Teaching/Learning Social Skills

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(If this is the wrong place for this, please tell me -- I'm new.)

I could use some advice.

My eldest is six, turning seven in June. He's considered "high functioning", is in a mainstream class at school, and at this point is getting very little in the way of special instruction. A little bit of speech, and tiny bit of physical therapy to help with his fine motor skills.

(This, for the record, we need to step up; we're working on finding a way to afford it.)

His social skills are becoming the bigger issue, though. He's doing pretty well at school, with a few close friends, but I know that he's having a hard time playing with other kids. I've watched him at the park -- older kids invite him to play ball, and he's happy to play...his way. Which means that instead of playing catch (throwing is very hard for him, accurate throwing even more so), he takes the ball and runs away in hopes of inciting a chase. Or grabs a football and tries to introduce the concept of the "bonus ball".

I can see the other kids getting annoyed, and from their perspective it's not hard to understand why.

He's also overly friendly with small children and their parents. He like to pat toddlers on the head, hug and kiss them, and divulge every iota of personal information to the parent -- name, grade, age, his little brother's name and age, his home address and phone number. Thank god he doesn't know his social security number; he'd happily give that out as well.

I'm trying to explain to him what is and isn't appropriate ("You can't just kiss a baby you don't know," and "Jumping up and down and screaming silly things is not the best way to entertain that toddler...and it's freaking out his mom."), but he tends to just shut me out and walk away when I try. He gets very anxious about certain things -- anything that he sees on TV that involves someone getting in trouble, like a Word Girl episode where she gets framed for a crime, will send him out of the room with his hands over his ears, wailing that he doesn't want to watch that. I suspect that there's a connection here, but it's not one that he's ever been able to articulate to me.

I'm not an outgoing person. Neither is his mother. There's something terribly ironic about *us* having to teach a child social skills, but yet...here we are.

And I've no idea where or how to start.

A good place to start would be with some social stories - check out Carol Gray's books & website http://www.thegraycenter.org/
With things like how to act around babies/toddlers, write a brief story about the things one needs to remember about how to act with a baby and why it is important to be gentle. Review the story often, like on a daily basis for a few weeks. Then when he gets in that situation again, the lesson learned from the social story will likely come to his mind or you can remind him of it. This way you are instilling the lesson during teachable moments instead of trying to prevent inappropriate behavior while you are in the midst of it happening.

The best way to appeal to the Autistic mind is to make it practical. If it makes sense, it will sink in and stick. If it seems pointless and silly to us, its much harder to grasp WHY we must behave in a way that feels unnatural to us. Be patient. It takes a lot of time to adjust to social expectations we don't fully comprehend. In many ways, he will never learn to behave the way others think he should, and you'll just have to accept that. When one's brain is wired differently, your thought processes just run along different lines - when your approach is askew from the norm, your conclusions are likely to be askew as well - not wrong, just different.

I agree with the above posters!

Social Stories are a great way to introduce social rules. My kiddo need specific rules laid out with WHY people have those rules. I make my own social stories....with fabulous stick people pictures. hahaha

The story could be named "Play Ball!"

Then something like:

It is fun to play ball with friends. There are many different ways to play with a ball.

I can play catch, chase, soccer, and even basketball!

If I want to join other kids who are playing ball, then I follow the game they are playing.

If I want to play chase, I can find a ball and invite a friend to play.

If I join other kids, and then try to change their game they might get mad. Then they won't want to play at all. That's why it is important to play the game the group is playing when I join another group.

I love playing ball! A can join in other people's game or invite other kids to play my game!



Then we role play with characters. I have him be the other person's role first so it is easier for him to understand the other person's perspective. Then we switch roles.

We also practice the roles ourselves, so its easier to remember when he comes across it.

Then we go out to parks and find kids to play with and practice the skill that way too.






As far as social rules for touching/hugging/etc you can make him a "circle of friends" chart...it looks like a bullseye. In the center of the circle is family, you can talk to your family about anything and hugs and kisses are fine. Then friends (friends are kids you know well. You talk to them about things you have in common, like school, toys, and sports. Then discuss appropriate touch). Then Adults that help...you can talk to them when you need help. They are there to keep you safe and help you learn. Then talk appropriate touch for that group. Then community helpers, and then strangers. Strangers are people we don't know, we do not talk to adults we don't know. Then discuss your rules for meeting children he doesn't know.

It helped my kiddo to be able to put people into categories and match up what his responses should be with that group. There was a while when he would ask any adult in a store for help! The circle of friends helped him navigate that better.



As far as getting anxious when he sees people or characters getting in trouble...I've seen that too! My kiddo is worried that HE is going to get in trouble too. As if it happens to them, it can somehow happen to him. He is also obsessed with other kids at school getting in trouble and breaking rules. We talk about the What if (What if I get in trouble too?) versus the What Is (I like to follow rules, and I don't get in trouble in class.)

You can do some oral and fine motor exercises at home too, if you want more info let me know.

Absolutely excellent advice from the above posters.

At about the same age, we started my son in social skills classes. Where we lived, they were provided by the state. Some internet searching for social skills classes might turn up a class available in your area.

Also, at that age, my son's school speech therapist provided A LOT in the way of social skills. At your son's age, she would have asked him to invite two kids from his class to go to the therapist with him, and then they would play in front of the therapist. That way, the therapist could watch what he was doing correctly and praise and promote that good behavior, and also watch whatever it was that he wasn't doing correctly (not sharing, not playing the game the others want to play) and direct his behavior into more appropriate play skills. This went from first grade through third grade, and the other kids were more than happy to come and play. In fourth and fifth grade, once every two weeks the therapist had my son invite one or two friends to have lunch with the therapist, and she would work on conversational skills. At this age, it's slightly harder to get the kids to attend, but usually somebody would do so. All of this was extremely beneficial for my son.

Also, this speech therapist asked us often what things our son needed to work on. If you were able to have similar help from your speech therapist, you could ask her to work on "what's appropriate to do when you meet younger kids at a playground", etc.

This I relate to very much. "The blind leading the blind" so to speak (although that figure of speech doesn't sound particularly politically correct anymore, does it? No offence intended to anyone who is visually impaired).

Great advice from the previous posters. We have done social stories, role playing and read books about friendship over and over again. (I recommend "How to be a Friend" by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown) When my sons were younger, we also invited 1 or two kids over for very structured playdates. Where I was basically hanging out with them, and gently helping my son(s) to respond in the appropriate way at the appropriate time, being careful not to embarrass them in the process.

One of the biggest things that has helped our sons has been a social skills group that the school runs once a week. Because my sons often don't generalize information (I can teach them not to do something at home, but they may not be able to apply the lesson to a school setting) this has been most helpful. Could you ask your school whether they would be willing to start such a group? In our school it is run jointly by the school counsellor, speech pathologist and resource teacher. My sons have also attended a social skills day camp in the summer, which was run by 2 occupational therapists, which was also helpful.

Thank you all -- it's been a busy week, as our youngest (also on the spectrum) started preschool this morning. To my amazement, he got on the bus without screaming or fighting -- indeed, he yanked his hand out of mine, clambered on up, and held out his arms for the aide so she could pick him up and put him in his seat. I'm still a little boggled by this...

As a sort of stopgap, I was using "You're sick, and if you kiss people while you're sick you might make THEM sick as well." Which he did get, albeit with some grumbling.

Making some social stories -- my wife, happily, has genuine artistic skills -- sounds like a great idea, and I'll try hard to explain the wise and wherefores of not treating all small children the way that you treat your little brother. Why his brother puts up with it, I still don't know.



I love that idea! I think that we'll try and do something like that this weekend.



Honestly, I have a bit of it myself. I can't STAND to watch someone making a fool of himself -- a lot of the "Special Reports" on the Daily Show are almost painful for me, and shows like Fawlty Towers are very difficult to sit through, funny though they may be.



I'll look into this. It's been a rough year, with my wife dealing with a very severe depression that's required a couple of hospitalizations -- we've been spending so much time and energy keeping things afloat, we've not been able to devote nearly enough to finding services.

Hello!

I too am new and just thought of a couple of things while reading your post. I think social skills are the most difficult to teach. I work with middle school aged kids and they can be SO MEAN!

I think that Bombaloo has some great suggestions as far as social stories and being proactive is so important. Even keeping a little notebook (or using your cell phone as I do to keep notes) about things that you see that need to be taught would be a great idea as being proactive and not letting them get caught in "unfamiliar territory" is always important. I don't know how your son's verbal skills are, but when something happens and they are frustrated or embarrassed, they find it so hard to tell you what is wrong and its definitely not a time that they receptive to teaching as it is with all of us!

Speech therapists are usually a great resource as far as being able to provide ideas or resources of teaching social skills.

Once you teach social skills or social stories, another thing to remember is that not all individuals with autism can "generalize" these ideas or skills from one situation to another, so there is a lot of retouching involved as you already know!

On another post someone offered Boy Scouts as something to get a child involved in so that they can learn and practice interacting with others along with learning new skills. I have also had several students with autism who were successful at Taekwondo or in 4H groups as well. Everyone there is learning social skills, responsibility and how to interact with others as well as some new skills about their projects as well!

The post is this website then- postt158041.html just in case there were some different ideas posted there.

There are some amazing, knowledgeable parents on this website with some great information!

Good luck to you!