DS is 11, in Y7. He has a formal diagnosis of an Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which you might call Aspergers.
He goes to a prep school, which is quite small with only about 20 in his year. He is very good at maths, and likes to read and find out facts about many different subjects. He also has a good musical ear and plays guitar, though his singing voice has probably gone off since his voice started breaking.
In Y9 he has a place to start at Hampton School. We visited quite a number of private schools before deciding on this one, which we did based on the fact that it was one of the more academic ones, and seemed to be particularly good with maths. They also have a proper climbing wall, which is nice for DS, who is hopeless at board games but good at climbing (which can be unfortunate as he tends to show-off)
On the negative side we were a bit concerned as it is a large school and it felt compared to some other schools we visited much more sort of hustle & bustle and less calm/relaxed. He has poor organisation skills. Hence we were happy to keep him at his current, much smaller, school until the end of Y8, rather than throw him at the start of Y7 (though he as matured a lot, albeit perhaps only physically, since we made that decision).
The learning support department we spoke to and were one of the more supportive we saw, saying that they do specific social skills courses with other ASD boys, and also they have study skills courses. They also seemed to be a bit more forward-thinking than most more generally, and mentioned things like using iPads for work delivery (which would be great for DS rather than messing around with lots of exercise books), though I'm not quite clear how much this is actually in place.
Anyway, we don't have any particular concerns yet about the new school, though obviously we have no idea really because he hasn't started there yet! We are a bit fucked off paying through the nose to live in/around London though, so we went to look at a school out of London, in Ashford, Kent. We are happy to be paying for DS to go to private school, just because we are aware that he is vulnerable and it hopefully will shelter him as much as possible, we are more fed up with the cost of living locally.
Ashford seemed a relaxed (coed) school, 'nice'; they have quite a contingent of Chinese students, which I thought might boost their maths credentials also. But the learning support department didn't really seem interested in doing anything specific for ASD. (DS isn't getting anything at the moment either.) I suppose they probably spend their time teaching the foreign students English.
So anyway I have gone on quite a bit without really touching on the title of my thread. I guess DS is aware that he doesn't have friends. He has a birthday coming up and we don't really have anyone to invite to a party. His younger sister has no ASD, and he gets a bit frustrated when she has a much better social life than he does. But that's who he is - it's not that he is to blame, but that his social skills are poor, so that can put people off. Some of it I suppose is very much unconscious - things like body language that will give people a worse impression of him. Others are more overt, more controllable perhaps, things like him butting into other people's conversations to tell them that such and such is rubbish, or showing off about himself.
He has a couple of boys who he gets on with, on and off, one came round and spent all his time playing games on his ipod, another he seems to fall out with quite a lot. He recently was complaining to me about this other boy, and his sister (who is 6) said 'I thought you wanted him to come to our house' and he said 'That was only because I wanted to work on our project together', and she observed (quite rightly, but just showing the sort of gulf between them, even with him twice her age) that that wasn't a very nice thing to say about your friend.
When we are aware of interactions that he has with others that are awkward/rude, we try to tell him, and explain to him that other people don't want to hear that what they are talking about is rubbish, but he doesn't really like to hear this, and tends to just say 'Yes yes yes yes' until we shut up and doesn't change. He does seem to get in
Obviously he is doing well at school, but I'm not sure if that is the point. He doesn't really have any friends, and I don't know if we can change him so he grows to be more 'normal' as an adult, if he is best left with his Maths textbooks and computers, or what?
Any thoughts on any of this? Immediate interventions? Future schooling directions?