What do 'relationship difficulties' look like in your ASD girls

[RightSaidFred72]

DD(11) had an ASD assessment earlier in the year. She scored highly, but didn't meet the criteria for a diagnosis due to a lower score in the part "significant difficulties in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships".

The thing is, as a mum I just KNOW. DD says herself she KNOWS. To me, it's clear as day, living with her every day. And her other areas of difficulty are becoming more and more evident.

It basically infers in the assessment the lower score is because she can make and maintain friendships.

She DOES have friends...but still struggles. Struggles to understand the nuances of friendships, falls in and out of favour with them whenever the wind changes direction, never really asks or arranges to see them at weekends, doesn't seem to miss them if she hasn't seen them for months (as was in lockdown), etc.

For those with ASD girls...especially those who have a number of friends...what do their struggles look like? How do you think they differ from the friendships of NT girls?

My year 6 ( 11 in February) daughter has recently been diagnosed as having autism.
in terms of friendship she has friends at school. ( these are kids she’s known since the age of 4, starting school) it’s a class of 33 kids in a school of about 120. So they’re lovely and accepting. But they’re not friends really in the term of friendship.
my daughter doesn’t ask questions, know things about them. Really understand what they’re talking about ie, music, make up etc. she never wants to meet them in holidays or asks for them to come over to the house.
They are lovely kids but I worry that when they go to secondary school and they get older these accepting kids will forget her.
she enjoys Guides and Judo and this keeps her active and social but in the park after school ( we go because she has a 6 year old brother) she wants to run and play with the younger kids. ( not many of her friends/ classmates go to the park any more)
She will see her friends in the street and walk past them without speaking to them.

Its upsetting but she’s happy and loves school so it’s not bothering her. She likes her own company.

Maybe you have given the wrong answers in the assessment? If the children in your dd's class drop her and she is noone's 'best friend', doesn't develop close relationships that are sustained throughout holidays and weekends, then she doesn't have 'friendships', she just more or less rubbish along with the kids in her class. The problem with ASD diagnosis is that it depends so much on the words parents use to describe their dc, and of course, words like 'friends' mean different things to different people.

Rubs not rubbish. Silly autocorrect😀