AS teen can't socialise

[sergeantmajor]

My Aspie ds is 13, in mainstream school, no statement, academically fine, but socially.... not so great.
He is well liked by his classmates but he doesn't do the social niceties e.g. saying hello back, etc. His classmates affectionately accept his quirks but he is getting left out of stuff now.
He would like to go with a few of them to the cinema in the holidays, or hang out with them in general. He does enjoy the company of his classmates. But he is absolutely incapable of asking them for their mobile numbers, or suggesting a get-together.
I'm worried that the social circles will close, and the classmates won't think of inviting him in the future, if he is not part of their get-togethers now. I occasionally hear of kids in his class going on sleepovers and trips to the shopping centre, which ds is left out of.
It's not that he wants to be alone (if he did, I'd let him). He does want to be included but is physically incapable of doing what's necessary.
At his age, it's getting embarrassing to make arrangements mum-to-mum.
How can I help him?
Are there any useful therapies or online resources for this sort of thing?
TIA

It's hard, isn't it? The only thing I could think of for my ds was to find other ways of getting people's mobile numbers (even if that meant going to parents to ask) or making friends on FB, and to encourage him to take charge of making arrangements rather than wait for friends to do it for him.

Ds had a huge obstacle for social media, couldn't see the point (it's the 'social' bit, obviously), but I used his obsession for Xbox and encouraged him to get gamer tags and communicate with friends that way. Would your ds do something like that?

After a lot of discussion, I managed to get him to realise that he couldn't always rely on the same group of friends always being around and he'd have to widen his circle so that there were always people available for him. We talked about having different groups of friends for different interests and needs, and in time he did recognise that he had to take some responsibility for himself and his friendships.

I do sympathise with you. It's not easy when our teens lack this very basic social interaction. Your son sounds like he's got some good kids around him though.

Thanks for your reply streakbacon

Are any of them on Social Media like Instagram or Facebook? I'm sure there are others...you could ask him if he knows and then help him to set up accounts. Watch carefully the interactions....and then help him join in.

You might have to stalk his mates a little bit to get the gist of how the social dance works...it's quite specific I'm sure...but with you helping, he might do better for getting more involved.

I could have written this post! Son in Y8 with AS, gets on fine with his peers at school and has a few friends he goes to lunchtime activities with, but we are at that inbetween age where he is too old for me to be arranging 'playdates' but not yet capable of initiating social arrangements himself. It doesn't help that some of his school friends live ten miles away, with limited public transport.

I set up a Facebook account for him when he turned 13, and he has a couple of dozen 'friends' on there, but he rarely remembers to check it and his peers don't seem to be very active on it anyway. He has a mobile phone but rarely turns it on. I am considering setting up an instagram account for him as I know that some of his friends from church communicate on that, but the other parents report quite a lot of unnecessary drama on there which he would be unequipped to understand or deal with.

If it makes you feel any better, neurotypical eldest was end of Y9 / beginning of Y10 before he had enough initiative or wherewithal to make social arrangements outside school hours. He has also pointed out that he spends all day surrounded by teenagers, and wants a break from them outside school hours.

My DS (now nearly 17, with AS) was pretty much the same at 14. Not lonely in school, but no social invitations out of school at all. I remember feeling sad at him coming home alone when all the other kids were going out on the last day of term, though he seemed unbothered. Things started to get a little better at around 15, and at 16 every week or two I come home every week or two to find three or four kids in the living room on the computer drinking all the apple juice and eating cereal or snacks from the shop, or I get a text saying he's gone over to a friend's house. There’s a little group of them who seem to have found each other, who don’t much like shopping trips and outings and seem to have similar (mostly geeky) interests. Oddly enough DS was most socially active at exam time, when they’d have an exam for an hour or two and then go to the coffee shop to compare notes afterwards. None of them are capable of organising a social life (apart from one girl) and more than half their social arrangements seem to fall through, though they are getting better at it.

At about 14 he got into electronic social networking outside school on forums for people interested in particular games (and nitpicking about their rules). He found those very satisfying at the time but spends very little time on them now.

We did also encourage him to do Duke of Edinburgh. It didn't exactly make friends for him but it did at least get him out of the house. (He likes walking and camping so that was the motivator.)

And yes, we still organise the occasional "playdate" for him. One of our friends has a son (NT) of the same age who seldom goes out and sometimes we parents organise a trip to the cinema for them - look up the film times, parents call each other to arrange it, etc. They're both quite happy to go but only if we fix it up!

Anyway, that was just to let you know that even if they're like hermits at 14 it doesn't mean they'll always be hermits