I have thought about looking for a social skills group for her, but am not sure that's really what's needed. It's like she needs...coping class, more than anything. More skills to manage her emotions.
If you find a solution, let us know. It has been a huge issue for my son. His current social skills group actually works on it, mostly through social stories, but I don't think they really teach practical tools for the kids to better regulate their emotions.
We've done a number of things in this regard.
1. The book Parenting Your Asperger Child (Alan Sohn) has a great strategy- I think he calls it "deliberate sabotage." Basically, you take the child a bit further out of their comfort zone, and over time they adapt. (If your child only likes one brand of bread, "run out" of it and offer a different kind, encouraging the child to deal with it; make sure he loses games sometimes, after pre-teaching how to act when you lose; etc.) This is a practical way to teach coping. Most parents adapt to a child who melts down by accommodating the child's preferences-- but in fact, that's not the best route to resilience.
2. DS actually took a course, kind of an "autism and me" thing, at the autism center of our local children's hospital. They taught anxiety management and things like "how to recognize that I'm getting upset, and what I can do about it." It was not a cure-all, but it was important. It also showed DS that AS was not his fault, which was hugely important and eased his overall anxiety about his place in the world. Feeling different can be devastating for an elementary-schooler who doesn't have a context for why he feels that way.
3. Cognitive-behavior therapy seeks to alter how a person responds to given stimuli. We have done a fair bit of this with DS, mostly around things that make him anxious. (Filling out the planner in the morning at school, for instance; we practiced it using CBT strategies and he is much better about it now.) CBT teaches that managing thoughts will also influence feelings, so by changing how you think you change how you feel; and a gifted kid can pick up the strategies fairly easily, though the practice of them takes time.
I never found a social skills group that worked for us; we made our own supported environments by being involved with group activities, always with a parent in tow until DS could handle it on his own.
HTH,
DeeDee
