Our son is Autistic. He's considered high functioning so we were lucky that he would have speech, and be able to potty train. Don't get me wrong, none of that came easy by no means, but it did eventually come. And we were thankful for each victory as you have to be when dealing with these little battles.

Flash forward, he's 14 now; we signed him up for adaptive phy-ed bowling last year when he hit middle school 7th grade. The coach came to us & said she thought it would be a good thing for him to try. He did NOT want to do this - but I kind of made him. I know, sounds bad - but he really needs to be pushed into social situations. He bowls with kids from 7th grade up to 12th grade & they are all kids with different abilities. He sees his younger sister who is a social butterfly, get invited to parties & sleep overs all the time, he sees his younger brother enjoying the same. He has only gotten 2 birthday party invitations and they came in 2nd grade & 4th grade. He gets frustrated that no one invites him to their house, no one asks him to sleep over. I have to explain to him, you have to make a friend first. He bowled all last year & got to know a couple of other boys, but not too indepth. Autistic kids want to talk about what they like, not what the other person likes. So when you are socially underdevoloped, it's very difficult to make a friend. I would tell him to ask the boy what he likes, ask the boy if he plays video games, ask the boy if he saw that movie too, ask the boy if he likes Legos also. Ask the boy his name and remember it. These things aren't a big deal to most people, but for a child with Autism, it's like a foreign language!!

He lettered in bowling last year and all he had to do was bowl & finish the season which he did. He couldn't remember anyone's name, but did talk to some boys about some topics of interest. I told him we will sign him up to be on the team again this spring. He's again, not really thrilled about it. I told him he kind of needs to do this in order to make a friend. He got a lettermen's jacket for Christmas from us - he proudly wears this & knows what a symbol it is. So I told him in order to continue to wear that jacket, you need to be in that sport. And we are practicing conversations in hopes of inviting a friend over sometime that he hopefully will get to know this year during the bowling season. I do these types of things keeping in mind that someday, we will no longer be on this earth for my son to lean on. He will need to learn this difficult task of getting to know people on his own. I want him to have a good life and be able to maintain friendships because they will be as important to him someday as they are to the rest of us.

Little victories are all we can ask for, it's all we can hope for. And all I have is hope for my children, so I will continually push them when I know it's going to help in the long run. Love comes in many forms, and I've been told by many that I'm too strict, but my kids have manners and when I ask them to try, they do because as my kids say, "Mom, you were right."  And I don't care about being right, I care about them being successful in their lives.