She's not so bad

[renaeden]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

[Callaway]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

One of the other teachers has some sort of program from the specialist and we are in the early stages of teaching it to her a step at a time.

[WolFish]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

One of the other teachers has some sort of program from the specialist and we are in the early stages of teaching it to her a step at a time.

What happened that she didn't start learning social skills earlier? Do you think she will become more independent when she learns them? My parents were painfully clueless (maybe autistic too?) and to this day do not recognize me as autistic. I wish they had at least - eh, I don't even know. I find this thread fascinating but in general I am one of those who is both deathly afraid of social contact and who tends to forget that other people exist. If pryxs didn't prod me I wouldn't even be here.

@renaeden: does it work? have you tried it on NTs? what exactly do you do? is it like desensitization? keep watch in this thread (if it goes on long enough) and you will see what goes wrong for me. I manage to offend even people who understand autism.

[renaeden]

We did some stuff on facial expressions, like we were shown pictures and asked what we thought the emotion shown by the person/people was. Found out that I am pretty shit at this. I go more by the sound of voices I think. Have been trying out looking at facial expressions on people at uni but I find it hard to keep looking at someone when they are looking at me. Even if it is a lecturer looking in my general direction. I am such a chicken. Definitely something I have to work on.

We have also tried conversation turn-taking. That is, not talking at someone about a special interest but also asking them questions about what interests them and not butting in, letting them finish. I am ok at this as I am interested in a wide variety of subjects and like to learn new things. I did get going once at my mum recently about qualitative research methods, though. So I can go overboard, I just don't do it often. I have found that people I know at uni rarely want to talk about psychology which I find strange as they are psych students too. When I first meet up with them, they want to talk about how much their coffee was or what sort it is and how much it has or has not been raining. Then they want to talk in depth about their kids and holidays they want to go on and getting a new car or house and things like this. Not psychology or assignments or interesting articles. I am not having much luck in finding someone who wants to talk about the same things I do and I am about to start 4th year. So I probably do appear awkward because a lot of the time I don't know what to say when people talk about their coffee or their kids, for example.

Will probably think of more later.

[El]

We did some stuff on facial expressions, like we were shown pictures and asked what we thought the emotion shown by the person/people was. Found out that I am pretty shit at this. I go more by the sound of voices I think. Have been trying out looking at facial expressions on people at uni but I find it hard to keep looking at someone when they are looking at me. Even if it is a lecturer looking in my general direction. I am such a chicken. Definitely something I have to work on.

We have also tried conversation turn-taking. That is, not talking at someone about a special interest but also asking them questions about what interests them and not butting in, letting them finish. I am ok at this as I am interested in a wide variety of subjects and like to learn new things. I did get going once at my mum recently about qualitative research methods, though. So I can go overboard, I just don't do it often. I have found that people I know at uni rarely want to talk about psychology which I find strange as they are psych students too. When I first meet up with them, they want to talk about how much their coffee was or what sort it is and how much it has or has not been raining. Then they want to talk in depth about their kids and holidays they want to go on and getting a new car or house and things like this. Not psychology or assignments or interesting articles. I am not having much luck in finding someone who wants to talk about the same things I do and I am about to start 4th year. So I probably do appear awkward because a lot of the time I don't know what to say when people talk about their coffee or their kids, for example.

Will probably think of more later.

Practice active listening!   

(Actually I honestly think doing so when I can't think of anything else to say when I'm working with clients has made 'normal' social interaction more difficult for me, lol.)

["couldbecousin"]

We did some stuff on facial expressions, like we were shown pictures and asked what we thought the emotion shown by the person/people was. Found out that I am pretty shit at this. I go more by the sound of voices I think. Have been trying out looking at facial expressions on people at uni but I find it hard to keep looking at someone when they are looking at me. Even if it is a lecturer looking in my general direction. I am such a chicken. Definitely something I have to work on.

We have also tried conversation turn-taking. That is, not talking at someone about a special interest but also asking them questions about what interests them and not butting in, letting them finish. I am ok at this as I am interested in a wide variety of subjects and like to learn new things. I did get going once at my mum recently about qualitative research methods, though. So I can go overboard, I just don't do it often. I have found that people I know at uni rarely want to talk about psychology which I find strange as they are psych students too. When I first meet up with them, they want to talk about how much their coffee was or what sort it is and how much it has or has not been raining. Then they want to talk in depth about their kids and holidays they want to go on and getting a new car or house and things like this. Not psychology or assignments or interesting articles. I am not having much luck in finding someone who wants to talk about the same things I do and I am about to start 4th year. So I probably do appear awkward because a lot of the time I don't know what to say when people talk about their coffee or their kids, for example.

Will probably think of more later.

Practice active listening!   

(Actually I honestly think doing so when I can't think of anything else to say when I'm working with clients has made 'normal' social interaction more difficult for me, lol.)

 I should Google "active listening."  I sometimes fail to pay full attention to what the other
 person is saying because I'm already composing my answer and getting impatient for him
 to shut up so I can have my turn to speak!   

[El]

We did some stuff on facial expressions, like we were shown pictures and asked what we thought the emotion shown by the person/people was. Found out that I am pretty shit at this. I go more by the sound of voices I think. Have been trying out looking at facial expressions on people at uni but I find it hard to keep looking at someone when they are looking at me. Even if it is a lecturer looking in my general direction. I am such a chicken. Definitely something I have to work on.

We have also tried conversation turn-taking. That is, not talking at someone about a special interest but also asking them questions about what interests them and not butting in, letting them finish. I am ok at this as I am interested in a wide variety of subjects and like to learn new things. I did get going once at my mum recently about qualitative research methods, though. So I can go overboard, I just don't do it often. I have found that people I know at uni rarely want to talk about psychology which I find strange as they are psych students too. When I first meet up with them, they want to talk about how much their coffee was or what sort it is and how much it has or has not been raining. Then they want to talk in depth about their kids and holidays they want to go on and getting a new car or house and things like this. Not psychology or assignments or interesting articles. I am not having much luck in finding someone who wants to talk about the same things I do and I am about to start 4th year. So I probably do appear awkward because a lot of the time I don't know what to say when people talk about their coffee or their kids, for example.

Will probably think of more later.

Practice active listening!   

(Actually I honestly think doing so when I can't think of anything else to say when I'm working with clients has made 'normal' social interaction more difficult for me, lol.)

 I should Google "active listening."  I sometimes fail to pay full attention to what the other
 person is saying because I'm already composing my answer and getting impatient for him
 to shut up so I can have my turn to speak!   

Active listening is a Rogerian technique that I use as filler when my mind goes blank at work.  (It's supposed to be used to convey that you are hearing and understanding what your client is saying... usually seems to work.)

["couldbecousin"]

We did some stuff on facial expressions, like we were shown pictures and asked what we thought the emotion shown by the person/people was. Found out that I am pretty shit at this. I go more by the sound of voices I think. Have been trying out looking at facial expressions on people at uni but I find it hard to keep looking at someone when they are looking at me. Even if it is a lecturer looking in my general direction. I am such a chicken. Definitely something I have to work on.

We have also tried conversation turn-taking. That is, not talking at someone about a special interest but also asking them questions about what interests them and not butting in, letting them finish. I am ok at this as I am interested in a wide variety of subjects and like to learn new things. I did get going once at my mum recently about qualitative research methods, though. So I can go overboard, I just don't do it often. I have found that people I know at uni rarely want to talk about psychology which I find strange as they are psych students too. When I first meet up with them, they want to talk about how much their coffee was or what sort it is and how much it has or has not been raining. Then they want to talk in depth about their kids and holidays they want to go on and getting a new car or house and things like this. Not psychology or assignments or interesting articles. I am not having much luck in finding someone who wants to talk about the same things I do and I am about to start 4th year. So I probably do appear awkward because a lot of the time I don't know what to say when people talk about their coffee or their kids, for example.

Will probably think of more later.

Practice active listening!   

(Actually I honestly think doing so when I can't think of anything else to say when I'm working with clients has made 'normal' social interaction more difficult for me, lol.)

 I should Google "active listening."  I sometimes fail to pay full attention to what the other
 person is saying because I'm already composing my answer and getting impatient for him
 to shut up so I can have my turn to speak!   

Active listening is a Rogerian technique that I use as filler when my mind goes blank at work.  (It's supposed to be used to convey that you are hearing and understanding what your client is saying... usually seems to work.)

 Oh, I think I remember ... you kind of repeat what the other person says, to be sure you
 have heard correctly, right?  I probably wouldn't have the patience to do it though. 

[Callaway]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

One of the other teachers has some sort of program from the specialist and we are in the early stages of teaching it to her a step at a time.

What happened that she didn't start learning social skills earlier? Do you think she will become more independent when she learns them? My parents were painfully clueless (maybe autistic too?) and to this day do not recognize me as autistic. I wish they had at least - eh, I don't even know. I find this thread fascinating but in general I am one of those who is both deathly afraid of social contact and who tends to forget that other people exist. If pryxs didn't prod me I wouldn't even be here.

@renaeden: does it work? have you tried it on NTs? what exactly do you do? is it like desensitization? keep watch in this thread (if it goes on long enough) and you will see what goes wrong for me. I manage to offend even people who understand autism.

My daughter does know some social skills, like looking at pictures of faces and trying to figure out how they are feeling.  She knows how to say please and thank you although she does not always do it.  She needs a lot more practice at turn-taking in conversations, though.  She and the girl in the class were more talking at one another about their respective interests than actually listening to one another.

The ones they want her to learn now are the ones that would teach her to be a part of a small classroom with other students, like how all the students are quiet and listen to the teacher talk when she needs all of them to listen.  The reason she hasn't already learned all of these skills is because she hasn't spent that much time in classrooms with other children since she was in first grade.  My daughter already knows to raise her hand, for example, but when the classroom teacher of the autistic students asked her whether she would like to come back to that class sometimes, my daughter did not know how to respond to her question, so kept repetitively telling the teacher to always keep magnets away from her computer.  Then she started acting out because the teacher was ignoring her saying that and just waited for an answer to her own question.  Eventually she said that she thought maybe she would, then she acted out some more.

[renaeden]

The turn-taking social skill takes a lot of practice. I am ok at it but a lot of adults at my autism group were pretty bad at it when we practised it with each other. I ended up doing a lot of listening.

[WolFish]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

One of the other teachers has some sort of program from the specialist and we are in the early stages of teaching it to her a step at a time.

What happened that she didn't start learning social skills earlier? Do you think she will become more independent when she learns them? My parents were painfully clueless (maybe autistic too?) and to this day do not recognize me as autistic. I wish they had at least - eh, I don't even know. I find this thread fascinating but in general I am one of those who is both deathly afraid of social contact and who tends to forget that other people exist. If pryxs didn't prod me I wouldn't even be here.

@renaeden: does it work? have you tried it on NTs? what exactly do you do? is it like desensitization? keep watch in this thread (if it goes on long enough) and you will see what goes wrong for me. I manage to offend even people who understand autism.

My daughter does know some social skills, like looking at pictures of faces and trying to figure out how they are feeling.  She knows how to say please and thank you although she does not always do it.  She needs a lot more practice at turn-taking in conversations, though.  She and the girl in the class were more talking at one another about their respective interests than actually listening to one another.

The ones they want her to learn now are the ones that would teach her to be a part of a small classroom with other students, like how all the students are quiet and listen to the teacher talk when she needs all of them to listen.  The reason she hasn't already learned all of these skills is because she hasn't spent that much time in classrooms with other children since she was in first grade.  My daughter already knows to raise her hand, for example, but when the classroom teacher of the autistic students asked her whether she would like to come back to that class sometimes, my daughter did not know how to respond to her question, so kept repetitively telling the teacher to always keep magnets away from her computer.  Then she started acting out because the teacher was ignoring her saying that and just waited for an answer to her own question.  Eventually she said that she thought maybe she would, then she acted out some more.

i often suck at turn taking so pryxs has a clay thing that we named an edgewise. she holds it up when she wants to get a word in.

why did the teacher ignore her? that would be frustrating for a normal person. what does acting out mean for your daughter?
we have a big hunk of clay that we make things out of and then break when we are frustrated. when i was a kid therapist i gave my frustrated client a box of 100 popsicle sticks and told him he could break them as long as he was frustrated and angry. I think he only got through about 15 or so. i coached his mom and sent them home with the box. they were both pleased.

sorry if anything is offensive. i have a bit of hypoxia today. dunno if that is making a diff.

[Callaway]

Yeah, can understand that it is a lot easier to interact with one person than a whole group at once. Whole groups at once can feel overwhelming imo.
How can she learn more social skills? I am learning some of this stuff at autism group but it isn't easy.

One of the other teachers has some sort of program from the specialist and we are in the early stages of teaching it to her a step at a time.

What happened that she didn't start learning social skills earlier? Do you think she will become more independent when she learns them? My parents were painfully clueless (maybe autistic too?) and to this day do not recognize me as autistic. I wish they had at least - eh, I don't even know. I find this thread fascinating but in general I am one of those who is both deathly afraid of social contact and who tends to forget that other people exist. If pryxs didn't prod me I wouldn't even be here.

@renaeden: does it work? have you tried it on NTs? what exactly do you do? is it like desensitization? keep watch in this thread (if it goes on long enough) and you will see what goes wrong for me. I manage to offend even people who understand autism.

My daughter does know some social skills, like looking at pictures of faces and trying to figure out how they are feeling.  She knows how to say please and thank you although she does not always do it.  She needs a lot more practice at turn-taking in conversations, though.  She and the girl in the class were more talking at one another about their respective interests than actually listening to one another.

The ones they want her to learn now are the ones that would teach her to be a part of a small classroom with other students, like how all the students are quiet and listen to the teacher talk when she needs all of them to listen.  The reason she hasn't already learned all of these skills is because she hasn't spent that much time in classrooms with other children since she was in first grade.  My daughter already knows to raise her hand, for example, but when the classroom teacher of the autistic students asked her whether she would like to come back to that class sometimes, my daughter did not know how to respond to her question, so kept repetitively telling the teacher to always keep magnets away from her computer.  Then she started acting out because the teacher was ignoring her saying that and just waited for an answer to her own question.  Eventually she said that she thought maybe she would, then she acted out some more.

i often suck at turn taking so pryxs has a clay thing that we named an edgewise. she holds it up when she wants to get a word in.

why did the teacher ignore her? that would be frustrating for a normal person. what does acting out mean for your daughter?
we have a big hunk of clay that we make things out of and then break when we are frustrated. when i was a kid therapist i gave my frustrated client a box of 100 popsicle sticks and told him he could break them as long as he was frustrated and angry. I think he only got through about 15 or so. i coached his mom and sent them home with the box. they were both pleased.

sorry if anything is offensive. i have a bit of hypoxia today. dunno if that is making a diff.

You are not offending me.

I don't know why the teacher ignored her but I guess that she wanted an answer to the question that she asked my daughter first before responding to what my daughter was telling her.  Honestly, it makes me wonder whether or not she would be a good teacher for my daughter, because being ignored really upsets her.

My daughter screamed over and over, "Keep magnets away from your computer!" and climbed up and lay on the table at first and then she pulled my hair, IIRC.  I quietly untangled her fingers from my hair, then she kicked off her snow boots, one of which hit a clock on the wall and it fell and broke.  I don't think that it was her intention to break the clock, though. 

The other students left the classroom to go for their walk after lunch and we were able to get her calmed down and then leave ourselves.  I think one of the other teachers who were there with us was able to put the clock back together and she left it on a table.

We get cardboard boxes for our daughter, or she gets them for herself, then she sometimes tears up these boxes in her bedroom at home when she's upset.  Sometimes she breaks and debarks sticks that fall from the tree in our back yard.  She has a trampoline, a play fort, and a swing set in the back yard. 

We have a variety of things for her to tear up at school, including a box of cloth that she can rip into shreds, some rope that she can unravel, and a stack of old newspapers.  I really like your popsicle stick idea, and we actually have some at school right now we could use to try it out. 

She has breaks that she chooses when she does a bit of schoolwork.  We could go for a walk around the block, we could go to the park to swing, we could go to a nearby store to buy her a doughnut and take it back to the room for her to eat and have a chat with whoever she wants, she has music and DVDs she could listen to, magazines and books she could read, and free time on the computer.  She usually chooses a swing break, a walk around the block, or a snack and chat. 

She also gets tokens to reward doing her work, making polite requests, etc. that she can spend for prizes at the end of the day.  Today was a pretty good day so with the tokens she saved from buying her prize yesterday, she had 40 tokens, which let her buy a $4 prize that she chose along with a bunch of other prizes from a shopping trip at a special store with me and we put into the cabinet so she could earn prizes she picked out for herself.

[renaeden]

She sounds low-functioning to me - in regards to behaviour when frustrated. Honestly don't know how you can cope with having hair pulled, you are very tolerant. And it seems like the special autism school did not do much good in terms of pushing your daughter's development forward.

[Pyraxis]

It sounds like she is regressing and becoming more dependent on you over time, not less.

[Al Swearegen]

There are two problesm with being a parent of an Autistic child.
One is that there is a general expectation that child will progress in emotional and social maturity to certain designated points (most will...if they are NT) throughout their life. But these expected designated points mean nothing when factoring an autistic child. What points will they reach and will they reach them at what age? No clue. So it makes it hard to know if you are asking for what they can do with a push, what they can do but not now or what they simply can not do.
In not pushing them, are you teaching them learned helplessness and taking away their want to go the hard yards (sheltering them) or in pushing them are you expecting too much and setting them up for a fall.
The fact that we are parents and know our kids only gives us the ability to make an educated guess. That is all.

The second point is that we are oin the spectrum ourselves. I am authority to teach my boy on the intricasies of socialisation?  Any of my weaknessness are likely to show in him and i am supposed to demostrate a great awareness of such issues when after more than 40 years on earth, I can not myself?

There are issues here and i do not expect to presume that i have or would be expected to have the answers at my disposal. In consideration, doing the best you can is a good option