Assessing Children's Social Skills

In the teaching at home and school in special needs education, social skills teaching is a popular topic. For many children, these skills emerge naturally without any teaching of these 'unwritten rules of communication' - so how do we assess and teach them?
The principals of the A.B.A. protocol give us tools to teach some social skills as part of our everyday teaching. These include communicating with others in an appropriate way, following instructions, learning and adapting new skills and behaviour patterns.

The book I often refer to is called 'Social Skills Solutions' - a hands-on manual, written by Kelly McKinnon and Janis Krempa. It is described well by Rafael Castro:

"Starting with the initial assessment of the child's proficiency proir to the start of the program to the implementation of each of it's modules to the smallest details"

 The checklist and modules in the book are well-designed and when completed, cover a full range of skill areas for evaluation. This helps us to write recommendations and curriculum development for individual children.  

The text also covers strategies for your curriculum, and a good selection of useable resources.

For those of us who are working with children who have social skills difficulties, this is an extremly useful text.

You can also write social stories for children.

Points to include in your social story:

1. A title
2. A narrative - what do you want your child to learn?
3. Event lines
4. Emotion lines
5. Story lines
6. A ending

You can also include pictures to illustrate the key aspects of your story.

The games we write at Hometrain - 'How Are You?' and 'Hello' each have eight characters, 4 boys and 4 girls. Each child has a social scenario and emotion that the player can learn about, and relate to. They are written this way to join together children, emotions and related social scenarios together.

Associated worksheets and colouring pages are printable also from the same disc.

The birthday party game is fun to play and opens up many different avenues of conversation and learning about this social scene.

You can play this free online here: http://www.hometrain.ie/games/party.php

There are also colouring pages in our free resources.

Happy teaching!

Claire.

Ten More Things you didn't know about us....

1. Hometrain.ie is the only developer of social skills software in Ireland
2. Hometrain has a sister company called 'Hometrain Media' - which is  a CD and DVD printing company: http://www.hometrain.ie/media
3. Claire researches,develops and writes our programmes, she also really likes Jedward
4. The Hometrain Social Skills Group is now 1 year old, and runs every Saturday (term-time) 
5. The book on CD 'Going to School' is being translated into Irish, ready to launch in May/June 2011
6. William is the programmer and developer of all software, as well as the website, which he updates with changes most days!
7. Hometrain Ltd publishes and produces it's own products in Ireland
8. The next big project is App development for i-Phones
9. The project after that is called 'Going to Hospital' for App and CD-Rom
10. Hometrain are working hard and surviving the recession - support us - help us feel better! 

Why Special Needs Children Don't Enjoy Parties

Love them or hate them, birthday parties are part and 'parcel' of child-life, and indeed adult life too.
Before talking about kids though, think about the adults in your life (yourself included) and how you react to birthday parties. There are generally three types:

1) Yes! The party lover! Enjoys their parties, the kids' parties, other people's parties, planning, organising, having people around or going out, the more the merrier etc. Usually a sociable type of person who likes to have events to look forward to and likes groups and enjoys excitement.
2) Maybe, erm, o.k. The party attendee! Will go when invited, doesn't mind parties, but if given a choice, prefers to have a quiet celebration without all the hassle. The classic line for this person - 'You'll enjoy it when you get there' (know anyone like this?) and 'don't go to any trouble on my account.'

3) No! Party pooper! Does not like fuss, too many people, too much to organise for just a birthday unless it's a significant birthday. May go

along to the party, but but probably whine and

moan until you get in the door. Classic line for this person -

'I'll just go for an hour'.

It's a combination of personality type, our life experience of parties, plus how we express our needs/wants/desires at celebrations.

So what about our kids?
We take pleasure in seeing our children grow to become excited about parties, many count the days, weeks, hours and minutes until their next brithday, liking to help organise what to have, where to go and what they want to do etc. Other children don't mind parties, and like us, some do not experience the same enjoyment.
If you are a party person, and you as a parent have kids who are party kids, then great. If you are a party parent, and your kid is not a party kid, then to some degree, there's not a lot you can do!

If your child has special needs, they too might love parties (some too much) and there are reasons why they don't enjoy parties.
Here's a term we all know and love: Being 'over stimulated' which is caused by high excitement, anticipation and sensory overload. For some children, this can be an unpleasant experience, feeling out of control and unsure how to process the events. Especially high when surrounded with decorations and everyone is creating a party atmosphere.
There are 7 senses we use to process information:
1) Sight 2) Sound 3) Touch 4) Smell 5) Taste 6) Body posture 7) Movement
Our brains constantly process all these senses to help us feel secure, and know how to act in different situations.
Children who have sensory dysfunction cannot process all this information smoothly, and therefore are unable to react in social situations in the same way we expect them to - even if they have been to lots of parties.
Many children do not experience fun or excitement in the same way we do, and being centre of attention can be an extremely unpleasant experience.

Some ways you can help:

• Give your child choices about when and where and if they want a party
• Give them choices about activities, the cake and games
• Make a calendar to count down the days if they are very excited
• Make a book about birthdays, learn about presants, cards, cake etc.
• Give your child choices about what clothing they want (they may feel more comfortable in something familiar instead of new)
• Give them time to prepare for going to a party - if they haven't been to the house before, you could arrange a pre-party play date
• Don't push it if they don't want to go - give them time to feel comfortable going to parties
• Go to choose the party gift together

Kids can play a great party game free online, from the social skills communication game 'Hello'
Go here:http://www.hometrain.ie/games/party.php

And just for the record................ I love parties!

Claire.