How Did Your Day Go?

Every day I ask Will questions about his day. Not only do I want to find out if he had a nice day, but I need other information as well. I always ask him about how recess went, and you other ASD parents will understand that this is because recess is a minefield for our kids. Will actually does want to have friends, but he makes the usual mistakes of wanting to control the situation at recess, and wanting to do a lot of pretend play (not always cool in the third grade). So, when I ask him what he did for recess, it's an opportunity to modify the recess situation -- if he's having trouble keeping friends, I'll ask if he's making them play things they don't want to play. I try to encourage him to do different things each day, so he doesn't fall into a rut.

Once early on in the school year, I asked my daily questions about recess, and just knew that something wasn't quite right with the boys Will was playing with. A red flag went up, and I contacted the school. Sure enough, there was some low-level bullying going on, and Will wasn't aware. The school handled it well (although not the way I would have handled it). The interesting thing is that the parents of those boys were SO nice -- eventually every single parent of every boy made an effort to befriend us, include Will in activities, or make up for the bad behavior in some way. It was really a positive experience, especially considering how negative it seemed early on.

Will also has a situation with his speech teacher, where he can invite two "buddies" up to her classroom for lunch, and the speech teacher observes Will's interactions with the other children, and tries to help him interact. I think he really enjoys this experience, and I think that the other children that go with him enjoy it as well.