When Your Autistic Kid Has No Friends....

They need your help.

If you are WAITING for your ND Kids to "make friends," you might be doing it "wrong"....

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Growing up Autistic and ADHD, I was terribly lonely.

I didn't have friends outside of the one Autistic/ADHD gal I stuck to, at Family Summer Camp, each year.

But did my parents know it?

Well, it WASN'T a secret.

I assumed they knew.

But then again, when you are a kid, you think your parents are mind readers.

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So here I am at age 44, and recently my mom was talking about my middle school "friends."

But I had NO idea who she was talking about. Friends?!

She began to list people...

all my biggest bullies...

and it dawned on me that because I TALKED about those kids at home,

and because I didn't always REALIZE at the time, that they were bullying me

(I was desperate for any scrap of attention/inclusion, so I fell for a lot of pranks and sarcasm, that I didn't want to admit I had fallen for)....

My mom believed I had friends.

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I was shocked. She really hadn't known how isolated I was? How depressed?

But.... she was smart!

She knew that my (older) brother had struggled to make friends.

She mentioned all the time, how she had HELPED him to form close friendships.

So...how had she missed noticing ME?

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(You can skip this section until the next ___ line, if the reasons dont interest you...but they might be illuminating)

Well...

Having an older sibling with higher support needs, I tended to blend into the background.

My parents didn't realize EITHER of us was Autistic...

but since my brother was so prone to aggression, eloping, and defiance, they gave him the lion's share of attention.

Their lived experience made them believe that I was doing great (by comparison)...

And also, because my parents THEMSELVES were undiagnosed ND, they didn't have a good sense of what typical development looked like!

Plus, being socialized as a girl, I also masked my emotions better.

And under pressure to co-regulate with my parents I became a level 10 masking EXPERT.

(You see... my parents' Emotional Regulation skills were weak even BEFORE they were parents,

but my brother's dysregulation pushed them to the brink, almost every day,

and looking back, I realized that the only people I entrusted my loneliness to, were librarians, English teachers, and theater coaches.)

Suddenly, my miserable tween/teen years made a LOT of sense!

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So, what about MY ADHD/Autistic kids? Do they have friends?

Yes. Plenty!

But not because they made friends on their own.

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I had to HELP them:

*make friends,

*connect with those friends,

*play with those friends,

*learn to compromise with those friends,

*and build up the communication skills necessary to maintain those friendships.

And here is how I did it...

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Eleanor:

She is my HIGHER masking, lower support needs, Au-DHD kid.

Clever, adaptable, kind, talkative, and super fashionable.... you would think she was an alpha girl.

But Eleanor struggles--

not necessarily to meet people or engage with then--

but to read social cues and to be unmasked.

Unmasking is important, because masking your Autism takes a lot of energy.

It can make socializing an exhausting prospect. Plus, it means that friends never really get to know the real YOU.

So for Eleanor, I use my best instincts to spot other ND kids (both undiagnosed AND diagnosed).

Sometimes I have made chit chat with other parents and casually mentioned my own Autism diagnosis to see their response,

and when they day, "Oh! Benji is also Autistic!" I can pretend to be surprised.

Other times I just say to a parent,

"Wow. My Eleanor and your daughter really seem to vibe well, together. It's so nice to see them giggling. Could we swap contact info so they can arrange a meet-up, sometime soon?"

And one time... I even answered a local personals Ad for a parent seeking a friend for their Autistic daughter. (It worked! They have been friends for about 4 years, now).

Does Eleanor have any close friends that I consider to be Neurotypical? No.

She connects best with kids who have high levels of empathy from LIVED experience, and that means kids who have things like

anxiety, giftedness,

sensory sensitivities or

strong sensory SEEKING impulses,

Executive dysfunction,

or Auditory Processing struggles,

Trouble with pragmatic language

(too loud, too literal, too close, etc.)

insomnia, dyslexia,

weak working memory,

levels of exuberance and risk taking considered Atypical by most,

Or issues with "clumsiness" (Dyspraxia).

Eleanor can be herself, unmasked, around them. And they are an AWESOME group of kids, who flourish when their needs are met.

There is more to it than just helping her initially FIND like-minded friends, but it applies to Charlie, too.

So I'm going to move on...

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Charlie:

Charlie is my lower masking, higher SUPPORT needs child, Au-DHD kid.

He is outgoing and brainy, curious and polite, a creative problem solver who enjoys helping others with their projects.

He's a great kid!

And...he is also my kid whose dysregulation is more frequent and can become physically aggressive.

And my kid who has low stamina and gets cranky when he is tired.

He is my picky eater who has no interest in team sports.

Charlie loves to info-dump, but has taken many years to learn how to listen to OTHER people speak.

And it has taken a LONG time to teach him how to play without ALWAYS relying on "scripts" for exactly how play should "work."

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So... How did I help him make friends?

Well, I DIDN'T start with kids. Charlie didn't have the social skills necessary to play with peers.

So, I took him along with me, to events with adults--even if he was the only kid there.

I helped him find mentors...ADULTS he could help and learn from at places like--

animal rescues,

Renaissance festivals,

libraries and their free programs,

recycling centers,

small farms,

cooking classes,

family campgrounds,

community centers,

rock hounding clubs,

nature preserves,

museums,

Comic Cons,

art classes,

comic book stores,

Unitarian Universalist Fellowships,

and small businesses.

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To do this, I volunteered with him (occasionally, 4-5 hours each month)

or I asked him to come along and keep me company (parallel play) as I did stuff.

I often invited Charlie to help older adults, with chores that involved bending over, climbing, or twisting...telling him how STRONG he was.

And I suggested he teach specific adults about his special interests.

He LOVED that.

And often, elderly folks enjoyed the company.

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I spend hundreds of hours (over the course of a few years) exposing him to adult social interactions,

and allowing TOLERANT ADULTS

(or vaguely disinterested, but gentle adults)

to help correct his more problematic behaviors like

interrupting,

being inflexible with plans,

verbalizing his grudges,

and

forgetting to reciprocate with questions about the other person after an infodump.

His exposure to a variety of adults also helped him gain a better understanding of things like sarcasm, etiquette, and boundaries.

And by the time he was 9, he was ready to start expanding his social circle a bit..

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So, I found a 1 week summer camp program designed for Autistic kids, and I enrolled him.

(Honestly, any program with a big chance of ND kids would have worked...a Lego club...a Minecraft class...a D&D club or cosplay group)

He wasn't a fan, at first.

Kids weren't as tolerant as adults.

They wanted Charlie to be more flexible, less temperamental, and to listen better. They corrected him a LOT.... which frusterated him...

and He skipped the last day of camp.

He had enjoyed himself but also got a bit burned out.

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But he went back next year, and did a little better. He took a half day in the middle of the week, but got through the rest.

So THIS TIME, I got phone numbers from other parents and I arranged playdates with other kids.

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I worked HARD on those playdates.

I was always the host.

I planned lots of activities to keep the kids busy with parallel play while they talked,

minimizing the chances of Charlie becoming too rough during a game of tag, or too frusterated by a board game.

Kids met up with us and decorated cookies, built dioramas, made slime, carved soap, went on scavenger hunts, strung beads, sculpted clay, cooked waffles, and mastered facepaint.

Kids always wanted to RETURN because I made it FUN.

And their returns gave Charlie more practice

so eventually I wouldn't have to keep scaffolding his social skills by supervising every moment.

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It took another year, but we kept up with the playdates and the annual camp, and by the end of it, Charlie was flourishing.

He even stayed overnight, for a campout with his peers!

Plus, he was able to make and sustain his own friendships...

with just a bit of help from me, reminding him to text people back or reach out to make plans.

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He now has about a dozen kids he plays with, pretty regularly now...and a couple of them are even Neurotypical!

And best of all... I don't ALWAYS have to host the playdates, now... because other parents are impressed by his politeness, cooperation, and responsibility!

Charlie has become a TEACHER to boys who used to be JUST LIKE HIM, so parents love him!

(And Adults do, too...he still has a lot of Adult Mentors)

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So there it is, folks. There is hope!

And remember that one ND friend I had from summer camp?

I saw her last month...and last year...and the year before...

Once we reconnected and realized we both had Autism and Autistic kids, we laughed, remembered our childhoods, and trauma bonded all over again...

and to this day, I am incredibly grateful that I had at least ONE peer who GOT ME and around whom I didn't have to mask.

She probably saved my life.