Making friends – supporting your autistic child
Your autistic child might struggle in social situations. You might notice that other kids seem to naturally understand how to talk and play together. It can be puzzling for parents of autistic children to explain why their kids find socialising tough, even if they’re good at other things.
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Autism and social interaction
The characteristics of autism vary from one person to another, but in order for a diagnosis to be made, a person will usually be assessed as having, along with other issues, difficulties with social interaction and social communication.
“It’s as if everybody is playing some complicated game and I am the only one who hasn’t been told the rules.”
Martian in the playground, C Sainsbury, p8
- Autistic people may have difficulty understanding people’s intentions or social cues but non-autistic people have similar difficulties understanding autistic people.
- Some autistic children may have a preference to play alone or with people they are familiar with, some do have an interest in making friends but don’t know how to approach other people. Nonetheless, autistic people can and do make friends.
- Autistic people may understand things literally and require clear instructions.
Trying to understand complex and unwritten social rules can be confusing, exhausting and stressful for autistic children. You can help them by:
- carrying, or giving your child, an autism alert card
- using our communication tips
- asking your child’s schools to teach the concept of neurodiversity at school (Find out about the LEANS – Learning About Neurodiversity at School programme)
- suggesting things your child’s school can do to support your child during unstructured times, as these can be harder for autistic children to cope with.
- looking for social groups and leisure activities in your local community that are more autism-friendly or have a shared interest and connection with your autistic child
Supporting friendships
It is often said that autistic children find it difficult to understand that other people’s feelings, perspectives, beliefs, interests and experiences may be different to their own. This is however an incomplete portrayal and understanding of autism as the difficulties in communicating and understanding each other is bi-directional. It is not just autistic people who have to learn how to communicate with non-autistic people but non-autistic people have to learn how to communicate with the autistic person too. This difficulty in understanding each other is known as the Double Empathy problem.
The following tips for communication should be understood in the context that autistic people have their own way of communicating that is different to non-autistic people, which is not necessarily ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. Often, autistic people are told that they need to be taught social skills in order to fit in but this can cause more harm than good when autistic people are taught that their way of communication is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ and when they are picked on for their differences. We should be directing efforts instead for both sides to understand different ways of communication and find ways for everybody to communicate and socialise.
Communication tips
- create a social space that is accessible for the autistic person and reduce social stressors or triggers where possible
- start with the basics and progress in stages
- practise any new social skillswith your child in a number of different places, and with different people. Autistic children can find it hard to apply new skills in different contexts.
- link skills to real tangible situations, refer to examples and use people’s names.
- find out what particular social difficulties your child experiences and get extra help in school.
- pick the time carefully when introducing new social skills.Avoid stressful times, or times when your child is distracted by a favourite activity.
- find apps to support your child’s communicationand read app reviews.
Suggestions for developing different social skills at home
Start with basic emotions such as happy, sad and angry, then branch out to more complex feelings such as surprised, confused.
Autistic children often respond to more visible, tangible concepts, so once you’ve come up with a list of feelings, you could categorise and colour code the list. Write negative feelings in red and positive ones in green. The number of categories can increase as their understanding broadens.
Be creative at home and make use of different activities and materials to teach your child about different emotions. You can make faces of different expressions on paper plates, puppets, masks etc. or on biscuits with icing/sweets/dried fruit. Discuss the different parts of the face, make different expressions, copy and mirror them to each other, and talk about situations where you have seen that expression.
Cartoons are a great way to teach facial expressions as they are over-exaggerated. Watch an episode of a cartoon together and pause at appropriate spots, talk through what happened and what these expressions mean, and see if you can predict what will happen next.
Take photos of you and your child or other people making a certain facial expression and get them to see the similarities in how their faces work. This will help with generalisation. Print off photos of different facial expressions and use them in a matching card game such as Snap.
It is important to make sure that your child understands what a game is and is involved. Many autistic children may not understand the rules and the meaning of winning or losing unless this is discussed.
It is easier to make friends with people who share the same interests as your child, as it gives them a common topic to talk about and takes some pressure off having to think of what to say. You can teach your child how to choose children who might be compatible playmates with similar interests. For example, if your child wants to play or talk about football – join a football club or if your child is at school, choose a child who is playing football, rather than a child who is reading a book or playing a computer game.
Teach your child what they can say if they want to play with someone and rehearse it with them. Make sure you practise alternative endings. eg what to do if they say no. Also, explain that it’s ok to spend time alone. It may be useful to carry a cue card with the key phrases on it if they get nervous and need support to communicate.
Encourage your child to go to a teacher if they don’t get the response they are looking for and talk it over with them. Explain why having an argument may affect any future attempts to play with this child. Perhaps provide them with a card they can hand to a teacher asking for space when they are upset rather than having to talk through the issue.
Some autistic children may have a fear of making mistakes and might run away rather than ask for help or screw up a whole piece of work rather than put a line through a mistake.
You could:
- dramatise your own mistakes so they can see it happens to others, and that it can be fixed
- help them to identify emotions
- label any feelings which they don’t recognise for them and direct them to a calming activity
- give them a tangible ‘HELP’ card if they cannot verbalise their feelings themselves
- talk about publicly scrutinised wins/losses in the news, eg sports, awards, etc. Pointing out that it is common to make mistakes and ways to cope or resolve them
- keep conflict resolution factual. Stick to the facts if you are debriefing a child about an incident and help them address different parts of the argument that they may have missed, such as the other person’s point of view and misinterpretations of words
- draw an incident with speech and thought bubbles. If two children have had a disagreement, draw them and their thoughts/feelings/actions/speech. Having something visually to refer to can help reinforce recognition it can be done as a comic strip conversationTM, movie script, cartoon or story
- work on boosting their self-esteem and creating more predictability in the general environment to help minimise the impact of mistakes
- talk through a game or an activity before it starts. If they are about to get involved with something where the goal is winning, talk them through ‘being a good loser’ and the nature of the game they are playing.
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