Social skills?

As a parent I find myself questioning my abilities all the time.
This little human I produced is relying on me to teach her everything I know about the world….
….and sometimes I wonder if I am the right person to do it.

I want to do it, don’t get me wrong.
I want to be there for my children for as long as my life allows.
It’s just, sometimes, I don’t know what I am doing, or if I am doing it correctly.

My girl has Autism.
I don’t.
Therefore me trying to teach her things is difficult.
She can learn, I can teach.
She can walk, talk, eat, read, write etc, and I have taught her those things.
But….
….how can I teach social skills? How can I teach her all the skills she needs to be accepted into society?

Good social skills can improve your mental health and overall quality of life.
To love, and be loved, are fundamental to our existence.
Alot of my girls social struggles stem from the lack of understanding of emotions and social cues.
Her inability to portray, communicate, or read emotion from spoken language, body language and facial expressions hinders the ability to judge a person and make friends.

I want to teach her how to socialise, but that is a skill I struggle with myself.
She has friends, people she talks all things pokémon with and gets up to mischief.
She has always struggled with friendships though, and finds it really difficult to allow her friend, to have friends.
She wants a friend, to be her friend, and nobody elses.

Good social skills are not just about having friends.
It is about how you interact and communicate with others around you.
How you read, and interpret, unspoken language and social cues.
How you position yourself in society.
…Do I feel qualified to teach that?
I don’t think I do.

Being a parent of a child with additional needs, I have isolated myself.
Socialising is not on my ‘to do’ list, I find it all consuming and exhausting.
After years of having to explain my childs behaviour, explain Autism, reiterate that it is not bad parenting, not bad behaviour, it’s not just a phase, justify my ‘paranoid parenting’, I just got disheartened and fell away from the crowd.
My social skills were washed away by all the tears that I cried for the ‘friends’ that walked away when I needed them the most.

Parenting any child is hard.
Teaching any child is hard.
I just want to be able to provide my child with all the knowledge she needs to grow up feeling safe and secure in this big, scary world.
How can I do that though when I cannot see the world through her eyes?

How can I teach what I don’t understand, if I don’t understand what I teach?