Daily Practice Will Strengthen Your Child's Social Skills

Your child's ability to appropriately participate in social interactions and play may increase their intellectual functioning, boost self-confidence, help them manage emotions, and improve self-motivation. Parents play a valuable role in strengthening their child's social abilities.

In this article, I will provide several research-based techniques that parents can use to help their children on the autism spectrum feel less stressed out about social situations and building friendships. Parents can integrate these techniques into their child's everyday routine. 

Technique #1: Conversation Show and Tell

Children typically learn through observing and emulating others. Children with autism may have difficulty processing situations they observe so verbal explanations can help them understand what they see.

For children with autism, clarification is vital. Many of the social strategies that come naturally to a parent may be too subtle for the child to identify without further explanation. In real-world social situations, children with autism may find it difficult, to read facial cues, use proper voice inflection, or express appropriate body language. Parents should focus on these types of social behaviors when explaining how the child could improve social interactions in the future.

Parents who model kind, considerate behavior, and make time to thoroughly explain social situations, produce children who are better equipped to connect with, and start conversations with children their age. 

Technique #2: Discuss Prepared Social Scenarios

Another way to prepare your child for future social situations is to write up several different scenarios and discuss them with your child.

Present each scenario visually and then follow up with a verbal explanation. Each scenario could include a list of possible answer choices to give your child guidance about how to respond. If you need inspiration for social scenarios to use with your child look to comics, cartoons, movies, or other media that your child enjoys and take scenarios from there.

Technique # 3: Act It Out

First, pinpoint particular relationships with a peer or classmate that your child finds especially challenging. Then, role-play specific problem situations with your child. Third, give your child direct feedback on how they can appropriately resolve issues that arise. When role-playing have your child play the peer's role in addition to his own role. Highlight and reinforce socially appropriate behaviors as they occur throughout the role-play.

Role-playing will help your child acquire interpersonal skills (thinking before responding and selecting a polite response) as you model and discuss conversations that come up in real-life social scenarios. Role-playing is also beneficial for your child because he can practice social skills in a safe environment with you before tackling the problem directly with a peer or classmate.

Technique #4: Seek Out a Support System

The majority of your child’s success will be greatly influenced by your knowledge of how they struggle socially, and your ability to patiently implement strategies to help them address these needs.

As a parent of a special needs child, I realize that parents need support to do their job well. I suggest that you join an autism support group. The Autism Parenting Magazine provides many great support group resources. As you speak with parents (who also have a child on the autism spectrum) about the social skills training methods they have tried, you will feel more comfortable about helping your child build their social skills.

Most Importantly, Have Faith in Your Child

Radiate confidence in your child. Your words and actions will let your child know that you think they have the ability to learn social skills. If your child can sense that you don't think they can improve, your attempts to teach new novel social skills may be unsuccessful. As you work with your child look at the positive and highlight even small improvements because every small change your child makes will add up to big improvements in the long-run.

Resources

Thompson, B., 2017. Helping Your Child With Autism Improve Social Skills. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/socioemotional-success/201706/helping-your-child-autism-improve-social-skills> [Accessed 24 June 2020].