Helping Your Child Make Friends: A Social Skills Roadmap

A warm, research-backed roadmap to help your autistic child make friends — affirming, BCBA-guided steps from a team serving Southern Utah.

Social Skills & Development
Helping Your Child Make Friends: A Social Skills Roadmap

The short answer: If you want to help your autistic child make friends, you don’t need to change who they are — you need to teach concrete, learnable skills and create supportive chances to practice them. Friendship difficulty is a recognized, expected part of autism, not a sign that your child doesn’t want connection or that you’ve done something wrong. As one UCLA expert puts it, the goal of social skills work is “not to change a person but to enhance their social interactions to help others know how great they are” (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Research shows structured friendship programs genuinely help, and below is a step-by-step roadmap you can start today.

Why friendship feels hard — and why that’s not your fault

Struggling with friendship is part of how autism shows up, not a reflection of your child’s heart or your parenting. The CDC notes that as autistic children grow, “they may have difficulties developing and maintaining friendships, communicating with peers and adults, or understanding what behaviors are expected in school or on the job” (CDC). Autism is also common — “about 1 in 31 (3.2%) children aged 8 years has been identified with ASD” (CDC) — so if your family is navigating this in St. George or anywhere across Southern Utah, you are in good company.

It helps to separate two things that often get tangled together. The CDC explains that “people with ASD often have problems with social communication and interaction” (CDC). That’s about the pragmatics of connecting — reading cues, starting a conversation, taking turns — not about whether your child wants friends. Many autistic children deeply want connection and simply need the steps taught clearly. That reframe is the foundation of everything else here.

The philosophy that should anchor your approach

Before any technique, decide what you’re aiming for: not a child who “acts neurotypical,” but a child who has more ways to connect as themselves. Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, founder of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, frames it this way: “Learning social skills must be voluntary and neuro-affirming. These programs do not attempt to change a person but to enhance their social interactions to help others know how great they are” (Autism Research Institute, 2024).

This matters practically, too. Skills your child wants tend to stick; skills imposed to mask who they are tend to cause stress and burnout. Throughout this roadmap, you’re following your child’s lead and interests — building on strengths, not papering over differences.

Do friendship programs actually work? Honestly, yes — within limits

Structured friendship interventions can genuinely help, and it’s worth being honest about how much. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis found a within-group (before-and-after) effect that was “small to moderate (z = 2.761, p = 0.006, g = 0.485),” concluding that “individual interventions can positively impact social functioning and foster more meaningful friendships.” Three specific programs — SDARI, MOSAIC, and COMET — produced large effects (Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023).

What does that mean for your family? Real, measurable progress is realistic — but not overnight, and not guaranteed for any one child. Think of these strategies as moving the odds in your child’s favor, not as a switch you flip. That honesty is part of doing this well.

The roadmap: concrete steps to help your autistic child make friends

The research points to a clear set of building blocks. Here’s how to put them in order at home.

1. Start with peer entry skills. Joining a group is a teachable sequence. The PEERS approach breaks “entering a conversation” into steps: observe the group, find a shared interest, mention it, exchange information, read interest cues, and then introduce yourself (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Teaching these as small, named steps takes the guesswork out of one of the hardest social moments.

2. Build on shared interests. Friendships form around common ground. Help your child find activities, clubs, or get-togethers organized around something they already love — the shared interest does much of the social work for them.

3. Rehearse, don’t just explain. Children learn social skills the way they learn anything else: by practicing in low-stakes settings first. Role-play, video modeling, and guided practice let your child build comfort before real interactions (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Run through a “how to ask to play” scene at the kitchen table a few times before the playdate.

4. Prepare for teasing realistically. Telling a child to “just ignore it” rarely works. The PEERS program instead has kids rehearse short, neutral comebacks like “Whatever” or “Who cares?” so teasing loses its power (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Practicing these in advance gives your child a calm, ready response.

5. Coach during real, unstructured time. Recess and lunch are where friendships actually happen — and where many autistic kids need a gentle adult nearby. Adult-facilitated coaching during unstructured time, plus structured supports like lunch buddies and board-game groups, peer education, playdates, and a lot of patience, are the everyday engine of progress (Autism Speaks).

6. Bring peers into the plan. Some of the most-recommended evidence-based practices involve training typical peers to include and support autistic classmates — approaches like Peer Network Intervention and Remaking Recess (Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023). Friendship is a two-way street, and inviting peers in often changes the whole dynamic. In fact, the review found that effective interventions “involved educators, targeted child characteristics known to moderate peer functioning, actively involved peers, and incorporated techniques to facilitate positive peer perceptions” (Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023).

What progress really looks like

Real progress is hopeful and usually gradual — measured in months and years, not days. One parent writing for Autism Speaks shared, “I can honestly say that [my son] has friends his own age now. He is able to actively participate in friendship” (Autism Speaks). That breakthrough followed roughly four years of patient, adult-facilitated coaching — a reminder that meaningful friendship is absolutely possible, and that it’s okay for it to take time.

The most-studied program in this space, the UCLA PEERS curriculum, is parent-assisted and validated across more than 150 countries and 12 languages. A randomized controlled trial found that teens improved their knowledge of friendship skills, increased the number of get-togethers they hosted, and decreased social anxiety, core autistic symptoms, and problem behaviors compared with a waitlist control group (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Programs like these give families across Southern Utah a roadmap that’s been tested and refined.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can autistic children make friends? Yes. Difficulty developing and maintaining friendships is a recognized part of autism (CDC), but it isn’t a dead end. Structured, evidence-based programs have been shown to improve friendship skills and foster “more meaningful friendships” (Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023). Many autistic children want connection and thrive once the steps are taught clearly.

Is it too late to help my older child or teen make friends? It’s rarely too late. The most-studied parent-assisted program, PEERS, was developed for teens and showed measurable friendship gains in a randomized trial (Autism Research Institute, 2024). One parent’s account of real friendship developing over about four years of support is a reminder that progress can happen at any stage (Autism Speaks). At Ryse, we support individuals ages 2 to 65.

What’s a good way to help my autistic child make friends? Teach friendship as concrete, learnable steps: peer entry skills (observe, find a shared interest, exchange info, then introduce), role-play and video modeling to rehearse, shared-interest activities, adult-facilitated coaching during unstructured time, and peer-mediated approaches that involve classmates (Autism Research Institute, 2024; Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023).

Does my child have to “act neurotypical” to have friends? No. The goal is to enhance your child’s interactions, not change who they are. As Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson puts it, these programs “do not attempt to change a person but to enhance their social interactions to help others know how great they are” (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Affirming, voluntary skill-building tends to last; masking who a child is does not.

What are PEERS and peer-mediated intervention, and do they work? PEERS is a parent-assisted, evidence-based program that teaches friendship skills through structured steps and practice; a randomized controlled trial showed teens increased get-togethers and reduced social anxiety (Autism Research Institute, 2024). Peer-mediated intervention trains typical peers to include and support autistic classmates. A 2023 meta-analysis found friendship interventions produced “small to moderate” within-group gains, with larger effects for certain programs — real help, without overpromising (Cordier et al., PLOS ONE, 2023).

When you’re ready, you don’t have to wait

If you’d like a personalized, BCBA-led plan to help your child build friendships, Ryse ABA Therapy provides in-home and community-based care across Washington County — St. George, Washington, Hurricane, Santa Clara, Ivins, and La Verkin — plus Cedar City in Iron County. Our approach is family-first, play-based, and data-driven, and there is no waitlist — families can start right away (an autism diagnosis and active insurance coverage are required). When we Ryse together, we achieve more. Call us at (385) 549-5656 to begin.

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