As our ds hit the 4-5 age range, we began to notice that the other children seemed to sense something different about him. He would walk up and talk to them and they would just stare at him, even though he was being kind and polite. Around this time we saw his first negative reaction when engaging with other children. He was watching some girls play at the park and he decided to stomp on a little dirt house that they had made. Maybe this would be normal for some boys, but not our ds. I was shocked, but I did go to him and tell him that this wasn't acceptable behavior. He couldn't really tell me what he had decided to do this.
Our DS9 (with AS) is also typically better with adults than with peers. He has a hard time choosing the right topics to engage with peers about, and he finds peers less predictable than adults. He also sometimes sees them as competitors, which makes him feel anxious; and he misreads social cues so that even if someone is not making fun of him, he may think they are.
Asking a kid with AS why they did something is unlikely to yield much... they usually don't have a lot of insight into their own behavior.
Right after he turned six, we started a homeschool co-op. He did fine, except that the other boys seemed to be intimidated by a six-year-old who "knew stuff." They mostly excluded him in the educational classes. I first saw that we had something really unusual going on when we started the PE class. No matter what they were doing, my son would seem to go into his own world. He would listen (or try to) and participate, but he would do crazy things, and in general he seemed rather lost much of the time.
Gym is hard... it can be overstimulating AND competitive, both of which have been issues for my DS.
The exclusion is awful. Did you find a way to work on it?
With our DS at this age we had the teacher introduce the idea of AS to the class, and DS had an opportunity to tell his peers about his challenges. The teachers were very clear about the need to be kind and accepting, and we found that other kids avoid DS much less now that they know what his deal is. It has been a real success for us.
He did this in every class. He also never fully 'got' the instructions for games and things and wouldn't bother to ask. He just faked his way through as much as he could.
Often people with AS have trouble with implicit instructions, or even listening to instructions fully. My DS has it in his IEP that instructions have to be explicit, and usually he should be presented with a checklist or an example of successful work, so he knows what he has to do.
yet, at home he is as calm as can be and never exhibits these signs.
Home sounds like a comfort zone; good that he has one.
I encourage you to see if you can find ways to stretch him to be flexible. This can be as simple as running out of a favorite food (brand of bread, style of peanut butter) and having to substitute something else on the fly; or driving home a new way; or changing the schedule unexpectedly. This sort of thing encourages him to be OK with alternatives, which in the long term reduces anxiety.
I don't want to continually correct him in a way that makes him feel like he's always doing something wrong, yet he bulldozes the smaller children around him when he gets in this spaced-out mode. Here's an example from yesterday. He was playing with other children, he ran out of a closet, ran over a three-year-old in the floor in front of him. He said that he didn't even see her (right in front of him!).
Correcting constantly is no fun, but that's the route we've taken. Only if he can be made to understand what's acceptable, and how to do it, can he learn to take responsibility for his actions and do the right thing. We say: "In our family, we figure out the right thing to do, and we do it, even if it's hard."
To not correct him is to accept that he's never going to learn to be considerate... we were unwilling to take that route, so we correct unwanted behavior, and we try to be consistent.
One more thing to mention is that in the past two months "lost time," extreme dawdling, and a major lack of focus in general has become a huge issue.
Problems with attention are often part and parcel of AS. People with AS often find that what's in their own heads is more interesting than what's going on with other people out in the world, so they have difficulty attending to basic life stuff or any subject that they find intrinsically uninteresting.
We have been very successful with behavior therapy (ABA), and I recommend it highly. The aim is to teach correct behaviors, and gradually reinforce them in a variety of settings until they become natural. In the past we have had therapists run play dates for DS to keep him on track and get him used to other kids, or take him to the park and practice joining play with other kids.
They also work directly on anxiety and social thinking. (The Michelle Garcia Winner materials are useful for this, too, and can be used by parents or professionals.)
We have found that our DS needed medication both for anxiety (SSRI) and for attention. This was not our total solution, but it has allowed DS to learn what we are teaching him. He's doing really well these days, and we are proud of him.
I recommend the discussion forum at OASIS, too:
http://www.aspergersyndrome.org/Forums.aspx HTH,
DeeDee
