Communicating from the perspectives of someone with Aspergers and someone without
One of the toughest things that I've found I deal with is identifying, acknowledging and then being able to verbalise my feelings. This I feel is a throwback to the best self defence mechanism I could create, show little emotion and feel as little hurt/pain as possible. While this may have helped me keep my guard up it will no doubt have been frustrating for my loved ones and the people who were trying to help my situation. As time passed I moved away from the schooling system and the pressure of having to lay my feelings out to strangers time in and out. It allowed me to start to develop my own means of communication which suited me better.
It's important when communicating to not make the situation become confrontational despite how frustrating things may feel. From experience at times I'd find it hard to properly understand how I felt myself, so communicating this to others would be almost impossible at times. Remembering that the people close to you (whether you're someone with Aspergers or the person who is close to someone with it) aren't the enemy is vital in building the trust needed for good communication. Painful memories of conflict (even with the best of intentions for me in mind) would make me apprehensive about opening up, with worry of that sort of thing happening again. It may take time but finding a comfortable way to communicate is vital for all involved and an invaluable aid.
A simple means of identifying my feelings was to relate how I felt to songs. I could pick out lines or even verses to symbolise how I felt. My go to song from my early teens was a song called "Push" which from the title alone you can draw ideas from it. I felt at the time I was being pushed by people's opinions of how I should feel to make things easier for them to do their "job." The feel of music and the escapism it gave would let me think of how I felt without pressure. A wide variety of music works best for this as it allows a range of emotions to be covered that one particular genre may not allow for.
Another similar method to finding emotion and feelings in songs is to identify with a film/TV program. The main difference between this and songs is that scenes last longer than lyrics from songs, which can give a clearer indication to feelings. There may also be visual cues as to how someone's feeling so it's worth observing the actor/actresses mannerisms in a scene.
As I'm a visual person a good way for me to be able to try to identify how I felt was to have a list of emotions in front of me. As I'd look through them, even if I wasn't 100% sure how I felt I could best place to which one (or even a few) I felt the closet to. Although I never had anyone do this with me, I feel that making up cards with emotions on may be ideal for working with a younger child. That way they have the consciously look through all the emotions and consider them. If you would like to try and gauge how someone is feeling about a particular subject/situation you could ask them to answer using the cards. This would be a good idea as verbally communicating may be hard to do on the spot, or if the person is upset.
If you'd prefer a more direct means of communication that still doesn't require an immediate response to minimise pressure, an open notebook is a good option. I've used this technique before to express myself properly without the worry of a time limit. It was an open forum that was specifically created to remove the worry of confrontation. What was wrote was respected by both parties and without "the heat of the moment" to concern me my communication was clearer and I was easier to read as a pattern to my feelings/behaviour could be seen. Rather than making it completely serious we also included fun little facts, drawing and jokes as a reminder it wasn't a bad thing to do an entry in it.