Facilitating friendships with the opposite sex-Step Two

When we left off last week, I was telling you how tired I was of telling Matthew that he will meet a nice girl “someday.”

MattSpokane

I developed a three step plan to help him. I’m aware that I will need to add many more steps along the way, but I thought it was best to start with small and succinct steps so that I didn’t become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead.

STEP ONE, which I addressed last week, was to find activity based social groups that Matthew could join such as Special Olympics.

Matthew was very enthusiastic about the idea, and said he would prefer the groups that had at least 4 beautiful girls each.

STEP TWO?

Help him with his socially awkward behavior so that he doesn’t scare girls  away.

The Plan?

Matthew’s social skills psychologist and I thought it would be a great idea for Matthew to start some “in vivo” social training. She recommended a young woman named Jane who does this sort of thing with other socially awkward individuals, and mentioned the idea to Matthew:

“Our talking about it led to a torrent of questions from Matthew about relationships and how people (boys and girls) meet each other.  He would like to meet Jane with me in the office.  Her initial idea is to go “people watching” with him so they can be out somewhere and talk about what he notices when people interact.”

The plot thickens!!

I’ll keep you in the loop.

By the way, you can read more about Matthew HERE.

LAURA

I'm a fifth generation Californian and live in the San Francisco Area with my husband and three sons. My oldest, Matthew, is autistic and I've been writing about my experience raising him from babyhood to young adulthood for about 4 years. I've read my stories on NPR and published them in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, including Voices of Autism. My book A Regular Guy: Growing up with Autism is available at Amazon.
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