Friendship is that special connection between two or more people that we all get to experience and enjoy. Making and keeping friends requires the most complex set of skills that we have. As one of my clients said “making friends is easy; keeping them is hard”. Why? Because we have to be able to think about the other person’s needs, to listen to our friends even when we are not in the mood, we have to put up with their ups and downs, we have to support them when they are in need and accept them even when they make mistakes. Friendship needs to be maintained by all parties involved…

Friendship is even more complicated when you are on the autism spectrum and have perspective taking deficits. Perspective taking deficits make it extremely hard for our children to think about other people’s needs. However, it is great to know that, even if some things take longer for our children to accomplish, they can do it!!!
Here is the story of my FRIEND Lizzie:

- A few years ago, when we started our journey, we had to turn the house upside down in order for Lizzie to even notice that there was another person in the room;
- Later on, we moved to Lizzie acknowledging that I was in the room but doing everything in her power to avoid me – I really wanted to be Lizzie’s friend so I put up with it and tried over and over!
- My work paid off – Lizzie was not running away anymore and wanted to be my friend! Yes!! I did it! Here is the catch: she only wanted to be my friend when I was doing whatever she wanted to do. Whenever I wanted to do something else she will get upset and move away…It felt like I was her friend but she wasn’t my friend. I had to give up everything and she gave up nothing.
- We slowly moved to the part when Lizzie wanted me to be her friend most of the time and she wanted to be my friend for a little bit. It felt awesome!!! I was getting through.
- After a while, we moved to the phase when Lizzie will be tired of being my friend and was worried not to hurt my feelings – she would politely say “How about you go to your own house now?” Hurray – we are making progress!!!
- A few months ago, we were working a lot on Lizzie being my friend and doing a lot of things I liked but were really hard for her: following my plan, sharing, trading roles so that Lizzie can build on my plan (something that was extremely hard for her). Anyway, Lizzie was so tired of being my friend – she tried so hard to let me know without hurting my feelings: “Cristina, I can’t do this anymore!”, “How about you go to your own house”, etc and nothing worked. Finally, she looked at me and said “Ok, Cristina, play time is CLOSED!” I said: “I don’t understand you Lizzie, What does that mean?” Lizzie: “You stay right here!” She closed the door and I could hear her talking herself through: “I need some tape. I need scissors” Yes, you guessed – she taped the playroom door shut with me on the inside and herself on the outside. I appreciated the humor but I also realized that she would do anything to get me out of her sight (if she could not send me home :)). I was happy that she was able to find a way to get her needs met and problem solve a difficult situation without tantruming but I was sad that she still did not want to be my friend when things got hard for her…
- Here we are today! One of the best days ever!! Lizzie not only acted like my friend the whole time I was there but she asked me to come back on Wednesday (our regular time together) AND Friday!!!!! I was never asked to come back!!!! WOW! What a great feeling! I finally have a new friend and I don’t have to be the only one who tries really hard anymore!!!! We are both working on our friendship and we are both enjoying it to the point when we ask each other to come back for more!
What a great start of the New Year!