ASD - explaining why we want him to talk about/identify emotions - help?

[RoleyMo64]

Hi

My son (SpLD, being assessed for Asperger's) is getting speech therapy to work on friendship issues and also expressing emotions.

The problem is he doesn't like the emotions work and thinks talking about feelings is weird, stupid, and he generally doesn't like it.

Any ideas for what I can say (or a social story) to explain to him why this is important?

Thanks

marking spot - exactly the same problems here. DS couldn't explain at all what happy, sad etc felt like inside.

Blimey, I'm in my 40s and only just worked out how to do it

I find it much easier to use pictures or music to explain how I feel. Words don't connect to my emotions directly. That might sound weird, but it's true for a good number of us on the spectrum. Might be an idea to try something involving art or music rather than words?

Can we join in too, Dd3 has 2 moods according to her happy or not happy!!

She struggles so much to read her own emotions that she has no chance with anybody elses.

She is in a social skills group at school , they are working on managing emotions and maintaining friendships at the moment.

Salt gave us a game to play with faces on and we are meant to talk about how the people in the pics are feeling but she cant relate it to herself.

Amber, that's interesting that you feel that. My son plays trumpet and is capable of telling me what 'mood' a piece of music has and connecting that with emotions, but the language is a problem :-)

I guess what I'm more getting at is - what are the advantages of being able to express one's emotions in words? Maybe that's just what the speech therapists focus on because, after all, they deal with speech!

Is the idea that the child once able to recognise it in themselves can then recognise it in other people? Or maybe once recognised they can learn to express it more socially acceptably?

(We've had the same game with the faces I think. My son does it cognitively - i.e. smile = happy, crying = sad etc, but then can't do it with real people.)

I think it is a massive jump from nothing tocommunicating to another what your emotion is tbh.

First you have to identify your own emotion which can be bloody tricky.

I would start with the two simplest ones. Happy and sad. And do loads of work asking him to identify them in others first. Use cards but also real life examples but make sure the emotions are really exaggerated.

Then reinforce HIS emotions by labelling HIS happy and sad. When he is able to tell you himself with accuracy you can introduce two more etc.

Model your emotions. For example,
"Ooh I'm feeling sooo excited" (act all excited)
"im feeling excited because my old friend Jane is coming to visit tomorrow. Because I'm feeling excited I'm going to bake her a cake."

I'm feeling Y. I'm feeling Y because of X. because I'm feeling Y I'm going to do Z..

therapist told us to do this with ds and it has been helpful for him/us.

Starlight, you are so right it is a big jump. A bigger jump than he can really manage. His speech therapist started with six basic ones, but for two of them (sad and frightened) he was able to identify exactly one occasion in his whole life when he had felt that emotion. (He's 11).

oodles that's a really good idea. My main emotion these days is tiredness unfortunately but I'm sure I can manage something...

6 is far too many IMO.

I can do happy, sad and scared. I don't have others. So there's no point me inventing them.

I think if a child can work out how sad a piece of music is, they can work out how sad a person is. But our 'language' is music/picture etc, not words.
Respecting that language is important, I think.

Maybe the speech therapist needs to learn his language instead

Ds (13) has always struggled with this. There's a lesser condition called Alexithymia which is often linked to autism (lots of info if you Google it), which means a difficulty with expressing emotion because of a problem linking the physical feeling to words.

oodles idea is great, we've used that too but it will be very difficult for a child to relate to that if they simply don't feel the emotion themselves.

I agree with starting with the basic emotions and extending from that. But it takes a lot of time as you have to go over it such a lot.

Tv programmes are good - asking why a character is behaving a certain way, what made them do X, what were they thinking, what emotion is that.

Mind Reading software is excellent - beg, borrow or steal if you can.

I also recommend a book called Stick Up For Yourself by Gershen Kaufman - some great suggestions and guidance in there.

Interestingly, ds can now recognise and label emotions in other people far better than he can identify them in himself. I'm still working on that one .

I have just asked my ds for his advice, he did this for years with teachers, salt etc. his reply was "you learn to tell them what they want to hear". For him it was easier to use emotions for others to help read them.

DS (6, ASD) started with pictures and me 'making faces' and asking him to 'make faces'. Then, with the input of the SALT, we moved on to 'situations' where the usual outcome is someone feeling sad, or happy, etc., again with a lot of pictures and speech/thought bubbles. We also asked a lot of questions about feeling when reading books or watching TV.
Now we're working more on him articulating how he feels using a 3-point scale (again visual). I'm also trying to teach him some non-verbal, non-face 'language', like hand gestures.
We started with sad/happy, then he learnt angry/scared/surprised and now we're sort of stuck on the really difficult ones: ashamed/proud/grateful, which I guess are mostly 'situational'.
Tbh much depends on how much stuff is going on at the same time. If someone is talking to him using more than a few words, DS can't concentrate on the words and the face at the same time.

I was saying on another thread feelings are very abstract and complicated. Ds doesnt like to talk about feelings, probably because he is confused by them.

I found with ds the best time to help him identify emotions or feelings, was when he was actually feeling them. Then talking to him about how his body was feeling, what his face might look like etc.

I tell ds that talking about feelings is important because it can make us feel better.