![]() They can help a person know how to act in different social situations, make friends, learn from others, develop leisure interests, foster relationships, and support mental health and well-being. Social skills encompass a number of areas such as play skills, conversing, emotions, problem solving and friendships/relationships. What’s Missing from Social Skills Training My attitude now is about trying to understand and learn more about supporting their unique communication styles, thinking, how they express themselves, and how I can help them and the people they interact with make social situations satisfying experiences for them. My daughter experiences high social anxiety when having to mix with people even though she wants to be engaged and involved. My son loves being around people and going out and about in the community, but he has communication difficulties and is echolalic. While my children have learned many skills and improved, they continue to struggle in new social situations. Judy Endow has helped me to understand why social skills programs have not worked for my autistic children who are now 25 and 23. Often, things we see as social skills are neurotypical expectations or rules like making eye contact or making small talk.” It’s that being autistic means we have a different way of socializing that needs to be understood and accommodated. “It’s not that being autistic affects our social skills. Sonny Jane, consultant and lived experience educator says: I was never very good at it because no matter how many therapeutic social skills situations I availed myself of, because they were taught as if all participants had a neurotypical brain and my brain was not neurotypical, I mostly failed their learning agenda for me. When I was younger and deemed “in need of help” that “help” largely involved others trying to teach me to think and act as if I had a typically wired brain. Judy Endow expresses this point well in her blog post Autistic Processing of Social Information: When autistic thinking and neurology are not taken into account, social skills tend to be taught for the neurotyical brain. Reading and listening to the viewpoints of autistic people has opened my eyes to the problems that social skills training can cause over time such as masking. See product file for clip art credits.Over the years, my thoughts and opinions around social skills teaching have changed a great deal. Intended for classroom and personal use ONLY. Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. This product is to be used by the original downloader only. Each teacher should share their experiences with the responses, as well.Ĭopyright © 2016-22. The "Suggested Response" pages are a jumping point for teachers. The responses are an opinion in words that elementary age children will understand. This is intended for use in a General Education classroom, with common questions that students have asked over my many years of teaching. In recognition of Autism Awareness Month and all year long, here are 101 Question Cards about Autism in simple language with kid-friendly answers.
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