What to expect and do in the French exchange for AS girls 14 ?

[Vanillachocolate]

Next week the French AS girl is coming for a week and my AS DD2 will go to France the week after. I am having a last minute "why did I get myself into this?" and "what on Hearth am I going to do" thing.

My DD never had a friend for a sleep-over so I have no very little idea what to expect from a normal girl.
We don't know any other AS girl, so this is a huge first time experiment . don't have any experience of how they would behave in this situation. I spoken with the mother extensively and there is a striking pattern of how AS treats are similar, but it is a big gamble for me and for them.

I proposed to go to London and to do this and that, but the visiting girl just prefers it quiet and take it a day at a time. This was such a relief as my DD wouldn't want to do any of the minding the gap and sightseeing...

So we would go to the pool, maybe to the cinema, to the park to feed the swans. Nothing ambitious.

What do you think they will do - just settle behind their respective computer and play their [Minecraft] quietly?

Please tell me anything that comes to mind, any comment will be helpful . How can I help them to engage with each-other but not to overdo it?
What to expect?

Could anyone share any thoughts please?

This is not about French really, its about how two AS DC, boys or girls, interact when they are together.

Can't comment on an exchange as my children are younger but have two AS ten year olds so know a bit how they interact.

If I ask them where they want to go out one will say A and the other B and there will be no compromise so we often end up not going out! So my tip would be to avoid giving them both the choice.

Pick places you know your daughter will enjoy so at least one will be happy.

Give them advance notice of where you are going rather than being spontaneous.

Also give the visitor a space where she can escape from you and your daughter for a while if need be.

I won't be able to offer her a separate room, but she should be able to have some space either in the dining room or in the living or in the bedroom. So if I set some rules, like if Miss X needs some time out, she could go to the badroom and be on her own?

What would trigger Miss X to want a time out?

What can I do to help communication?

Could I ask - how did you find another teen with an ASC to exchange with? My DS?s school were planning to run a French exchange, DS was keen but I didn?t feel confident in DS doing it because I was afraid the family would know nothing about ASCs and probably wouldn?t cope with DS. As it turned out the exchange was cancelled for other reasons.

Sorry I don?t have any suggestions but I?m watching with interest!

Yes, indeed. I made a draft plan combining something stimulating or outdoor with something calm and homely, combined with quiet time out time so everyone could unwind. We already took shopping and sight seeing off the list. It is a good ideas to actually print out activities and submit to the girls to discuss and choose the time. Thanks.

I thought doing some activities together will help them to communicate, like baking, console games, going out, swimming etc. I assume they would choose their own way to unwind. My DD would want to Minecraft for example.

Any experience of sleep overs even with NT kids? What tends to happen?

My DD goes to mainstream school. She has ADHD as well, so she can be jumpy and overexcited. Because I don't have any experience of handling two AS DDs, I wonder whether they would drive each other into an overload after 5 minutes?

Generally I think it should work fine, unless I am blissfully unaware of what could happen. Any "what can go wrong" and troubleshooting tips?

What if Miss X is less high functioning then the parents suggested - what would be the difference in behaviour?

Kleinzeit, probably cross posted.

We contacted the association of parents with AS kids in Paris. They send the word around, however without success. There were plenty of families with boys, so if you do the same you might find a suitable family easily. Then I called directly the mainstream schools in Paris, which had ASD units. One of the schools had an AS girl and the family wanted an exchange. Once you find a family, you could arrange it through Lingoo if you want some more reassurance, but we just did it directly. My DH was in Paris , so he visited the family and we had a few phone conversations and emails.

Nobody knows how DDs will react over there. On our side, DH will be on business trip for a week in France and could take her home if necessary. The French family booked themselves a holiday in UK and will be on stand buy in case of crisis. It was their idea, I didn't ask; they didn't ask for DH to be there. Surprisingly similar reaction by the parents :).

On your point about the school exchange, the biggest hurdle was not DD herself. Initially we applied for the school exchange. My DD went to all the school trips so far. So we expected the exchange to go ahead. I even offered to stay there in B&B in case of crisis. However the school for "Health and Safety" reasons put such a scary "disclosure" and a list of child protection demands to the French school and the families , that it must have scared the s###t out of them. People do it on the basis of mutual trust, but the letter read like the host family are a danger to DD, which is absurd. So obviously, no French family wanted to host DD. I must say in France there is much less awareness and diagnosis rate is lower, so people are just less aware, confused and afraid. Imagine you were approached to host an autistic boy if you didn't know anything about autism. But the AS parent's association and the schools reacted very positively.

We also applied for the school German exchange with the same result... and then found an AS German girl ourselves.

Do you think it will be scary for DC?

Am really impressed with the genius idea of 2 AS families sorting out their own exchange.

We used to be summer hosts for overseas teenagers when I was a pre-teen... they were sweet but nervous, some were shy, they all hid behind headphones and magazines a lot. And by & large, they really didn't like English food.

I (naively?) would suggest that all the back-up from both sets of parents, due to the AS, will mean they're the best-prepared exchange students either school has ever seen. . You can't fix everything, but that'll be true of any exchange students. They will find it stressful, but that's ok, they'll live (and hopefully learn!)