Social story for making friends for DD with possible mild Aspergers?

[chicaguapa]

The jury's still out on whether DD has Aspergers. The EP seems to think so but DD scored 28.5 on the CARS test so she hasn't been 'labelled' yet. I can see why the EP thinks this but I'm still inclined to put it down to developmental lag at the moment. (She was also assessed with an average academic & intelligence age of y6/y7 and she's actually only just finished y2 so I can understand difficulties in relating to her peers.)

But to make her life easier, we're going to try out some techniques for dealing with aspergers to see if they help in any way. DD doesn't have a big problem in sustaining friendships and children seem to like her but she just has the one best friend at school - which isn't a problem. But we're supposed to be moving next summer to a whole new area and DD will be changing schools. We're preparing DD now and she is happy to move as we'll be nearer family etc. But she's worried that she won't make any friends as she recognises that she finds this difficult.

So I thought I'd see if I could find a social story or something to help her learn some things to say, ice breakers etc. to put her mind at rest. Obviously the school would help with this when she starts but I don't want to say this to DD as she doesn't know anything about the EP assessments etc. I know I could give her some pointers myself on making friends but she likes things in a book in black and white to mull over at leisure.

"we're going to try out some techniques for dealing with aspergers to see if they help in any way"

Hanen has published a book called "talkability". It's aimed at the 3-7 age group. have a look - www.hanen.org. It's expensive but there is a UK distributor and you can order their books from libraries.

But I suspect others may come up with better suggestions.

this book looks good...and on amazonuk you can 'look inside the book'....

How To Be A Friend

just got the book, has lots of pictures and two line examples of inviting friends to join in, being nice, thinking of other. my ds likes busy pages with lots to look at, so hopefully will like the book and open up discussion. and not expensive so has to be worth a try.

Thanks. I'll order it.

Hi

My DS2's teacher has been introducing multimedia social stories - she used this book for part of her research:

Baker J (2001) The Social Skills Picture Book: Teaching play, emotion and communication to children with autism. USA: Future Horizons.

It might also be of help.

Thanks.

I'm going to give this a try too The Unwritten Rules of Friendship: Simple Strategies to Help Your Child Make Friends which came up when I was looking at the How to be a friend book. I can't believe how many self help books are out there for children. It's Bridget Jones gone mad.