One of the things we've found, that opens doors for difficult child 3 - it's his extreme capability with all things technological. He's fixed school computers, he's fixed computers for friends. He's an expert on just about any computer game, too.
I used to run a school chess club, which I actually started to give difficult child 3 something other than academic stuff to achieve in, and also a chance to mingle with other kids under my supervision. Some of the kids were mean to him (even with me there); a lot of the kids had their own problems. I remember one kid (fairly typical, sadly) who seemed to have a problem with any kind of disability, physical or otherwise. I'm fairly sure this came form his mother, who was a fitness fanatic who at times was very rude to me (because of my own fairly obvious physical disability). I remember one inter-school tournament, there was a kid there with achondroplasia. The achondroplasic kid was actually a very good chess player, but I could see he was heading for a lifetime of pain as his long bones such as his legs were already badly twisting and he needed to stand on the chair instead of sit on it, to reach across the chess table. ANd my "little treasure" of a student just stood there, stared and pointed, saying, "Look at HIM! How sick is that?" very loudly.
My dragging the kid off for a stern talk did absolutely nothing (except draw more attention to the discrimination).
This "little treasure" one day (at a different inter-school tournament) was very nasty to difficult child 3 in the car, calling him "dummy" and "retard" (yep - one more place for difficult child 3 to hear that choice word used as an insult). I actually stopped the car and said, "You are getting a lift from me to an inter-school event. I'm not getting paid for any of this, I do it because I want to do something nice for you all. So do something nice for me and stop being mean to my son."
As I suspected, it had absolutely no impact on this kid and I was mentally planning what to say to his mother when I said her son was about to get dropped form the team.
UNTIL - on the way home, "little treasure" was struggling with his hand-held computer game. He kept striking out at the lower level and was desperate to move up. All the kids had a go and couldn't do it. One of the other kids handed the game to difficult child 3. "Little treasure tried to snatch it back but stopped when he saw difficult child 3 talking him through how to get to the higher level. "See? You missed collecting gold at that point. Then you have to push both those buttons this way to kick the last villain to the kerb. OK - now you're through. Here you are."
difficult child 3 handed the game back to the kid who said, "How did you do that? Do you have that game too? Wow, I didn't know you were able to do that!"
difficult child 3 replied, "No, I don't have that game. I haven't played it before. But I've been watching you all and I worked it out while I watched. It's fairly basic, really."
After that, "little treasure" stopped bullying HGFG3 and respected his brain - he realised he had one, after all.
A lot of difficult child 3's friends are kids who hang around purely for the gaming. Being younger kids, they often lack some of the finer motor skills or the multi-tasking. Incidentally, difficult child 1 is bad at multitasking, while difficult child 3 is good at it. Some are - some aren't.
Just yesterday, difficult child 3 wanted to go visit a friend. He has two friends within close walking distance so I suggested he begin at the closer house - across the street. difficult child 3 disappeared and didn't come home, which usually indicates he's found someone willing to play. Then he came home at about 5 pm and brought his friend with him. They played computer games until 6 pm when this other kid knew he had to go home. They have little in common other than this other kid respecting difficult child 3's problem solving skills. He's also used difficult child 3 to re-build various complex toys (such as Lego things). He's also friends with difficult child 3's other good friend, who is more mildly autistic and also high-functioning. It's three friends, two on the spectrum.
difficult child 3 was free to go visit yesterday because his tennis class was cancelled (teacher sick). But at tennis, he plays with other kids who know him from when he was in their class at school. I tend to hang around and make myself useful kicking balls back to the teacher or fetching balls that go out of bounds, so I'm around to support any social interaction. Sometimes difficult child 3, in trying to joke around with the other kids (mostly girls) gets offensive or verbally aggressive and I have to tromp on him. The girls are trying to avoid upsetting him so they tend to not joke back as much, so I sometimes joke around with him to give them a hint, so they're starting to verbally sass him too, which is all good for him to learn more Aussie ways of interacting.
You can do this sort of thing yourself informally, but don't force social interactions. Observe the other kids and if they seem reluctant in any way, leave them off your list next time. When difficult child 3 was 5 he had more friends than he has now. The social gulf between him and other kids his age was not so great. Now it is greater, but as he gets older that gulf is narrowing again, as other kids learn more mature social skills and become more able to make allowances. When they were 5 there was one kid who regularly was round to play, but he never seemed too thrilled about it. I found out the boy's mother was pushing him to come and visit because she felt it would be good for her son to grow up with a wider tolerance of the differences in the human spectrum. But her son resented it and increasingly he was uncomfortable around difficult child 3. So I stopped inviting him and I think the kid was relieved. However, there have been many times since when there was a problem and this other kid would step in to help difficult child 3. They still say "g'day in passing (often at the beach - the other kid just about lives there, swims like a fish) but really, don't have much in common.
What we also have done, is look around for social groups for kids with autism, and also for general groups (various activities) for kids with disabilities. You can get therapy groups, such as hippotherapy (not in our area, unfortunately). For a year or so we joined a club for swimming lessons for kids with disabilities. There are a lot of autistic kids there, some high-functioning. At difficult child 3's drama class, there are also a lot of autistic kids of varying levels of ability. But there are kids with other disabilities too, including a couple of kids with Downs and a few with unspecified global developmental delay. We had a Prader-Willi kid for a while, until he became too disruptive. He's now in a foster care arrangement, even though his mother was absolutely brilliant with him. But he needed more intensive medical supervision and 24/7 observation and she couldn't do it alone. We've made some wonderful contacts at the drama group - while the kids are in the next room doing a sort of improv theatre sports, us parents are in the next room chatting and drinking coffee. From there a lot of good social stuff gets organised. difficult child 3 has asked me to organise a ten pin bowling day for him and his drama classmates. We simply set a day and time, book a couple of lanes and whoever turns up, they have a game or two. We used to organise picnics too. These social outings originally came from a social skills class which we found out about too late - difficult child 3 was only there for the last two sessions. But we were there to find out about a bowling activity, and he went along and formed friendships.
Some things you can organise yourself. But sometimes you just have to look around at what is already available, and plug in to that. It may work, or it may not. You might need to persist. But always, watch for those signs of impending conflict.
difficult child 3 hated drama for a long time, because he had a lot of difficulty with performing and "being what you are not". The first play they did was a simple adaptation of AA Milne's "The King's Breakfast". The teacher wanted difficult child 3 to play the king, but the king is a badly behaved spoilt baby and difficult child 3 didn't want people to see him in the play and think he really was badly behaved. He spent so much of his day trying to be good, that to turn around and pretend to be naughty was too difficult for him, so we let him drop out of the performance, and the kids all ended up reciting it instead.
Now - difficult child 3 prints out "Red Dwarf" scripts off the internet and he and his friends act them out.
He's come a long way.
Marg