How to help our autistic and ADHD kids find friends

You can listen to this podcast episode HERE.

As I was thinking about this episode, it occurred to me how much this concept has in common with dating. I say this because I feel like so many of the questions parents ask themselves when trying to help their kids find and make friends are the same questions I was asking myself about 9 months ago when I embarked on a dating experiment.

Where do I find people?

What about online?

Should I ask friends for introductions?

What am I really looking for?

These are all questions I was asking myself when I dove into dating, and they are most likely questions you have asked yourself when trying to help your kiddo meet new people.

The purpose of this episode is to discuss the best ways to go about connecting our kids to others, and the best people to connect them with.

Let’s kick this episode off by actually defining what a friend is.

We tend to use that term loosely in our culture. Very loosely in fact. People who follow you on social media are considered ‘friends’. Early elementary teachers often refer to all their students as ‘friends’. If you ask some of our kids, they think everyone they meet is their friend.

While these ideas of friendship are all lovely concepts, they aren’t accurate.

And our overuse of the word actually makes it more difficult to help our kids navigate who really is their friend.

Because the reality is that most of the people on our social media feed aren’t actually our friends. They are acquaintainces. The same is true for the students in your child’s class. Even if every one of them likes your child, but that doesn’t make them friends. Teachers saying ‘Hey friend!’ to every student in their class is misleading. Far too often, the word ‘friend’ actually refers to someone who is an acquaintance.

What I teach my students at Starfish Social Club is that a friend is someone whom we choose to spend time with.

I also like to add that we choose to spend time with them outside of where we usually see them. While it makes sense for our kids to say the child they always play with at recess or the teen they sit with at lunch or the kiddo they play with every week at Starfish are their friends, friendship also means that we can talk to this person about personal stuff. That we have things in common with them. That we want to do and share things with them. And that level of friendship usually means we make plans to spend time with this person away from our usual meeting place.

Okay, so now that we have a definition of what a friend is, let’s talk about some of the ways we as adults go about trying to create relationships for our kids and which ones are least and most likely to be successful.

The strategy I find to be the least successful is the peer buddy system used in a lot of schools. Sometimes it’s called pals, sometimes lunch bunch, sometimes it’s referred to as a leadership program. This strategy is typically for students who are at level one or level two of our STARFISH scale. I actually find this method to be misleading for our kids, and it can do more harm than good.

The peer buddy system matches students who struggle to make friends with students who earn a credit, get recognition, want to help, etc. The buddies are either assigned to a specific student or they are there as part of a group.

While this is a nice gesture, it creates more of a caregiver type relationship than an actual friendship. Often the students assigned as peer buddies receive no training or guidance in how to best support our kids. They let our kids’ ‘friendship-repelling’ behaviors slide instead of addressing them. They overhelp our kids, even when they don’t need it. Sometimes their relationship with our kids is used as a status symbol.

I even see this carry over into Starfish. Some of our level 2 and 3 students on the STARFISH scale attempt to take over this role for our level 1 students. I find myself reminding our students that all our kids can move their own gamepieces. All our kids can help put the game away. All our kids can walk from room to room independently.

I often ask my team about things they’ve learned while working at Starfish. Since this is my jam, I’m not always aware of what I say or do that stands out to people and helps them see things differently. A former Starfish teacher once told me that the biggest thing she learned is that helping doesn’t always help. I’ve heard versions of that repeated often amongst the team and I notice that stepping out of the helper role and into the facilitator role is one of the biggest challenges for new staff.

If peer helpers were peer facilitators, I’d be more okay with that. But they aren’t. A system that considers kids to be pillars of society for ‘befriending’ our kids is sending the wrong message to everyone. It’s tricking our kids into thinking this is a real friendship, it’s tricking the buddies into thinking our kids need their help, it’s tricking the rest of the class or school into thinking our kids need pity friends. In case it’s not clear, I very much dislike this strategy.

Next on my list is arranged friendships. This can take a few different forms: it can be arranged playdates or hangouts with someone else’s autistic kid, it can be kids of friends of yours whom you’ve known for a while and who know your kid well, it can be groups or meetups for kids or families like yours.

Just like arranged relationships, there’s always a chance these work out. There are people in arranged marriages who live happily ever after. And people who knew each other for years before realizing they loved each other. And people who met in arranged groups and tied the knot.

The difference between arranged friendships and arranged relationships is that relationships are for adults, and we have the ability to say no. We can say that we don’t want to go on that date. Or keep hanging out with that person. Or be part of that group. As long as our kids have the same choice, I’m okay with this strategy.

If our kids don’t feel good with this person, that’s not a friendship. If they don’t get along, don’t enjoy spending time together, feel uncomfortable, that isn’t a friendship and it shouldn’t be forced.

This next strategy is the one I most endorse. It’s finding a club or team or group that is based on your child or teen’s interests.

It could be a drama club. Or a swim team. Or a Dungeons and Dragons group. And yes, it can be online. In person is preferred, but online works as well.

Here’s why this is my favorite way for our kids to meet potential friends:

We all like to be around people who like and do the same stuff as us. It means we get to talk about our interests. It means we get to do the thing we like with other people who also like it. It means we get to learn new things about something we already care about. It means we get to make genuine connections with people who geek out on the same stuff we do.

When our kids are part of an interest group, they have the same ability to contribute as the rest of the group. Even if they have physical challenges, or cognitive challenges, or social challenges, they have a knowledge base and a skill level tied to their interest.

They can run up and down the court with the rest of the basketball team and talk about stats and plays. They can learn new chess strategies and show off the ones they already know with the chess club. They can excel and feel confident in themselves when they are in their zone of enjoyment.

And what better environment to make friends in than somewhere where you feel like you belong? As we say at Starfish, somewhere you feel competent, confident, and connected?

A couple more notes about who makes the best friends for our kids:

When I first started Starfish Social Club in 2016, the students were grouped by age. As we grew, I also grouped them by ability. When I met a new student, I would assign them to a group based on those factors. Our elementary level 2 kids met at 5:00 on Wednesdays, our high school level 3 kids met at 6:00 on Tuesdays, etc.

And then came summer camp.

Our families make their own schedule for summer camp attendance. That means that some days we may have 12 high school kids and 2 elementary kids. Or 7 elementary kids and 2 middle kids and 2 high school kids. Every day is different. So eventually I just started throwing them all in together.

The first time I saw the beauty in this was when a 1^st grader and a 5^th grader became pals. They really enjoyed each other’s company and were a great pair. This helped me shift my mindset around splitting the kids up by age.

Now we have broader age groups. Our first groups of the evening are for kids who are 7-14 and our last groups are for kids who are 12 and older. Our game times are open to all ages.

Parents now choose the schedule for their child’s group, so every group includes students across the STARFISH scale. Game time as well.

There are no peer buddies at Starfish. The kids give each other social feedback instead of accepting or allowing ‘friendship-repelling’ behavior. They get to choose who they want to talk to and play games with. There are students younger than them, the same age as them, older than them. There are students less socially skilled, more socially skilled. It’s a social smorgasbord around here.

And because of that, the kids get to choose friends here if they want to. They get to learn more about who they are and who they want to spend time with. They get to meet kids who have things in common with them and those that don’t. They get to feel out who they feel good spending time with and who doesn’t click with them as well.

I can’t and I don’t promise that kids will make friends at Starfish. That isn’t my decision to make for them. But I can promise they will learn skills and strategies that will help making friends easier for them, wherever and whenever they choose to do so.