To cut a long story short, one of my son’s friends (Jojo, a 6 year old) at school is probably an aspie (based on my wife’s description).
His mother is the stereotypical Chinese Tiger Mom – who put off having children until she was 39 while she and her husband built up a successful and lucrative (and slightly dodgy) business. She approached motherhood with the same determination that she approaches life in general, and had her son in academic coaching from the time he was 2 years old. He is in a separate class from my son, and even though my son is usually top of his class, Jojo is way ahead of my son and all the other kids their age.

Jojo has poor social skills and intensely dislikes breaking any of his routines. He gets along with my son because, as my wife says, they have the same character, but generally when his mother tries to encourage him to play with other kids he says he would rather read a book or study and do homework instead.

Jojo is also (exactly like my son) very absent minded and has poor short term memory, and his mother pinches him to discipline him for constantly losing things, forgetting where he puts things and so on. Jojo normally scores 100% on mathematics meant for kids 5 years older than himself, but when he is distracted or not focussed he writes all the answers wrong, even though he knows the material inside out. My wife says that Jojo’s head is even bigger than my son’s head – and my son’s head is huge, significantly bigger than my wife’s head already.

Jojo’s little brother is 3 years old and very sociable and well organized.

My son grew up travelling, going to play groups, always having lots of people around (adults and kids) and now, even though he lacks social skills and is excessively naïve and trusting, he still thinks everyone is his friend and makes friends easily. While Jojo grew up with his nose in books. My wife wishes our son was more like Jojo, who refuses to have anything to do with another kid ever again if that kid is mean to him (whereas our son’s best friend at school is a budding sociopath who hurts him and says horrible things to him, who the other kids won’t have anything to do with).

Now I know from my own childhood that punishing a child for being absent minded and forgetful doesn’t do any good. There are coping strategies that I plan to try to teach my son when I think he is ready, but Jojo doesn’t seem to have the benefit of a parent who empathises with his struggles.

So my questions are:

Should I say anything to Jojo’s mother (I won’t mention HFA or AS)? I was thinking along the lines of sending an email (via my wife) explaining that punishing her son for being absent minded and disorganized is not going to help, and to try to steer her towards some coping strategies that she could teach him.

Also, I know that Jojo’s mother is starting to worry about his lack of social skills – it sounds like she would like him to go into business, but, like I said to my wife, Jojo would be better off being a scientist or an engineer or an IT specialist. He would get eaten alive in the business world in South East Asia. But it would be good if Jojo could at least make one or two friends – what tips could I give Jojo’s mother for teaching Jojo to be more sociable?

Invite the kid to play with your son? That would work both ways: your son could have a friend similar to himself. That way he could spend time away from his sociopath friend, and Jojo would be able to practise socializing with someone safe.

As for the e-mail...I don't think I would like that that if I were Jojo's mother! I bet someone told her already and she just feels that this is the only way to teach him. It might be better to befriend the boy and then say something to the mother like: he is really a little professor, including the forgetfulness, but don't worry - his secretary will take care of all that later! And when you know them a bit better, maybe slip her a book about communication with kids, that recommends star charts instead of punishment. It doesn't have to be something about Asperger, as forgetfulness afflicts many children and not just Aspies.

I was actually in Australia, while my son was at school in Indonesia, at the time I originally posted. So I could not put Earth Mum's excellent suggestions into practice.

I did speak to my wife about this in January, after my family had arrived in Australia. My wife was telling me about how much Jojo's mother loves our kids, how she buys expensive clothes and jewellery for our 3 year old daughter. It seems that Jojo's mother is mostly concerned about Jojo's lack of interest in making friends, and would like him to be more like our son who considers everyone to be his friend.

Anyway, it sounds very much like Jojo's mother is as aspie as Jojo is. She is disliked by by most of the mothers at the school, constantly says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and my wife is her only real friend (I suspect that my wife is more tolerant of aspie traits, being used to myself and our son).

Jojo's mother is very much an overachiever in life, wealthy and successful and totally self-made, and seems to expect her son to be the same. She has already bought an apartment in Singapore in expectation of Jojo attending high school and university there.

As for my son's "sociopath" friend... well, after he had slugged our son and really hurt him, my wife told our son not to be his friend any more, and our son finally agreed. The next time the little "sociopath" wanted to play with him, our son said "I don't want to play with you because you are naughty. Later if you are nice we can be friends again". Anyway, believe it or not, the little "sociopath" was devastated at the loss of his only friend and totally reformed his behaviour, and became best friends again with our son. The headmaster, the teachers, the kid's mother, all couldn't believe it, they were amazed after everything else that had been tried with him had failed. I was choking back tears as my wife told me the full story. When my son moved to Australia at the end of December, the little "sociopath" begged his parents to move to Australia so that he could still be with his best friend.

It's ironic that that lady might be Aspie.  She must have worked extra, extra hard and overcame so many obstacles in order for her to have her current standing in this world.  Do you think she know's she's Aspie?  There are so many undiagnosed Aspies who are in denial about being different and can be described as NT-wannabes.  I have an uncle who is like that.  As a "Tiger Mom", I'd imigined she was the polar opposite of an Aspie.

I wish you the best about your eye situation.  That's some scary stuff.  Get it taken care of right away.  The next time I go to my eye doctor (in about a year), I'll have to remember your story for it might have been preventable but there was no warning signs.

No - no email to the mom.

and, you could probably easily give her a good book that shows that you can not change abesnt mindedness- and yes therea re many very successful people who are and always will be absent minded.  
It is part of ones character and maybe help the kid by clueing the mom into the fact that non-social people do actually work in IT or engineering (and maybe not in her field of business) and they do have office staff eventually - BUT I think the mom is doing her level best and I happen to think she is probably a very good mom for the kid (imagine had he not been given anything academic to do when he was so young! perish the thought)  if you found a book that gives tips on absent mindedness - I am sure it would show how to use CHECKlists - my aspie son NEEDED them - because unimportant things he forgets which probably lets him focus on important things...
the mom can be enlightened to see the letting go of unimportant things as a positive aspect of why he does so well on other things...  

Also her son will talk back to her soon and tell her not to pinch no worries... or she will use a book to teach her a better way...

JoJo is quite young - the mom seems rather on the ball to me.

I'm glad to hear about your son's friend. I experienced something similar. My (very NT) daughter changed schools, having been bullied by some kids and the teacher! So you can see bullying isn't just an Aspie problem. But the point of this story is that the worst bully cried to her mother because she missed my daughter so much. She regretted what she had done and became a lot nicer to everybody, including her own mother! So yes, kids can really change - probably more so than grown ups, who are more stuck in their ways.

As for Jojo: if his mother is Aspie, I'm relieved. She must have some understanding of his needs in that case.

The funny thing is that my daughter is now away from her Aspie brother because she's in a new school, and guess who she befriends? A boy who shows remarkable similarity to her brother. It's rather cute.