Will she get social skills from her friends?

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My daughter has a few friends and they come over about 3 times a week. She also has a twin who she hangs out with all day long. She has been diagnosed as having the interpersonal skills of a 4 year old. I don't really see this when I see her with her friends and she seems to be doing okay, like her sister. Does she need to attend some kind of social skills program to help her gain these skills or will she eventually learn them herself by socializing in real life?

She may learn them, possibly through social consequences she may or may not care about. I figured some of it out. My mom tried to "help me" and I pretty much ignored all of her advice whenever it was optional b/c she was going by a number of very incorrect assumptions of what my socialization goals would be. I was not diagnosed and it was uncommon to be diagnosed at that time, and I think I would have been too mild for social skills help anyway.

We are looking for a special interest club for my son b/c he would not enjoy a purely social group. We would have to bribe the heck out of him to participate, and I do not see the point in that case.

Do you know what her social goals are? If I remember right, she tags along mainly with her twin and her twin's friends. I don't remember if her sister and friends actually were OK with that or not. If it is OK with everyone involved then her sister could act as a guide which would probably be more effective than what an adult would teach b/c she would know what is currently cool, and the specific functioning of her social group.

If her sister and/or her friends are not cool with it, then that is a different thing b/c you have to decide if it is fair to force the one girl to include the other, and have to deal with the social consequences of that. I would not do that, personally, but I think that some families view that in a different way than I would.

Edited to add: If her friends are independent of her sister, and I am misremembering, than it depends on how she is doing with them. If any of them is acting like a "mother hen" and guiding her that will be more successful. If she has enough skills to navigate with not too many bumps compared to the others her age (There tends to be a lot of drama, and it is bumpy for all kids in some form or another to varying degrees) than you can just wait and see.

Hmm.. well we don't know how old she ACTUALLY is so I am going to assume (since you are posting) that social skills age 4 is not satisfactory.

She may pick up some from others, but she more likely doesn't realize they are there to pick up / and won't do it "naturally" if the mind isn't naturally inclined towards such things (mind is on other, possibly more interesting, things!).

So she may need some professional direction if you are gung ho about getting her to focus on learning to be more socially aware/skilled. The biggest challenge is to identify exactly what being diagnosed with "sub-par social skills" specifically means in HER particular case. And then to solve what - and why - it is important that she learn those abilities. If you can figure the what and why for each, and then explain or propose to her a logical reasoning behind this desire to pick up certain skills.... in a way where she sees a benefit to doing so...

You might make progress.

Yes, she will develop social skills by interacting socially and do so much more happily than if they are forced on her.

By "program" I assume you mean some sort of Behavioral Therapy. IMHO, it is nothing but unhealthy to indicate to a child that there is something wrong with being who they are, unless their behavior is violent, criminal or otherwise overtly antisocial.

One of the most important social skills that kids on the spectrum can learn is imitation. If she watches her peers, and tries to follow their lead (at least some of the time), then she will learn from them. Having peers that enjoy coming over is an incredibly valuable resource. Having a twin that can push her along is also potentially very helpful.

My main concern for you and your daughter would be in some way alienating the peers or their parents. So it may be worth having a conversation with their parents in advance if there's anything specific about your daughter or her behavior that may upset them. That way they can be prepared for it. Sometimes you may have to step in as well; if for example you notice that your daughter is refusing to do what her peers want, and only doing what she wants, you may want to step in and encourage some turn-taking. Basically, be on the look out for major social missteps, and try to help her avoid them if possible.

I think if one is mild, they can learn on their own. The ones who needs therapy for it are the ones who are more severe on the spectrum and can't figure it out on their own. For some reason they can't just watch other kids and copy them or go reading books about it and learn. I learned from reading books about it, talking to my mother asking her lot of questions about what people do and it was time consuming for her, watching movies. There are social skills books out there for NT kids and I read those. I think if one is eager to learn, they will learn.

Also the downside to having an ASD kid that mimics others is they may copy the wrong behavior and they may even copy the younger kids and also watch out for who their friends are and who they are with so they don't get badly influenced by them. People call this peer pressure because do kids do this too. I also had to learn from my mistakes of copying the wrong behaviors and to save myself the trouble, I figured out if I didn't like what someone did to me, chances are I shouldn't do it to someone else because it was probably wrong of them when they did it to me. It's called treating others the way you like to be treated.

Without knowing her age its difficult to judge how severe this is.

Social skills are learned between age 4 and 8 ... this means the ability to read body language, correctly interpret voice tone changes, hidden meanings, sarcasm, etc. If she is 10 or above then she won't learn these skills at the 'instinctive' level by socializing. She has to be taught how to consciously ID and respond to them.

Dantac,

This is probably a stupid question, but is it one of those things where if your kid is delayed enough to not pick it up via social osmosis, by chronological age 10, he/she probably aren't wired to get, or does it go by developmental age?

I learned sarcasm when I was older and I think it happened naturally, so it can still be learned. We just tend to learn them late passed the normal age because we are slow.

never heard that age thing myself. I know communication skills tend to get acquired in that age range (and earlier). There's a process called "synaptic pruning" where we start with way more neurons than we need, and then our brain operates on a "use it or lose it" principle. So in general, it's true that learning certain basic things is much easier at a younger age. Even so, things can typically be learned at any age, it just gets a bit harder to do, and there may be certain pieces that don't completely fit if learned later (for example, people who learn a language late tend to have more issues with pronunciation).

This was very important to both of my kids...learning to reference their peers. But I would say in different ways. My daughter used to freeze up and shut down if she wasn't explicitly taught how to do something. Everything from hanging up her coat to sitting in circle time had to be taught to her explicitly. So any "new" situation led to a spaced out little girl who almost looked catatonic. Her 1:1 taught her that when she felt confused to look at her peers for clues what to do. If everyone else is putting their books away, put your books away. If everyone else is walking in the same direction, walk with them. If everyone else was sitting on the carpet, sit on the carpet.

As she has gotten older, I would have to say this is not working as well because her needs are different, and social requirements are different. It is hard for me to explain, exactly, but now she often will not reference her peers because she always believes she is right and they are wrong, so she sometimes misses important social cues. She does get social skills training and she loves it. I actually asked her if she wanted to stop going this year because she is doing better, and she said no. She does have an understanding that she needs help with "social smarts" (as opposed to academic smarts, which she excels at), so she knows that going helps her. However, in the heat of the moment, she fails to recognize that the problem she is facing is due to her difficulty with "social smarts" so the incidental peer learning seems to be less effective. Plus, social interactions are getting more complex, so she really needs guidance breaking things down.

My son has pretty good "social smarts" insofar as interpersonal skills are concerned. Where he has difficulty is with non-verbal communication (body language/tone of voice) and figurative language. He uses peer referencing to try to "fake" his way through situations that he does not understand. He has never received official social skills training, though I have worked with him extensively and he does get general support at school and they know he has some social deficits, so they try to help him informally.

Its developmental. The brain undergoes significant internal wiring during the early years. Most parents think babies recognize their faces because the baby's eyes lock onto them...when the truth is that is a reflex which as the baby grows the brain wires a counter-signal that blocks that reflex.

The 'socializing osmosis' does happen between the ages I mentioned. It is why I said its the age range they learn these things to an automatic/instinctive level. Past age 10 the social information gets processed at a more cognitive level. The thing with AS and autism in general is the wiring needed to absorb that social information (body language, social graces, etc) is somehow 'miswired' (google: Mirror Neurons) hence during those critical years of socializing osmosis we do not pick most of those skills up. Monotone (mostly) voice... inability to read some/most body language... difficulty recognizing emotional content in others... all these little things add up to the social issues that become a difficulty during and past the teenage years.



It can be learned of course. What I'm trying to say is that it is not automatic...you have to cognitively pick it up. Think of how you observe people flirt/date/small talk and you'll see them bombarding each other with very subtle body language, voice tone and other emotional content at a dizzying rate. They pick all this up automatically while we need to 'catch' it happening.


Think of it as learning a foreign language. It is general knowledge kids pick up languages faster...this is wrong. Adults learn it faster. However, kids learn it better. They absorb (the osmosis thing again) the inflections, voice tone, nuances and all those qualities that give them native-level fluency. A child under ~10 that learns a foreign language gets the pronunciation perfectly if he has constant and daily exposure to it whereas an adult ends up speaking the language with an accent.

Talk to your child's psychologist and see if it would be ok to have her go to cognitive/social skills therapy to aid her in picking up these skills. The earlier the better.

There are a lot of different kinds of 'social skills' and some of them kids can learn by observation/practice - some of them not. I would ask what skills is she specifically lacking? My daughter was not able to read body language and didn't understand what changes in tone of voice or facial expression meant, but she could share and stand in line and some of those other social skills kids learn. She did receive social skills therapy for several years and has learned all of those skills - though as her autism specialist said, "**** has social skills, she just chooses not to use them."

I laughed pretty hard when she told us that, because it was exactly true. My daughter simply didn't (and still doesn't) see the need for friendships in the same way I do. Anyway I would suggest figuring out exactly what skills are lacking and get her some therapy to help her understand how others behave and why - then she can choose to make changes in her own behavior or not.

Good Luck

If her interactions were impaired, you would probably notice discomfort when friends are over, either on her part or theirs. For some kids on the spectrum, frustration, ranging from ignoring peers and sitting in a corner to becoming agressive or having meltdowns, are pretty common in the pre-school years; for others, friendships become much more difficult during the school years. It is quite common to have peers ignore them, bully them, refuse to play with them, etc. If you haven't seen or heard a lot of things that are problematic, ie if she isn't melting down and if her twin isn't saying that her friends don't want to play with her, then the social skills might not be as big a deal as people outside the home think.
I think interaction with her twin and her twin's friends is great practice. You might want to do some direct instruction with both of them, doing some role play or simply discussing aspects of interactions before or after.
My daughter is the youngest in a large family, and I know her relationships with her older siblings are great assets to her ability to navigate the complictions of friendships.
J.

Wow, did I ever get some great responses from everyone! I don't have the net at home, so I wasn't able to see all this advice until today. I forgot to mention that my daughter is 13 and has just been diagnosed two months ago. I am trying to figure out exactly what she needs in terms of help. I know she has the interpersonal skills of a 4 year old because the report said so, but I do not see this at home when she is around her friends. Her main thing is she has a bad temper which flares up regularly, but when she invites someone over, she is usually really happy and okay during the visit. If not, she would likely decide not to invite anyone over or decide to send the friend to her sister's room. Sometimes she gets overwhelmed and will kick her sister out of the room and just hang out with the friend she asked to come over. The visiting friend usually seems fine with hanging out with her too.

I just don't see the social deficits that her psychological report mentioned and I wonder if I am wrong. She seems just as social as her twin sister. She just has way more arguments with her friends because she takes things the wrong way. I am beginning to think if I find her help with managing her emotions, her whole life will just get way easier.

As for reading books about social cues to her, right now she is resistant to pretty much all help. She figures she is Aspergers and we just all need to deal with it. She doesn't feel the need for any help and doesn't feel that she has any problems.

triplemoon18,

Do you have a copy of the report that said she has the interpersonal skills of a 4 yr old that has a list of everything that was assessed, with ratings for each skill? What testing did they use to get their result? Was it just observation?

The reason I am asking is there is big difference between a teen that has mild emotional regulation problems (which seems to be what you observe) and having the same social skills as a 4 year old.

If you asked your other daughter would she give you a candid assessment of how she is doing? Given that she is in a position to observe her more than you can, that might be some very good insight to have. She will also know how much help she is giving her and will know how reliant she is.

IF she is anything like my son, home base feels safer and behavior is likely to be more atypical out in the wilds of socializationland, like school and wherever they hang out. In addition, there would not be the scaffolding that she has at home. She likely has to deal with larger groups of people out there and that might be a better gauge than in the lab conditions that home can sometimes resemble. (We do a lot of scaffolding, but even if we did not, it is just intrinsically a different place if you KWIM.)