends. I have NO idea how we are going to fill this void for our kids. The only thing I suppose we can keep doing is inviting other kids over to play..... inviting families to do things with us... etc.

My 5th grader has found some friends through community children's theater. I'm hoping that those turn into lasting, close friendships for him. It is an incredibly open and awesome group of kids.

For my 2nd grade daughter, I don't know... I'm not sure what her big interests really are yet, but her fear of group activities makes it difficult to get her out there.

All of this to say... YES.. this is absolutely something we are dealing with at my house, too.

And to get to the point that Spiderpig might be trying to make... I DO ask my kids sometimes if they feel like they have enough friends. (they answer NO... so, unfortunately it means we still have work to do). But I think that knowing what the kids' actual needs and desires are around friendships matters... because I am a really social person. I require multiple friends... whereas plenty of people like just 1 or 2.

If your child feels he has friends in the way he wants to have friends and is happy with that, it doesn't matter how it compares to NT friendships.

My son (now 19) acquires acquaintances and calls them friends. I've observed enough over the years to see that people do like and accept him; pretty much everyone in his high school knew who he was and could share positive stories. He is approachable, friendly and out-going on a very surface level. But I have learned he isn't interested in making any effort to build or maintain friendships; as long as interactions are convenient, he is good to go. He rarely makes an effort to see or talk to anyone unless he is looking for play testers for the games he invents. Largely for that reason, and because he did like to sit with someone at lunchtime, he has 4 friends from high school that he still makes some effort to see when he is home from college. At college he now has a circle of 6 or 7 friends from his dorm that he ignored all summer but quickly got back in with when he moved back to campus. I do push him to be more reciprocal because I can see the hurt sometimes in people who have made an effort with him only to see he makes none back. I know that a lot of people have drifted away from him over the years because they don't get back from him what they need, and I feel sad for them. My son doesn't care; he just moves on. Because he has an easy personality, he will always be able to find companionship when he wants it and, for him, that is good enough. He feels no need to share his secrets with anyone; he doesn't even go to that level with his family.

At your son's age my son did have friendships in a more traditional mode largely because I orchestrated them, and I think he didn't know himself well enough yet to realize that he wasn't that interested in friends under the NT definition; it is entirely possible the only reason he felt a need for friends that were more than acquaintances was because that is what he saw around him and read about in books.

I think it would be helpful to be involved at the school so you can observe what is going on. Once you know what is going on you can talk to your son to see how he about it. I learned so much that way. Long run, the key is understanding not just the reality, but what it is your son actually needs and wants. It may not BE friends in the way you think of them.

The way how I provide skills for my children to become social is, ehem, by not teaching them to socialize. Autistic children are not sick, they are not disabled, they don't suffer from a disorder. Once you understand that, you've gotta ask yourself: what in the world are we doing, as a society, by shoveling down the throat of our children something that is totally unnecessary and unhelpful?

In my opinion, all the extra efforts in teaching young children to potty train, to talk, and to socialize, are not only wasteful, but actually harmful, to the development of young autistic children. I would say, before they are 8 years old, there is truly no need for additional efforts in socialization, at all. What can I say? The more I look into the "Equation for Intelligence" http://michaelscharf.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-new-equation-for-intelligence-f-t-s.html, the more I realize why most of the autistic children don't turn out to be geniuses, why they don't turn out to be social. Intelligence is a Force that Maximises the Future Freedom of Action. When and where have we ever provided maximum future freedom of action to our children, when we only provided canned fast food for their brains, and asked them to follow our rules? By forcing them to socialize, we neglect to develop the larger patch of their brain. We lose on both ends: (1) forced learning of socialization just doesn't work, so the children grow up to be deficient in social skills, (2) we neglect to develop the main chunk of their brain power. We are given so many little Ramanujans in this world, but somehow we manage to turn virtually every single one of them into handicapped adults.

There is really no need to emphasize on teaching autistic children social skills. As long as they are properly developed, social skills come later, for free. The key is to pay attention to grow their interests, starting from the visual-manual direction.

My focus has been teaching my children visual-manual skills, including reading. Amazingly, compared to other autistic children, my children are more verbal, and more social. And frankly, my children are even smarter and happier than most neurotypical children. How is this possible, at all? You may wonder.

Bear with me. Let's go through a story first.

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Bob Dylan just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Truly inspirational. Let's take a look at the lyrics of "Blowing in the Wind", and see what can see from the autistic angle.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, there are people working hard to tell our society that autism is just another form of being human. We are different, but we are fine human beings. And privately, I would like to think we are better human beings.

Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?

Why does our society wage a war on autistic children? When will we stop our ignorance and stop our violence towards these children?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

The answer has always been there. It's just no one bothers to listen.

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?

Can't people realize that even the stiffest stubborn will crumble? Autism will be gone from DSM one day, it's just a matter of time.

Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?

Good question. When will autistic children ever be free from their parents and educators' violence? Violence in the name of love...

Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

Another good question: when will parents and educators ever learn? How much longer can parents and educators pretend not to see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

The answer to developing autistic children has always been there, for those willing to listen.

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Before any of you jump into silly comments, read on.

Human intelligence is based entirely on analogies. It's a skill of the human brain. It's what makes us intelligent. It's what separates us from animals. The ability for "factorize," to discover analogies and to recycle similar concepts, is what makes us intelligent. Our brain has limited number of neurons. The smartest guy is not the guy that stores the most information. The smartest guy is the guy that does the best job in factorizing concepts. The smartest guy is the guy that can see similarities in things where other people can't find any similarities. If you are not able to factorize, your brain will be overwhelmed easily with too much information, and all becomes noise, and you will stop being able to learn.

Just as I am able to find resonance between Bob Dylan's song and the mistreatment of the autistic children in our society, when autistic children are properly developed, they will be able to socialize. Why? Because by developing their brains in the visual-manual direction, we are developing their ability to factorize, to become intelligent. These are the foundational skills that they will later recycle to acquire their social skills. I always say, when properly developed, autistic children can see things that no one else can see, and they can solve problems that no one else can solve.

Creativity and rules don't mix. Intelligence requires freedom of action. The more rules you force upon your children, the less creative they will become.

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What if the human brain has the freedom to grow and see analogies? Recently and finally, I took time to look a little bit into Galois Theory and p-adic numbers. Here is a good motivational video on p-adic numbers, for those interested in math.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFDM1ip5HdU

I've seen "p-adic" numbers mentioned throughout my life, but never vested any time into looking into them. It's a refreshing experience. It makes me realize that, when you can do a good job in factorizing your concepts (e.g. set theory, groups, fields, vector space, metrics, etc.) you can go so much further. Regular, mundane folks won't ever know that they are being restricted by their imagination. They won't know that the world has more numbers than integer, real and complex numbers. Where you see a useless divergent series, smart geniuses actually can see it as a convergent series. All those esoteric concepts like axioms, set theory, groups, fields, metrics, etc. are not something that someone just dictated out of nowhere one day: they are concepts factored out from observing analogies across different human thought constructions.

Srinivasa Ramanujan produced a huge number of findings in number theory, about 100 years ago. I highly recommend the movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity" to anyone. It's about the life of Ramanujan. Some 100 years later, mathematicians still haven't figured out how Ramanujan arrived at some of his results. Many people believe Ramanujan must be superhuman. But that can't be true: he is a human being, just like you or me. The simple fact is we still don't understand how to properly raise our children.

Intelligence is a Force that Maximises the Future Freedom of Action. We can start by guiding our children, and provide them their future freedom of action. I guess.

Personally I so not think it is a good idea to ask children if they have any friends. This goes for NT kids as well as autistic ones.

Here is why: If you don't want friends or are happy with the acquaintances you have the very question is likely to undermine the child's feeling of self. Why make your child doubt their competence at something they don't care about or are happy with as is? The question intrinsically, though unintentionally, shows you think you child is inferior socially ---whether this is true or not is irrelevant b/c you would never ask a child who is not conventionally attractive if they feel bad b/c they are not conventionally attractive, for example, either.

If your child is happy as is, than it is your problem not his and you need to deal with it yourself without upsetting him. I went through this with conventional play. It saddened me that my child would do his own thing on field trips instead of enjoying things the way other kids did. It made me very sad. but he was fine spinning around instead of feeding the baby goats etc. It was my issue and not his. If he didn't want to play with the baby goats it would be stupid to attempt to make him do it so I could be happier or make him feel badly about preferring to spin.

If your child is unhappy with his social situation, and socially aware enough to understand it, he may be embarrassed and not want to talk about it with you. Communication about what bothers a child has everything to do with trust and comfort level, and a willingness to be vulnerable to you. Asking this question will undermine this rather than contribute to it, IMO.

I am unofficially diagnosed as an adult, and I have no idea if under current paradigms I would have been diagnosed. I kind of doubt it b/c girls are generally under diagnosed for a variety of reasons, and I think I still would have passed as NT, despite all my pretty bad social skills. My mother would ask me questions of this sort and it always struck me as undermining who I was b/c while I was not necessarily always happy with my social situation (more often than not) I would have been even less happy if I did what I needed to do, or became what I would have needed to become in order to improve this position. Also, generally, kids really don't want their parents hinting or saying what they think is wrong with them, even if they already know.

Learning how to make friends is unnecessary and unhelpful? And if we don't do something naturally, it's completely useless and we should just go without?

Have you been sent here to torture autistic people?

We are a population where the bulk of us will need supports. Running around claiming that your kids are fine, therefore NO autistic people need help is mean and dangerous. Some of us have significant intellectual disability, for one. And others of us who are very smart, still have symptoms which will require a lifetime of support.

Last edited by somanyspoons on 17 Oct 2016, 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is a real problem. Training to socialize with kids who aren't really good friends. I know now, looking back at my childhood, that the kids in my grade were terrible children. The teachers hated our class as we came through. We were regularly told that we were the worst class they had seen for years. We were regularly given lectures about being nice to each other. Gym class was more often than not spent sitting as a group being lectured on following the rules. I was a teacher for while and I realized that this happens in schools. There are certain cohorts that just don't come together. They become very difficult classes.

So, its a very heavy heart that I understand even more how much better off I would have been in my parents had simply helped me seek out a nicer group of friends. Instead, i was exposed to psychoanalysis and years of advice that I had to be a friend to make a friend. That I wouldn't make friends with these little sociopaths was pathologized on me! Oh, the irony.

A really hard part of the way we teach autistic kids right now is that compliance is seen as of top importance. This is creating a generation of young adults who almost all have experiences with assault. In part, because we've been trained to be good, compliant people. We need to also teach discernment and the occasional, very rare and carefully placed aggressive assertion. I finally stopped experiencing bullying the day that I followed on of them to their locker in middle school and punched him so hard in the back that he had the wind knocked out of him. One punch. And I had peace for the rest of my school career. Who knew!! ! But that's a whole different thread topic.

^^^This

The pressure on parents to make their kids have friends is very strong and I could really see many parents encouraging autistic kids to settle for any friend no matter who out of desperation to feel better that anything is better than nothing. The school district here was like that to a very large degree. That just teaches people to not be picky about relationships which is a terrible and dangerous thing.

Discovering that my son actually has some pretty good instincts about the kids that are decent kids for him to be friends with was a real eye opener for me. The trick is pushing him now to reach out to the kids that he WANTS to hang out with. He likes having friends, but I have had to teach him to do things like say "hi" back to his peers. He's always been fairly well liked, but I think the way he interacts with them is sending a message that he doesn't actually like them.

Friend making for me is really hard, in part because my natural inclination is to show interest by critically analyzing a person. Yah. That doesn't go over well.

My poor mother is a pastor. And she would ask me how I liked her sermons and I would give a thorough breakdown of her presentation, good and bad. But you see, I could do that because I was paying attention. I don't just give my attention everywhere. I could break down what went well and what didn't because I was thinking hard about what she had said. My criticism was the biggest compliment I could give her. Its only in the last few years that I really understand that she wasn't taking it that way. She very much just wants to be praised. So I have to cut off my desire to have a real conversation about her sermon and just give her what she wants - praise. I can talk about the content of her sermon, but it has to be in a way that is generally positive.

The same can be applied to friends. They don't want to be corrected. They want you to reflect back to them that they are awesome. That's pretty much it. Usually friends are people who make us feel good about ourselves and tell us what we want to hear. The times when we can be open and honest are rare and precious, and can be "bought" by years of carefully stroking someone's ego.

The elementary version of this is that you can't tell kids that their game is stupid, or that they aren't following the rules. And you can't just always try to win. You are meant to play with the aim of making other people feel good in your presence. So you are suppose to let them get you in tag. You are supposed to let the other team get a goal every once in a while. Going along with things is REALLY hard for a lot of autistics. But that's what popular kids do.

I just love your first two paragraphs. Such a great and classic example of the different way of thinking that is ASD.

My son and I had soooo many long discussions about why he had to reign in some of his natural inclinations, and it actually saddens me to think of all that was lost with that.

I don't think it is actually as bad as your last two paragraphs make it seem; I think it can be more balanced than that; but I appreciate it may not seem that way to you.

Yup. This is why I can't be bothered with adult female NT friendships. You have to spend sooo looong being superficial before you can have any kind of meaningful dialogue. It's exhausting and boring and stressful and makes me feel like some kind of Stepford-wife-ish robot.

You would probably feel better about me right now if I simply agreed with your last post.

I understand that this is one of those things that isn't suppose to be. But since we ASD folks don't get hidden curriculum well, this is a really important lesson. Its not that you won't find people in your life that can be more real with you. God willing, you will. And that's a huge blessing. But with a few exceptions, what I've written about friends is a HUGE lesson that NTs get intuitively and we don't get it at all. If you get it intuitively, its completely reasonable to say "be real with people" because you understand that the baseline is to make nice. But that's a course correction to a path that we're not on. It's just reflective of our different way of thinking, and why NTs sometimes have a hard time giving us lessons in socializing well. Because there are some things you are supposed to get but not acknowledge, and we simply don't have that. You have to be willing to get down to the more base aspects of human nature, and acknowledge that as well as our higher ideals.

Some NT women can be real. It's really great to discover them. I hope you do too someday.

Nah, I would know you were holding back