Is it better for a teen with Aspergers to be allowed to 'do his own thing' or be made to do activities,join clubs he doesn't want to?

[Penneyanne]

Following on from somebody else's thread can anyone tell me if a boy in his early teens with AS needs to be out there doing stuff like other boys his age or is it ok to leave him be?
Will his autistic traits become much more pronounced if we don't encourage him to mix more?He attends mainstream school and gets good support there but doesn't rerally mix much with his peers and has no close friends as such. He suffers with anxiety a lot but has no interest in anything much apart from his beloved computer games.I do make him come out for walks with me sometimes and we go for coffee together often and he goes to the cinema with his dad ,that type of thing, but is this enough ?
Can anyone who has been through this advise please?
I would be sooo grateful.

I have an 11 yr old so not quite at the teen thing yet but.... there are times (often at the moment) when just getting through the day at school wipes her out.

All the interactions and coping with all the transitions and rules and everything else at school exhausts her.

She does do 2 clubs out of school which she loves but if she has reached overload before she gets home then she opts out and watches a dvd instead.

To be honest going for walks and having coffee with your teenage son sounds wonderful, let him be who he is and enjoy him

Good luck

I tend to leave my teenager to do his own thing outside of school hours. The exception to this is that his school encourage everyone to join at least one lunchtime or after-school club if possible. If there's something he might be interested in then I encourage him to sign up, but otherwise I leave it up to him.

I also make sure that he leaves the house at least once at the weekend (usually to come out with us), otherwise he would happily fester in a corner somewhere with his beloved laptop!

I agree with polter ds is nine and I don't force him to activities , my parents forced me to various things as a child and I hated it

my son is 13 next week and he would just stay at home if he could - like you he will come for coffee with me and like to go to the cinema with his dad. he also has a carer who takes him out a couple of times a month but actually mixing with peers of his own age - he doesn't and hes quite happy with that. he seems happy at school and interacts with the kids there that if he want home to be his 'safe' space that's fine. ive offered him the chance to go youth clubs but he really isn't interested at all

Mine are 13 and 14 and I would not force them, no. It would be pointless. I tried it when they were younger and it just led to problems.

I do encourage them and try to find things that they like to do and if there is something they want to do I will walk over hot coals to make it happen!

But they get so much stimuli at school - it's so busy, there are so many demands on them, etc, that when they come home they are totally overloaded and really can't cope with much interaction. They are fried from the stress of it all and they need to be able to retreat and recover.

DS is 15 and I don’t have a good answer to this… The older my DS gets seems the less he wants to do socially (sigh) which is a pity because in primary school he had a roaring social life. I think he does get lonely but he can’t cope with the demands of unstructured teenage socialising and it's very difficult to get him to join any group activities. I can’t really force him to do things. Out of school he does music lessons and swimming lessons, both one-to-one not social though. He is still doing Duke of Edinburgh which means going to a meeting once a week and doing an hour in a charity shop, which he enjoys. He socialises online with a couple of kids from school, and on a chatroom for a game he’s interested in. Maybe there's hope - very rarely I will come home from work to find two teenagers playing computer games in the house, but that only started this year. He will go out to the cinema or theatre with us, or to the cinema with my friend’s son if we parents organise it(!), both boys are happy to go but can’t/wont organise it themselves. But mostly I feel he has to find his own way.

DS does still do social/sports activities, but these are confined to weekends. We find he has a very heavy workload and needs downtime when he gets home for about an hour before he starts homework. Once that is finished it is time for our evening meal and then he just wants to chill before bedtime .

Thanks everyone...yes it is interesting to see that everyone is saying the same thing really.My gut feeling is to go with his own choices and simply make sure he gets out a bit and doesn't spend every waking minute in his pit.