Life & Social Skills

Life & Social Skills

Ages: 7 - 13

Making Friends: Understanding the Process and Building Skills

Making Friends: Understanding the Process and Building Skills

Building friendships takes time and involves learning many different skills. Help your child with strategies and issues like these.

Conversation Basics

  • Practice conversation starters. What comes in the middle? How do you close?
  • Take turns talking and listen to the other person. Know when it’s time to stop talking and when the conversation is coming to an end.
  • How much to share in a conversation with who.
  • Learn how to not misread the social cues. Social skills training - looking for body language and words being used which may vary depending on culture.
  • Understand the challenge of literal thinking and perspective taking, learn cues for how the other person is feeling.

Understanding and Developing Friendships

Autistic children may be likely to play or do an activity side by side rather than as interactive as a neurotypical child. While the goal is to encourage and build toward collaborative play and interactive conversation, don’t be discouraged if this is slow to develop or isn’t realistic.

As children get older needs, interests and strengths evolve. This is a typical development process of side by side play and makes sense for an autistic child to stay in that stage longer than a neurotypical child. What is most important is to have opportunities and then let it evolve as your child gets older.

Social communication may look different for autistic children. For example making eye contact can feel overwhelming. Neurotypical and neuro-diverse children need to learn ways to communicate in ways that work for autistic children and be flexible and understanding.

These are essential skills and issues your child will need to develop and understand that you, professionals, school, and other relatives can help with:

  • Ideas for how to find friends such as activities or common interests, and what are clues someone seems interested in talking to you or being your friend.
  • Friendships bring companionship and fun but also hurt feelings, a friendship ending or someone mad at you.
  • How to handle someone not wanting to be your friend.
  • How to respond politely directly to someone who wants to be friends with you who you don’t want to be friends with.
  • How to understand who is a friend vs acquaintance and that friendship takes time to develop. Is this someone you can depend on, confide in safely? Or do you just play sports or do a particular activity in the same group?
  • How not to get taken advantage of, such as someone acting like your friend to get your help with their homework.

Ask your child about different kids they find interesting and encourage them to ask them to play or hang out together. You can help your child practice conversation topics like “What is Sue interested in that you could ask her about?” Ask your child what they might like to do when they get together to have different potential activities ready to choose from.

Safety Issues and Friendship

As your child gets older, discuss safety issues with them like what to do if their friend suggests something that they are not comfortable with or makes them feel like they are being taken advantage of. How should they respond if someone seems inappropriate?

If they start using social media make sure they understand safety issues like never giving their name, address, school name, or meet people in person they don’t know in real life without asking their parents or guardian.

Be aware that they may be exposed to pornography or potentially abusive people on the internet including YouTube, or online gaming which may have live chat. Safety precautions you can take include having parental filters, blocking sites like YouTube, and trying to monitor your child’s use of devices and the internet but we know it’s difficult.

Social isolation is a form of bullying like inviting everyone in the class but the autistic child to a party.

Friendship and Risk of Bullying and Being Taken Advantage Of

Autistic children can find it challenging to understand what a friend versus an acquaintance is and who is a safe person they can trust in which ways. You might help them think about it as if they felt scared or sad, who could they trust? Who is supportive and makes them feel happy?

Autistic kids are at risk of being teased, bullied or taken advantage of for their things, money or to try to get them to do something such as doing the homework or writing a paper for the “friend.”

Kids may face discrimination from other kids or from adults, in other words judging them and not seeing them as a person with feelings and great potential. Autistic children are more likely to be too compliant. They may be too likely to easily say yes to things without thinking about whether it was OK for someone to ask them to do something or whether they really want to do it. They may be very agreeable to whatever another child asks them to do because they think this person is their friend.

Additional Resources on Bullying

An Autism Perspective on Bullying: Creating a Culture of Acceptance

Children's Safety Network Bullying Prevention Resource Guide

Bullying Legal Rights from the Milestones Legal Tool Kit

Strategies for Children Who Are More Impacted

These are strategies that can help build communication skills for children who are more impacted. Finding ways to communicate that works for each child gives them a way to share what they need, want and feel.

Use visual supports such as picture charts or assistive devices if appropriate to help your child practice social communication. For example, picture charts of different fruits, or activities to help your child express what they want to eat or do. Autistic children are often visual learners and respond well to visuals. For more information, check out the Milestones Visual Supports Tool Kit.

When you’re doing different activities you can tell your child what you are doing to help them learn. Let your child know where you are planning to go. Set expectations and what they can and can’t do. For example, "We’re going to go to the grocery store and buy things we need to make our next meals, but we won’t be buying candy." Then as they get used to that approach you can ask things like what happens next?

Talk regularly with your child even if they do not speak. Having a conversation even though it is more one-sided can help engage and teach them.

Read to your child regularly using different books that seem to interest them. Try different kinds of books to see what seems to attract them.

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