Helping Your Child Make Friends

Which Social Skills does your child need in order for them to make friends?

Basic Social skills do not come naturally for many children and as they get older, they might catch up on the academic work, and struggle with the social interaction.

This is the case for many children who attend our social skills group in Meath.

Social skills by their nature are difficult to teach - especially to children who appear to have little motivation to interact with peers (unless they want something....) - so what can you do?

Consider these questions:

Does your child understand what 'friends' are?

Do they know what does 'Hello' means? and we say it?

Can they answer 'What's your name?'

The answer to these questions will give you a place to start.

In our group, we begin with basic 1-word social skills and build from there. You can do th same at home.

Tips to teach basic communication skills:

1) Use 'Hello' and 'Hello (name)' when you meet people. Encourage your child to look at, say or sign 'hello' to someone at least once every day.

2) See if they can remember something about their friend or friends - such as their names, what they are wearing, what they played with at school etc.

3) Practice answering 'what's your name?' - use their name as a prompt with the answer.

These basic questions are the ones many people will be asking your child out and about, or at school. If they can understand everyday questions and reply, it will help build your child's social confidence. When they can make basic social interactions, further attempts will follow.

All of these questions are covered in our social skills game 'Hello' which is designed to teach these skills - take a look at: http://www.hometrain.ie/ 'Hello', free social skills info and printables.

Claire.

'Hello' Social Skills Summer Group !

Hi everyone,

I have a small number of places left on my Social Skills Summer course called 'Hello' here in Meath. It's a basic verbal interaction group, that if all goes well, I will continue on weekly until December (4-7 years) - we have been beavering away this year and also launching our CDROM called 'Hello' which is our 2010 social skills project, but that's later this Summer.

Anyone interested in testing the programme at home (for free) ??



Check out the site this week for more info and details about the Hello group.
www.hometrain.ie

Oh and by the way, you might notice my name now is Claire Whyte, as I am embracing my newly married name!


Claire x

Mums and Tutors - I need your teaching ideas !!

This week I want ideas. Lots of them - big, small, whatever, please get your typing fingers ready!

Who has or is working with a child with asd, and, although they have a repertoire of more than 300 words spanning labelling and functional language, they show little interest in 'talking'??

Taking the step from labelling pictures at the classroom table, to talking about things can seem miles apart.

We can start with teaching a strong labelling repertiore - which builds language, confidence, accuracy and communication. O.k. Then we go onto teaching the function of items and objects (you write with a ..........pencil) - which is also helpful and builds on language.

Now - to the next part. Answering a variety questions. 'Wh' questions - What, Who, Where, When, Why, and How ? are our textbook selection. And we use pictures and verbal prompts for teaching these - such as pictures of people, places, storyboards etc.

So far so good, and the student can answer some questions - and fluently when practised. Where do you go from here? My stategy at this stage is to have a stack of random questions (influenced by the intraverbal questions in ABLL's appendix) - practise them with and without visual prompts, and build from there. Using reinforcers to keep their interest at the table during the questions (I'm asking about 8 at a time inbetween other activities) and giving the list to mum to practise randomly at home. Repetition of varied questions will hopefully lead to the student answering basic questions without a prompt, and so on.

My question is this:

Is this the best way to teach answering questions? I know every child is different etc, but if you have an idea or activity that worked, I'd love to hear it! Any of your teaching ideas for practical social/classroom skills will be great for all to see and use.

Thanks, in anticipation for ideas,

Claire x