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Hi everyone
My DS6 is probably MG with some 2E qualities (slow processing and some spectrum traits, although he has not qualified for an ASD diagnosis). He is struggling with expressing empathy - if someone is hurt he will respond and ask if they're OK, help if he can or try to distract them by making them laugh, but seems really uncomfortable going beyond that. He wouldn't often, for example, sympathise and say things like "ooh that must hurt", or spontaneously give physical comfort. Basically he will give a shallow response and then appears to run out of ideas and gets really uncomfortable or sort of shuts down. We had a talk about it this afternoon and he told me "when I look at someone having an emotion, I feel that same emotion and I can't stop it and it's too much." Anyone else have this with their kids? I know it's normal to an extent, but it seems to be hindering him socially. Is there anything I can do to help him with his feelings of being overwhelmed in the moment?
Thanks in advance!

This is a teachable skill. You can actually prompt him in the moment (or debrief afterward): "in this situation, what we say is..."

You can also teach him to monitor his own reactions and specific strategies to modify them (i.e. take a deep breath, etc.)

I don't know if DS8 is inappropriate in how he deals with others (I don't think so), but he does tend to get uncomfortable with displays of emotion. The movie "Inside Out" for instance has a scene when the main character starts crying as she is introducing herself to the class and DS was cowering in his seat and covering his face, horrified. None of the other 3 kids that were there (including one who is diagnosed with Aspergers) had a reaction like that. DS does that all the time and becomes overwhelmed by sappy movies or any kind of movie with a lot of emotion expressed by the characters. I attribute it to him being overly sensitive, maybe having TOO MUCH empathy rather than not enough and he's too young to think about it in a rational manner or know how to deal with it. If someone did that in school IRL (like the movie Inside Out) I'm guessing his reaction would be the same. He probably wouldn't go up and give the person a hug.

Thanks. He does refuse to re-watch certain movies that have emotionally intense scenes (eg. Big hero 6, how to train your dragon 2) because he finds them too sad, although he doesn't really seem to outwardly show much emotional response at the time of watching.
I probably should add that this is after me modelling and prompting responses for quite some time - it seems to be taking a long time to sink in.