Girls with aspergers in secondary - friendships

[belindarose]

Could you please talk to me about what, if anything, has helped your DD with aspergers build friendships in high school? Thank you.

[MrsDanverclone]

Hi, my daughter has had a really difficult time with friendships, particularly since she started Secondary school. She is now 14 and thankfully has made some wonderful friends, but it has taken a long, long time.
The things that helped to start with, would be that her school has an excellent mentor department and she could go there anytime, such as breaks and lunch time when she had nobody to be with, so that she wasn't lonely. The staff would play board games, chat etc and it helped her cope with 'social' time.

She had a lot of problems with other teenage girls and found it easier to be with boys, as she is quite immature and not into make up, clothes etc. So with the help of the mentor department, I encouraged her to join lunch time clubs, she tried a few but only really stuck at a Robotics club, she was the only girl but actually really enjoyed it, as the boys attending just accepted her for what she is. She has actually made a couple of friends from this club.

If your daughter is having problems in class, then I would suggest you talk to them about moving her to a different class, friendships in high/secondary school seem at first, to be limited to those in their class. It took 3 class moves before we found the class that was right for her. Each time she was going to move to a new group, there was a slow transition period and mentors worked on activities with the groups, to make it easier for her and help the other kids to have a slightly more inclusive outlook . My daughter also has selective mutism, so making it even harder to mix in.

I have 2 other teenagers and I totally leave the friendship thing up to them, but I realised early on, that I have to play a very active role in the life of my DD who has Asperger's, if she is going to have any chance of building good friendships. I have encouraged her to take part in lots of different groups, sometimes it has taken a lot of persuading, but over the years she has made little connections, got to know more people ( might not ever have spoken a word to them mind you!) I am very lucky that her siblings will sometimes include her in their plans, so she has met their friends and actually one of her friend's that she made in the 3rd tutor group, is the sibling of one my other Dd's friends. She took her under her wing and as this is a very sociable person, introduced her to lots of people and has made a point of including her.

We talk about situations and what being a good friend entails, because this sort of thing doesn't come easy to her. Finally she is starting to realise that its ok to ask me to explain things she doesn't understand, so that she can fit in easier with other people.

I know some people hate it, but I have found FaceBook has been great for her in helping to build friendships. She doesn't have the usual large amount of 'friends' on there, we talked about culling any negative friends in case of bullying and I do monitor it. But it has been invaluable in helping her make friends, she has been able to chat to those in her class, that she wouldn't feel able to actually talk to, face to face. They have got to know her better, they can keep in touch with each other 'lives' and she has been included in lots of after school activities that they have organised via FB.

I hope everything is ok for your daughter and she makes some lovely friends soon.

[SusanneLinder]

I have got to second Facebook for Aspergers kids, as long as you monitor it. I found it invaluable for my teen to get friendships. She is more confident from behind a screen that she is face to face, and can put up some funny facebook statuses that a lot of people like,so that has given her confidence to actually talk to people.