Asperger Syndrome Support Group
Asperger syndrome - also referred to as Asperger's syndrome, Asperger's, Aspergers or just AS - is one of five neurobiological pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and is characterized by deficiencies in social and communication skills, normal to above normal intelligence, and standard language development.
Has anyone tried teaching social skills to their Asperger child? My 17 year old son is very sad and lonely because he has so few friends and the ones he does have rarely spend time with him. We saw a therapist years ago who said that social skills can be taught but that they had to memorize what to say in various situations. Has anyone here worked with thier child on social skills? Or do you know of any programs or online resources that help teach this? Thank you.
Like I said, I did many, many exercises with my son.
When I think of teaching anyone anything, I always think about making it 95% easy. About 4% reinforcing things that they already know but may mess up in times of stress, and 1% new or hard.
So my advice is really just to do social things with your son multiple times a day. If he wants to go to the movies with his friends...take him to the movies weekly. Talk about the movie you're going to see, then talk about the movie you saw. Talk about other people in the crowd. Get him used to the idea of looking around and seeing what other people are doing...
IDK. That's just a guess.
The thing is that social skills are SKILLS. They're not inborn. People that are good at them, are good because they're practiced and made plenty of mistakes. They just made the mistakes when they were young, so it wasn't that noticeable.
And Heavenly thanks for the information about the meeting. Will definately look into that.
Three or four times a day, initiate a conversation about something other than video games. In your mind keep track of how many times you talk, then he talks, then you talk. (I believe that they called them "circles of communication".)
When I started with my son (he was younger back then too), I'd be lucky to get one or two circles. It took quite a bit of effort for him to concentrate on what I was saying, process it, and reply. I'd have to wait, wait, wait.
And it was much harder work for him, than it looked like. 5-10 minutes of effort was enough for one "session". Enough for both him AND me.
An example might be to walk in the room while he's playing a video game and in between games say, "It's raining outside." Then get him to shift focus to what you said, and to comment back. Echolalia type comments like "raining, yes" are okay. It's all part of how young kids learn to talk (or at least it's stuff my daughter did). Then I'd say something like "we sure need the rain", and he'd say "yes".
That's it. I kept it short. Started where he was at. Kept it positive. And did it over and over. As he got better at it, I worked at more circles. Topics could be current events, the meal he just ate, the restaurant or store you were just in... IDK, whatever is going on around you. The most challenging subjects were about the personalities of people around us (my son's teachers, friends, etc.). Learning what's okay and not okay to say about other people is tough.
Was it easy? No. I had to FORCE myself to not make it like "training exercises". I had to work at not losing patience. I had to keep reminding myself, that as much as anything, I was showing him how to be when he was frustrated himself.
Anyway, I wish you the best,
Patti