Our Jaw-Dropping Moment of the Week: Friendships

Friendships are so hard! First you have to make a friend (which takes work) and then you have to sustain this friendship (which takes even more work)! With children with autism spectrum disorders, simply making a friend can be difficult and then once they get that down, we throw another challenge on them: “so now you have a friend but you need to do even more work and sustain this friendship!” Our poor kids hardly get a break when it comes to friendships.

Also, let’s not forget that KIDS ARE CRUEL – there is no “CAN BE” – THEY ARE!! We have been to so many schools and have seen our kids practice their language, work up the courage and then finally go over to their peer to ask them “do you want to play with me?” to get a “NO” or even just a turn of the head in response! Our hearts break at this moment because we know what will happen next…..our children either begin to CRY (because they understand what just happened) or they walk away and begin playing alone (because they either understand what happened and don’t want to try again, or they don’t understand what just happened). Either way, this is just awful! We have thought for many years that all kids should take a little training course at preschool at the age of three on “HOW TO BE A GOOD FRIEND”!!

So together we all work day and night (sometimes literally) with our kids on wanting to be someone’s friend and then how to be their friend.

Our Jaw-Dropping Moment of the Week:
I have been working with this one child in particular since he was three years old and now he is almost six. Within the last year our major focus has been talking with peers, listening to our peers, playing cooperatively with our peers, problem solving with our peers, allowing our peers to make the toy/game choice, sustaining the interaction, as well as the friendship itself and even more! If you can do something with a peer, we have been working on it! He is making amazing progress! I walked into his school today and saw him in the hallway with a child and their parent. I stood back so he couldn’t see me, but close enough so I could hear what was going on. He was standing there negotiating setting up a play date with this child’s parent. He was talking about what they could do on the play date, where the play date would take place and that he needed the mommy’s email address to give to his mommy so that the play date could take place this weekend! I was astonished! I mean, I know this child is amazing – but – JAW-DROP - here he is planning, organizing, negotiating and more – AND it’s a play date – it’s not an activity with an adult! So then I took a deep breath and SMILED! Now, I know what some of you are thinking - he was talking to an adult. It is so much easier for our kids to talk to adults than peers. So even though this was amazing, I wished it had been with his peer. So I made my way to his classroom to talk to his teacher as he got the mommy’s email address. As soon as I walked into the classroom, his teacher began to tell me how the little boy had originally asked my kiddo to do a play date with HIM and they sat down together and talked about what they could do together! So another jaw-dropping moment! He had amazed me yet again! Not only did he plan out and organize this play date with his peer - but his PEER ASKED HIM – instead of the typical situation of him initiating and asking a peer. As we continued through our day, he held onto the email address with his life, so excited to tell his parents about his upcoming play date he had just helped organize.

Laura and Amanda
KidSpeak, LLC
www.kidspeakdallas.com