Reaching Out, Joining In: Teaching Social Skills to Young Children with Autism

Weiss, M. J. & Harris, S. L. (2001) Reaching Out, Joining In: Teaching Social Skills to Young Children with Autism BETHESDA, MD, USA; Woodbine House Inc. 


'If a child is nonverbal, there are still skills... that will be relevant for them. Remember that communication is both verbal and nonverbal, and that expression can take many forms besides verbal communication.' (for example, understanding the nonverbal communication of others) (pp70)


 The Language of Social Skills (pp71)

• appropriate social behaviour
• following social rules
• getting and giving information
• maintaining a conversation
• slang, idioms, and expressions
• telling jokes
• using gestures
  

Conversational Exchange 

'As the grammatical complexity of a child's language increases, so too does his ability to carry his own end of a conversation. Initially, it takes a great deal of work from the adult to sustain a conversation with the child. As the child gets older, he reciprocates with an adult more skillfully, and can carry on conversation with a peer.'

'conversations with a peer occur later, because childre are not as aware of the need to create a supportive structure for sustaining the echange. In fact, this is one of the reasons children with autism have a harder time conversing with peers than with adults. Adults have a very nuanced ability to recognise the needs of the child with autism and provide the right prompts. A child, no matter how well intentioned, will not understand how to do this and after a few attempts may give up on the dialog.'

Teaching the Language of Social Skills

'Children with autism are doubly challenged in learning the language of social sills. First, they struggle with understanding social information and with learning how to interact with peers. Second, understanding and using complex language is a significant challenge for many of them. As a result, learning to manage social interaction often presents formidable language demands along with social ones.'

• Is this why echolalia occurs?
• Are children repeating because they are not understanding to the concept?
  

Social Stories

'social stories are brief, written narratives about what will happen or how a child is expected to behave in a specific situation. These stories are written in simple language and capture the essence of a social behaviour.'

'Carol Gray, an educator employed by a school system in Michigan, created social stories as a means to convey complex social information to children with autism... She suggests that one directive (rule) statement be given for every three to five informative sentences that describe the situation or give perspective on behaviour.'

• Will the stories told relate to a social story that has been repeatedly told to the child?
• Will statements given refelct this, or will the program's more open-plan approach mean that the statements won't come up as the system of storytelling is less regimented?
• Should there be more of a 'rule' structure to the overall storytelling process?

Social Stories (Specifically for Autism)

Although are mainly written, alternative social stories can be recorded on video, spoken aloud, or used as 'scripts' to re-enact events or stories.

PURPOSE

1. Social avoidance -- Kids who would fall into the category of socially avoidant might be those who tantrum, shy away from, or attempt to escape from social situations. Often, kids that are this avoidant of social situations are doing so because they have some hypersensitivity to certain sensory stimuli. Consequently, those sensory needs must be addressed prior to attempts at teaching social skills. A kid who is constantly overwhelmed by his environment is likely not going to be successful in many interventions. Social stories may well prove to be useful tools with such children, but only after the sensory needs of those children have been met (through sensory integration, vision therapy, auditory integration, etc.).
2. Social indifference -- Social indifference is the social impairment common to the majority of children with autism. Children who are socially indifferent are those who do not actively seek social interaction, but at the same time, do not aggressively avoid such interaction. Social Stories are often quite effective with socially avoidant kids: they can simplify and illustrate social interactions, with the hope that increased understanding of those situations will make them more attractive and reinforcing for the child.
3. Social awkwardness -- Socially awkward children are typically higher functioning kids who may try very hard to gain and keep friends, but are hindered by a lack of reciprocity in conversation and interest -- they focus on their favorite topic or topics to the exclusion of most everything else -- and an inability to learn social skills and taboos by observing others. Social stories are often very effective with these individuals as they teach explicitly those skills and taboos that these children do not just pick up from their environment. Social stories provide them with a framework for successful social interaction: perspective on the thoughts, emotions, and beliefs of others in their environment, and suggestions of appropriate behaviors.

PRESENTATION

• Illustrations -- The child (or parent/teacher) can illustrate each page of the story, or photographs can be taken of the child and his peers in the social situation. These pictures can add interest and visual support for the presented ideas. Be wary, though, of images that are too complex. Children with autism do not always focus on pictures as we would expect (they sometimes fail to focus on a prominent object in the foreground in favor of some other item in the background), so the pictures (photographs, especially) should be as visual uncluttered as possible.
• Symbols -- The text of the story can be augmented with pictures representing various words or ideas. The Mayer-Johnson Picture Exchange symbols (often generated through their Boardmaker computer program) are typically good choices for this use. For beginning readers, PECS symbols or simple blackline drawings can be substitutes for written words not yet mastered. Or a single, large symbol can represent a complete idea on a particular page.
• Social Stories on tape -- A reading of a particular story can be recorded on audio tape with a tone or verbal cue for the child to turn the page.
• Video -- A film could be made of the student and peers acting out applicable scenes from the story. The text of the story should be edited in before the applicable scene, and the written story presented along with the video when it is presented to the child, however, with the hope of eventually fading the video for the written text (as the text is much less labor intensive to create and use than a video).
• Story boxes -- The child and an adult can act out scenes from the stories with small figures, rooms made of shoeboxes, etc. This too, can add interest and increase understanding of the concepts for children who are not strong readers.

(polyxo.com - A resource for teaching children with Autism)

Teachers TV - Storytelling for Independence

Includes short section on interactive storytelling.
Could link to social stories - learning key social skills through storytelling rather than mainstream curriculum-based stuff.

Teaching Independence (Special Schools)