My 4-year-old son is diagnosed with speech and a borderline case of autism (score was—29). Since 2 months ago he started to speak in sentences, tries to talk on his own and tries to explain what happened at school and is very happy with his improvement in speech. But the actual problem I’m facing with him is different.
He is an only child and we don’t have many friends who have kids. To give him a chance to socialize, improve his focus and to teach him to follow directions as per his teacher's recommendation, we send him to private Karate sessions and skating group sessions (class of 15) once a week.
In skating class he never looks at the instructor, he doesn’t follow a single instruction from the instructor. He looks at other kids and tries to say hi and is very interested in the other kids. The same thing happened in Karate class so they suggested he take private lessons. If he sees any kid crying in the class he will start crying like something happened to him.
We take him to the park also, but we are consistently observing his over-interest in looking at other kids' faces even at a park (wherever we go) getting too much. At that time he doesn’t make eye contact and to make him listen we have to hold his chin and make him look into our faces. If you have any suggestions about that, please let me know.
The other problem is doing work. He needs so many prompts, for example, for writing alphabets he needs at least 40 prompts. He zones out if I don’t prompt him he will forget what he has to do and will start doing silly things. Same thing with reading, coloring, any school work activity.
I tried to positively reinforce him, always tell him before doing any activity but nothing seems working and I feel totally lost. If anyone could suggest me what’s going on with him, that would be a great help. What are age-appropriate social activities you would suggest?