Sharon (mother of 2 children, including 1 autistic child): In social situations, when it comes to, like, say family, extended family and our close circle of friends, Peter’s fine. He knows where it’s safe, and I guess he knows where he can go and be himself, without any judgement or people getting funny at him, or stuff like that. But whenever we have to, like, things like weddings and stuff like that can pose an issue sometimes because we don’t get a chance to rehearse. It’s not as though we can go to the church or go to the venue and say ‘Oh, this is what we’re going to do’, and stuff like that. We can try and do the social story – sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Umm, so I suppose we just take whatever is in our kit bag and try and prepare as much as possible.

Shannon (father of 4 children, including 3 autistic children): Umm, if it’s a party situation: balloons, for Dominic. He doesn’t like helium balloons. Umm, I think Alexander, if there’s too many people he’ll retract and sort of either stay by himself or stay with us. And, yeah, the girls will sort of, yeah, I mean Amelia, if there’s someone there that she’ll take to, it’s not too bad, but yeah, she doesn’t like sort of high-pitched noises. And Emily will just sort of wander.

Joanne (mother of 4 children, including 2 autistic children): Usually when there’s a gathering of a large amount of people you’ll see Xalie just slip away into her bedroom quietly and sit on her bed and maybe make things with her plasticine or play with her dolls or read a book, because it’s not really her thing to be around large crowds. If it’s a birthday and there’s cake and there’s presents, it’s a bit more exciting, so she’ll be there for the cake, she’ll be there for the presents, but when it comes to the social interaction and chatting to people, it’s just not for her. So she’ll slip away. And we used to try and push her into the scene a little bit more but we don’t now. We just know, look, she’s not that comfortable with it. We’ll bring her out for the special moments.

Alison (mother of 2 children, including 1 with Asperger’s): It’s like me trying to do maths, you know. I would be mentally and physically exhausted if I had to do a maths test, because it’s just not my thing. So, being around other people and having to follow the social etiquette and not doing what you want to do … is difficult for him. So, again, it’s all in the preparation. If we’re going anywhere we explain where we’re going. Very unwise to give him a particular time because if you say ‘We’re going at 2 o’clock’, you’d better be going at 2 o’clock. So, it’s all very, very literal.

Bobby (father of 2 children, including 1 autistic child): Peter, being autistic, when it’s around my family, especially the central family, if there’s a sense of comfort there, then he becomes his normal self, a normal 5-year-old little boy, that likes to joke around, have a laugh, run around, wrestle with his brother, wrestle with his dad. Umm, but also play with his grandparents as well. He really enjoys being comfortable around people that he knows. People that love him, that know him, care about him. With the friends, basically all our friends have children about the same age, he’s very comfortable with them as well, and he really enjoys having that close network around him.