Are they laughing with you or at you?

Autistic people really can't tell. Little Squirrel desperately wants everyone to like her and pay attention to her so to get that friendship (or what she thinks is friendship) she will do whatever they ask, and this means making a fool of herself. And then they laugh, and she laughs. But she doesn't know they are laughing AT her, or even what that means, or that it's different than just plain laughing.

This is happening at the Boys & Girls Club this summer. It could have even been happening last year at school. When I arrived to pick her up one day when they were playing outside, Little Squirrel was with a group of girls, some were older, and they were directing her to go do something across the field. She looked hesitant but appeared to be headed to carry out the orders. I got there before she completed the task and when I asked her what they were doing she said they told her to go kiss a boy. I reported this to the staff but not sure what was done if anything. Then I heard from Little Squirrel's best friend who attends the club part of the week that this happens often.

I can't keep her in a bubble. I can't change the behavior of every other kid in the world. What I can do is try to give Little Squirrel better armor against the bullying. This could mean telling her about the autism. The problem is, when someone can't imagine the perspective of others, they can't very well understand how they themselves are different when the differences are something she can't see or imagine.

Principal's office

Usually the steps to handling Little Squirrel at school involve a series of "warnings" then "resets" then "thinking spot" then "Mr. PJ" in the intervention room ("He's a nice guy. He solves problems." - Little Squirrel). Yesterday there was an event involving Little Squirrel and the mean girl that involved spitting at each other during free time and screaming I HATE YOU. They were both sent to the principal's office.

Little Squirrel says it's because the mean girl didn't cheer for her when it was her turn to do something, but she cheered for A. and another one of their friends. Turns out, it wasn't even a cheering situation. What they were doing didn't require cheering and the mean girl was just doing it to annoy Little Squirrel. It worked.

So Little Squirrel learned how to handle one very specific tool the mean girl uses: the constant taunting "I'm not your friend" all day long. But now that the mean girl has seen this doesn't work anymore to make Little Squirrel explode, she is using different approaches.

Little Squirrel is a bottom up thinker. She can't generalize a strategy to include any kind of bullying or mean behavior. It has to be a specific scenario. We can't possibly imagine all the possible scenarios so I guess all we can do is just keep creating responses for the specific ones that come up, over and over and over and over--and maybe someday a generalized understanding will be achieved.

Learning some humor and bully handling

Latest humor involves silly "opposite" scenarios like if it's raining and cold, or too late at night: "Hey mommy, let's go swimming!" Then I say, "Okay! Go get your swimming on. Let's go!" And she goes to pretend to get ready. It all started during our nightly "game time" and it was a game that I lost badly. It wasn't even close. But I announced, "Hey, it was SOOO close!" It took her quite a pause to figure out I was joking and to process the layers of the joke. Now we've branched out to using that humor in many situations. It's a step toward helping her understand nuances and take a step out of her literal world. The little game is fine with me for the meantime. It hasn't gotten on  my nerves...yet.

Also, she's using some humor tactics to respond to the little jerk who plays friend one minute and bully the next=frenemy. The little jerk likes to say, "I'm not your friend" and wait for Little Squirrel to react with tears, then say, "I was just kidding!" over and over and over. All.day.long. Now when she says it, Little Squirrel says, "You're hilarious" or "Who cares?" with the perfect tone of voice (we had to role play it again and again). She seems to be feeling more confident now, finally, now that the school year is almost over!