• Friendships play a critical role in children’s social and emotional development.
• Children with autistic traits have difficulty with socioemotional skills, putting them at risk for peer rejection.
• Autistic children who are also aggressive or disruptive are particularly vulnerable.
• Parents and teachers can support children with autism through early interventions targeting socioemotional skills and lessons about peer acceptance for all children.

Friendship and acceptance by other children are vital ingredients for thriving young lives and are at the heart of growing up. They help children get out of bed in the morning, and encourage them to look forward to attending school, playing and learning, and building relationships. In contrast, loneliness, isolation, feeling awkward, and being bullied make everything more problematic. How do we ensure that the lives of children with autistic traits are not harmed by rejection?

Children with autism typically experience challenges developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. They want friendships but struggle to make them. Mostly, they have difficulties adjusting their behavior to suit various social contexts.

Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships.

They may not be able to communicate in ways that lead to friendship or understand how to share imaginative play in the same ways as typical children do. How does this impede acceptance and fruitful relationships at school? What can be done to improve this aspect of life for children with autism?

My colleagues and I have been studying five- and six-year-olds in primary schools in the Netherlands (called elementary schools elsewhere). The children had varying levels of autistic traits, often at such low levels that it was not clinically diagnosed. We know that young children with autistic traits are more likely to experience rejection and non-acceptance, even when the traits are at a low level.

The impact can be considerable. Studies show that having a friend at school can protect a child from an unwanted situation or behavior. A friend can act as a source of emotional support, providing a safe space to express thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

Photo: Wallpaper Flare.

Being without a friend at school can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can, in turn, make children vulnerable to bullying and negative behaviors. These experiences can have lasting effects on overall well-being, leading to low self-esteem and poor academic performance.

Risk of aggressive behavior

Our study identified a particularly vulnerable group of young children with autistic traits: those who are also aggressive and disruptive. Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships. Other children tend to isolate them or make them targets of bullying.

Schools can address these matters through programs designed to improve peer relationships in inclusive classrooms. Some programs focus on reducing children’s behavior problems (e.g., aggressive acts, poor temper control, sadness, anxiety, fidgeting, impulsive acts), especially when the problems are above and beyond the autistic traits that most convincingly predicted poor relationships in our study.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance.

Successful friendships

Our study also considered children with lower levels of autistic traits (whose autism may not have been diagnosed) and with non-aggressive behaviors. As noted earlier, their condition was associated with less peer acceptance and more rejection. It may be hard for these children to carry out basic social skills such as starting and maintaining conversations, taking turns, and responding appropriately to social cues. They may find it difficult to understand others’ minds, and to decode others’ intentions, emotions, and thoughts, leaving them confused, so it is important to help these children navigate social situations more effectively.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance. Other children seem to find ways to engage with them. In some cases, particularly in inclusive environments, a peer understands that a child has autism. A teacher might explain the condition and the peer develops a friendship with the child, accepting that it will be a different kind of friendship that is less reciprocal than their friendships with neurotypical children.

Photo: Leeloo Thefirst. Pexels.

How to support young children

Our findings suggest many opportunities for improving the relationships of children with autistic traits. The first step is recognizing and accepting the trait, not denying it. Parents should be alert: A child who initially responded to their name might suddenly, around 18 months, cease to respond. That can be a red flag.

Much can be done to help a child with autistic traits interpret a world that can seem confusing. With children as young as three, flashcards attached to everyday activities – waking up, having breakfast, taking a nap – can help build a vital vocabulary.

Likewise, photos of parents or caregivers highlighting labelled emotions – such as happy, sad, tired – can help train a child to better recognize facial expressions, improving the reciprocity and responsiveness of their interactions. Parents can role play what happens when other people visit, going through the language of meeting and greeting. It helps to start early.

The message from our research is that friendship and acceptance matter a great deal to each child’s development, both socially and academically. Adults can help children enjoy friendships by spotting traits of autism early and intervening in appropriate ways. Such interventions should address aggression, which is most harmful to children’s chances of having successful relationships.

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However, the three are, in fact, playing nicely together. They are communicating, though not through back-and-forth verbal dialogue. Each closely follows the others’ hand movements in the construction process, and these hand actions are like taking turns in a conversation. Bursts of songs signal togetherness. One child hums the famous “Halleluiah” section of “The Messiah,” while another follows by humming, in falsetto, a less well-known part of the oratorio. One child rolls the die and declares in imitation of Fortnite, “I am the One.” Another child does something with her hands. “Wow,” exclaims her friend.

This type of close observation highlights how autistic children do, indeed, relate to each other, but not in neurotypical language or in ways that neurotypical people instantly recognize. It can be difficult for people unfamiliar with children with autism to understand what is happening. This can easily result in erroneous conclusions, such as the mistaken view that autistic children dislike social relationships and prefer to play alone. Such misunderstanding can endanger autistic children because a major threat to their quality of life is loneliness and a dearth of friendships. Play-based social learning can help them avoid these dangers.

Parallel play among autistic children is a route to social play, not at odds with it.

Differences in autistic children

Autistic children value play with their peers and many are able to play with each other. However, they may communicate more visually and with their hands, rather than in the more verbal way of other children. They may need different facilitation strategies and more support than their neurotypical peers.

The benefit of carefully watching how autistic children play is that it can help others create environments that support the way they actually play, rather than spending time and effort instructing them how to play in neurotypical ways.

Inside parallel play

Some autistic children like to play in parallel. In general, the neurotypical world does not consider this type of play “social” play, but rather as an isolated, solo activity. But in our observations, we have seen that parallel play can be very social. For example, we watched three children building on their individual Lego boards. One was building a house, another was constructing a forest, and the third was building a TV set. We realized that the third child was watching the TV inside the house in the forest. This experience shows the need to cherish parallel play and let it continue until windows of connection occur, as they inevitably do. If we ask ourselves how we can support and strengthen these opportunities for connection, we will recognize that parallel play among autistic children is a route to social play, not at odds with it.

Photo provided by the author.

Understanding this can help teachers support the social dynamics of autistic children and tinker with those dynamics to support togetherness. In one game, we gave each child a Lego board and suggested that they build a bridge and they had to meet in the middle. In another game, children built a tower. Each child had bricks of a particular color, but the game stipulated that they should not place a brick of one color on top of a brick of the same color. As a result, the children enjoyed open-ended play, which gave them agency. The color rule supported the interaction of their parallel play. Simple games like this may be repeated with slight variations to create learning environments that are predictable, but not tedious, to support autistic children in developing their unique ways of socializing through hands-on experience.

Helping articulation of frustration

Accepting that autistic children can and do communicate  – albeit in atypical ways that may eschew direct language  – helps us support them when they become frustrated. In our work, we try to encourage children to tell the stories of their frustrations, recognizing that verbal explanations may not come easily. For example, in a play session involving a child with two younger children, the older and more experienced child became frustrated with the slowness of the others. To explain, he built a train track with three children on the platform, communicating that he felt like he was waiting for a train, which was frustrating. By ensuring that he had a way to express his feelings practically, we made it easier for him to manage his emotions and be patient.

Try to understand the social strategies the child uses to play with others. Create environments in which those strategies are easy for the child to use.

Suggestions for parents and teachers

We offer three suggestions for those who want to support children who are on the spectrum to ensure that they have access to play-based social learning. First, try to understand the social strategies the child uses to play with others. Create environments in which those strategies are easy for the child to use.

Second, do not be concerned if a child seems to play in parallel with others. At some point, as in the examples mentioned, a window between two parallel players will open. See parallel play as a route to social play.

Third, always assume that children are competent. Whether someone is silent, says “um,” or repeats a sentence, it is all meaningful. Think carefully about what children are doing because their actions provide a window into the way they are interpreting the situation. For example, when a child is tapping, there is something behind that. Behavior is communication.

We think of play as a way of learning – and not just for children. It is also a way for adults to learn about children. Just as we want children to learn from the play situation, so should adults. Be curious in the same way you want children to be curious. Try to adjust the environment to fit how the child is feeling that day – no day is ever the same as another and you never know in advance how a child is feeling.

If you wish to learn more, we have a resource tool kit for playing with children on the spectrum.

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