My son is being held to a higher standard

amother

Sun, Jan 28 2024, 9:31 am

13 years old, has HFASD. As you would expect with this, he's very bright but has weak social skills. He gets various supports in school. In the last year and a half, there's been a significant improvement in his social skills. He's finally joining in more with peers, has actual friends, started choosing to hang out with classmates who live nearby on shabbos afternoon etc. He also feels like he doesn't need so much support in school anymore, and we're starting to phase it out. Next year, when he goes to high school, he's not going to have anyone in school helping him (though he may still get some therapy outside of school if we feel he needs it).

The thing is, his teachers and therapists keep coming up with ways in which he's still "socially off" and I'm starting to get annoyed because I feel like if he didn't have a label, 75% of what they bring up would be written off as at worst, typical 13 year boy immaturity, or else just...normal. Recently, there was canteen at school and his teacher said he was a dollar short for what he wanted to buy and he asked a classmate to borrow (and the classmate agreed. DS paid him back the following day). She made this put to be super immature and socially off, which makes no sense because I know for a fact that in the reverse situation, he has lent a dollar here and there to classmates who asked, and I didn't get any calls about that! He had a problem, he solved the problem appropriately, not to mention, I can imagine it wasn't easy for him to ask! And no, the teacher couldn't name anything inappropriate about the way he asked, just that the fact that he asked was problematic. I just feel like his interactions are under a microscope just be we know he has social struggles. I'm starting to feel like he's unnecessarily piled on and we're both getting resentful of this. Has anyone else with a similar child noticed this tendency to make a problem out of every little thing? What is the best way to handle this?