Strategies for Teaching Social Skills

Introduction

These are the main areas we are going to talk about over the next hour.  We will talk a little bit about why social skills are so important.  We are going to look at how to assess social skills.  I will give you some checklists and we will go over them.  I think you will find them useful when you are assessing and working with students who have trouble with social skills.  Then we are going to look at just teaching social skills.  I am going to go over some interventions that I often use.  I will then provide you with a couple of sample goals.  I will talk a little bit about social skills groups, and how we have done them in our clinic and also how I have set them up in the schools.  Then we will look at a case study. 

Importance of Social Skills

I do not know if you have heard of Michelle Garcia Winner with SocialThinking.com.   I will refer to her several times throughout the presentation.  She has a great perspective on social skills and a lot of good resources.  Most of what I use and practice came from her conferences and seminars.  One thing that she talks about is the importance of social skills. She asks if you can think of, off the top of your head, a time when you do not need social skills.  It is hard to come up with a time when you truly do not need to use any type of social understanding.  Even thinking about purchasing gas from the gas station, how do you use social skills for that?  When you drive up, you have to make sure that you do not jump in front of the car in front of you.  If there is someone who has been waiting in line, I will not zoom in front of them.  That is a social skill.  How about eating at a restaurant?  Eating at a restaurant requires a ton of social skills, which is why so many of our children that we work with have such a hard time with it.  You have to be able to look around and see what the expectations are of everyone.  Where will you sit?  You have to wait.  You have to look at other people.  You have to be able to think about what other people are thinking about.  You have to communicate what you want and what you do not want.  Going to the bathroom in a public place requires social skills.  You have to know how to go into the bathroom and look to see who is next in line, and know at what point it is your turn to go.  All of those things are social skills.