Welcome to the Wired Differently podcast where we chat all about how to best support exceptional children.

I'm your host, Holly Blanc Moses, the mom psychologist who gets it.

Welcome, everyone.

Today we are talking about finding friends for differently wired children.

No, social interaction is already tough, right? And it doesn't even seem like it's made for kids who maybe look at the world a little different and it's hard and that makes

sense because social interaction is complicated and when you may have difficulty with turn

taking or sharing or following the rules of games losing, maybe making comments that appear rude to

others, but not to them. Maybe defensiveness is a struggle, perhaps forgiving a peer that has wronged

you, interrupting,

maybe talking about, you know, interests that maybe aren't interests to others.

And again, you can start to see why social interaction can be so hard,

especially for differently wired kids. Also, they are more likely to be socially

rejected, name call by others, ignored and even bullied. When interactions are hard, we're going to either say we don't care, right? So kids will

say, I don't care about making friends. It doesn't bother me. That doesn't mean that they don't

care. It means that it's hard and they've had some difficult experiences. A lot of times when things are really hard

consistently, we might try to avoid. And oftentimes we see that with kids, they're getting,

you know, anxious and in social situations and may try to avoid potentially difficult

interactions and just don't even try anymore.

This can lead to depression and even more anxiety.

Now, I've been a therapist for a really long time, specializing in kids with autism and

or ADHD, and I see these kind of the same statements over and over

again. And some include everyone hates me. I'll never have any friends. I don't do anything right.

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