My friend's son, we'll call him Joey, is 4 years old and started preschool in September. She was recently informed by Joey's teacher that he should be held back another year before starting kindergarden because of immature "social skills." She said he is unable to make friends with the other kids because he doesn't like to play the same things they do. She said sometimes Joey will walk up to another boy and just say "EEEE" really loud right in his face, not gaining him much popularity in the class.
At home however, Joey is verbal, although has some speech problems that sometimes make him hard to understand, and he does show affection towards his family.
Joey does have some other non traditional behaviors that my friend once though were unique qualities but is now starting to question their significance. For example, ever since he was very young he saw shapes and letters in all kinds of objects. When my friend was sitting indian style on the floor, joey said, triangle - and she realized he was referring to the shape of her legs. Similarly, when her husband was sitting on the floor with his feet heels together, toes apart, Joey said V. A picture of the twin towers made Joey said H. The only other strange behavior she mentioned was a fear of washing his hands; Joey hates the feeling of wet hands.
They are taking Joey to a speech pathologist to address his speech, but they don't know where else to turn to assess these behaviors. My friends husband is worried that Joey may have Asperger's, or be somewhere on the spectrum. Have any of you had similar experiences or ideas of where my friend can bring Joey for help?
Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

I am so glad they are seeing a speech therapist. My son used to have trouble with peer interactions when he was having trouble talking. As soon as he could talk correctly he made friends very easily. I would suggest they take him to a developmental pediatrician. They will be able to tell the parents if he is on the autism spectrum. If he is and he does not have any cognitive delays they might try an RDI program. This is specifically geared towards same age peer interactions.

If he has speech, cognitive, and self help skills that are far behind his peers I would suggest an ABA program.

Thank you Kathleen,
I'll be sure to pass on your good advice. It's very hard to watch a friend going through such frustration; I can only imagine how scared and confused she is - I hope together we can find some answers.
You mentioned that speech therapy was very helpful for your son; I was wondering what methods were most helpful for him. Did therapy help him just with articulation problems or did the speech therapist give him strategies to develop successful peer interactions as well?

My son never had trouble with articulation. It was just learning to talk. I remember after one of the speech sessions his therapist looked at me and said I feel like I am trying to teach him a foreign language. I had to point to objects and say the words a million times in the beginning before my son would realize that every object had a name. The little boy you know probably knows all the words but has trouble communicating his thoughts.

My son's speech therapist used the LOVAAS method for teaching speech. My son was never given any strategies to interact with peers. He was able to develop it on his own like a typical child.

RDI is the therapy I talked about that a lot of children with autism use to help build relationships with peers.

Do a search on RDI therapy and autism and you will get plenty of information. The exciting thing is parents can do this therapy themselves. When you do speech therapy and ABA therapy you have to pay lots of people to do the programs for you.