Helping E to build mental models via fiction (since she seems to be willing?) seems very useful, to me. I'm not on the spectrum and that's still more or less how I did it. :) (I saw it going on, but it almost never affected me directly and I didn't care for it or about it.)
IMO a ton of novels with teens in them are exaggerated, both during our approximate childhood years and now.
I think that there's a fair amount of variation. A close friend with a middle-school daughter and 8yo son says that the son has felt sad since the spring about the ways in which his classmates expect him to roughhouse and hide squishy feelings. She's speculated that his sister has fared better so far not because she's older but because she's more aware of ranges of possibility via ... the novels she reads. He reads, too, but much less widely.
no subject
IMO a ton of novels with teens in them are exaggerated, both during our approximate childhood years and now.
I think that there's a fair amount of variation. A close friend with a middle-school daughter and 8yo son says that the son has felt sad since the spring about the ways in which his classmates expect him to roughhouse and hide squishy feelings. She's speculated that his sister has fared better so far not because she's older but because she's more aware of ranges of possibility via ... the novels she reads. He reads, too, but much less widely.