Amaze

Making Friends – Strategies to Improve Social Understanding and

Friendship Skills

Diagnostic Criteria for Autistic Disorder

• Qualitative impairment in social interaction

• Qualitative impairments in communication

• Restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests and activities

Stages in Friendship

• 1. Physical world. • 2. Wanting to have friends. • 3. Functional friends. • 4.Loneliness. • 5. Partner.

Social Impairment • Maturity in friendship skills. • Limited vocabulary for characterization. • Limited response to peer pressure. • Conspicuous preference for solitude. • Unaware of the codes of social conduct.

French Driver

Social Calculator

• Add the following 3 numbers • 491 • 264 • 168

Social calculator

• Answer: 923 • As if neurotypicals have a calculator

Ability to Attribute Social Meaning

• Noticing objects and facts rather than thoughts, feelings and intentions.

LDA Language Cards: Emotions

LDA Language Cards: Emotions

Descriptions of pictures and events may not include thoughts and feelings.

Please draw me a picture of your classroom or your playground?

9 Year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome: Classroom

8 Year old girl with Asperger’s Syndrome: Playground

10 year old girl with Asperger’s syndrome: Playground

8 Year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome: Playground

What is unusual about each of these drawings?

6 year old sister of 8 year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome: Playground

7 Year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome: Classroom

His 5 year old sister: Classroom

Girl with Asperger’s syndrome: Playground

The Value of Friendship • Learn alternative perspectives and solutions. • Facilitates appropriate conflict resolution.

Team Work Skills for Employment

Basis of Adult Personal Relationships.

The Value of Friendship

• ‘Antidote’ to depression. • Avoid bullying.

Encourage Friendship Skills

• Behavioral strategies of observation and recording, task analysis, cues, prompting and rewards.

• Practice using role play games and drama activities.

• Cognitive strategies to learn the theory and script using Social Stories.

Social Stories

• Start with a story about a social success. • Half of Social Stories to record social

successes. • A particularly successful occasion is recorded

in a Social Story. • Social articles for teenagers (Compliments)

Four Stages in the Development of Friendship

Level 1 3-6 Years

Level 1: Approximately 3 to 6 Years

• Recognition of sharing and turn taking. • Friend has toys the child wants to play with. • One way assistance (he helps me). • Proximity.

Level 1: Approximately 3 to 6 Years

• Why is ….. your friend? • “He sits next to me.” • Momentary friends.

An Adult ‘Acting’ As a Friend • Observe the natural play of the child’s peers,

learn the games and rules. • Learn ‘child’ speak. • Turn taking. • Ask for help.

An Adult ‘Acting’ As a Friend • What else could it be? • Video replay of social play scenes at school. • Pause button.

An Adult ‘Acting’ As a Friend • Watch other children as a model of what to

do. • ‘Rent a friend.’ • Inclusion with typical children as they can

modify their social play to accommodate the child.

• Carol Gray’s Sixth Sense (the Social Sense).

Level 2 6-9 Years

Level 2: Approximately 6 to 9 Years

• Reciprocity and being fair. • Mutual assistance. • Like the same activities. • Why is …. your friend? • “She comes to my party and I go to hers.”

Level 2

• Role play activities, rehearsal, feedback and

rewards • Social engineering (modeling and protection). • Resources

Books on Friendship (www.tonyattwood.com.au)

Theory Of Mind Skills

A Social Story on Assistance • Sometimes children help me. They do this to be

friendly. Yesterday, I missed three math problems. Amy put her arm around me and said, “ It’s okay, Juanita.” She was trying to help me feel better. On my first day at school, Billy showed me my desk. That was helpful. Children have helped me in other ways. Here is my list:

• I will try to say “thank you” ! When children help me.

Observation Schedule

Communication Skills

Communication Skills

• Literal interpretation.

Communication Skills

• The art of attentive listening. • Topics of conversation. • Narrative ability

Social Signals

• Road signs: Traffic lights

• No tailgating (being too close to someone) • Men at work (interrupting) • Speed limit (talking too fast)

Teacher Assistant: An anthropologist in the classroom

• Identify the relevant social cues • Guidance in what to do or say. • Provide encouragement and positive

feedback. • Explanations, guidance and feedback to peers • Help manage emotions and conflict

Level 3 9-13 Years

Level 3: Approximately 9 to 13 Years

• Aware of other’s opinion of them and how their words and actions affect the feelings of others (white lie).

• Need for companionship rather than functional play.

• Cooperation more than competition. • Share thoughts rather than toys.

Level 3: Approximately 9 to 13 Years

• Personality characteristics, audacious, humor. • Helps in times of emotional distress. • Help the child feel good about themselves

(compliments). • Greater selectivity and durability.

Level 3: Approximately 9 to 13 Years

• Gender split. (Boy and girl activities). • Trust, loyalty and keeping promises. • Why is ….. your friend? • “I can trust her with my secrets.” • Conflict resolved by discussion that can

strengthen the relationship. • Conflicts forgiven.

Books on Friendship

Friendship

• ‘Nerds’ • Social rebels • New children • I had to learn the school rules and the cool

rules • Entry skills in friendship group

High School Autism Monitors

• Identify typical students who have a natural ability to understand students with Asperger’s syndrome.

• They are briefed on the issues faced by students with Asperger’s syndrome and what to do to help as a peer.

High School Autism Monitors

• Could be identified by wearing a badge • Monitor the integration and vulnerability of

students with Asperger’s syndrome • Act as an advocate • Provide feedback to teachers

Potential Friends

• Clubs. • Buddy system. • Team work program. • Drama classes.

Home Is a Castle

Level 4 Adolescent to Adult

Level 4: Adolescence to Adult

• Peer group acceptance more important than the opinion of parents.

• Greater depth and breadth of self disclosure. • Desire to be understood by friends. • Friend’s character compatible with their own.

Level 4: Adolescence to Adult

• Complex needs met by different types of friendship.

• “He/she accepts me for who I am.” • “We think the same way about things.”

Explanation • Create an explanation why the person is

different in social situations. • “I need to look away to help me to

concentrate on my answer to your question”. • “ I am the sort of person who…..” • Spoken Social Story.

• Animals as friends • Internet friends

• Don’t “invade people’s space”-that means get too close to them.

• Don’t stare at someone whatever reason (however fit they are!).

• Don’t make comments about people’s bodies, good or bad.

• Don’t tell dirty, sexist or racist jokes or make sexual innuendos.

• Don’t hug or touch people unless they are part of your family or they have agreed to be your boyfriend or girlfriend and you have both agreed to it.

• Here comes the but… you just watch and listen to a group of teenage boys or girls. They tell dirty jokes and make sexual innuendos at every opportunity and they will often touch someone when they are not a member of their family. It seems that when boys and girls are in their teenage packs, performing their adolescent rituals, then these rules go out of the window. What a strange world we live in.

Sexuality

• Delay in romantic experiences • The dating game. • The art of flirting and romance • Signals of mutual attraction • Expression of affection • Misinterpretation of intentions

Sexuality

• Crush • Vulnerability • The relationship continuum • Sources of information

Finding a friend

• Adult support groups. • Hobby and interest groups. • Work (Academia, computers, artistic

communities).

Pretending to Be Normal

• Looking far over my shoulder, I can call to mind people who must have been interested in my friendship. I can see a boy I knew as if it was yesterday. I can hear conversations we had and interests we shared. But more important, I can remember his face and the expressions he made as we talked. Today if he looked at me like he did then, I believe I would have seen the kindness and gentleness that was his. I never did much with this boy when I had the chance. I missed his offer of friendship. I would not miss that offer if it was made today. His face would make sense to me today. (Page 50)