Social skills and autism in children
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Children with ASD often have the desire to interact with others, but may not know how to engage appropriately and may be considerably overwhelmed by the idea of new social experiences. In this blog post we will look at how we can help build up the social skills of these children, and so give them the tools to make long lasting friendships, to play a part in their community and to live happy fulfilling lives.
Child social skill development
Social skills are the rules and traditional customs that drive our interactions with others from our families and wider society. Generally, people tend to absorb social skills at the same time that they learn their first language. Eventually they build a social map in their heads of how to act around others, and so will naturally come to know how to interact in different social situations – from talking to new people, to playing with children from the local neighbourhood. Typically, social skills can help your child make friends, learn all sorts of information and behaviours from others, find their hobbies, and build on their interests. These skills can also help develop relationships within the family and will provide your child with a sense of belonging, bolstering their mental health and overall quality of life.
The main social skills that most neurotypical children learn as they grow are:
- Playing with others through pretend play, taking turns, and sharing toys
- Solving problems
- Managing emotions and feelings
- Talking to others
How does autism affect social skills?
Children with autism often take longer than their neurotypical peers to learn and use these social skills. Here are some examples of the social interaction characteristics that children with ASD can present:
- Avoids eye contact.
- Does not respond to name or show a range of facial expressions by 9 months of age.
- Uses few gestures and does not play simple interactive games by 12 months of age.
- Does not share interests with others and keeps particular toys to themselves.
- Does not look at what you point to, or point at other things themselves, by 18 months of age.
- Does not notice when others are hurt or sad by 24 months of age.
- Plays rigidly with toys and does not pretend play.
- Shows little interest in playing with their peers.
- Shows difficulty in understanding other people's feelings or talking about own feelings at 36 months of age or older.
- Does not play turn taking games by 60 months of age.
- Difficulty in understanding jokes, sarcasm, or teasing.
- Unable to continue a conversation.
- Repeats words and phrases again and again (echolalia).
- Gives unrelated answers to questions.
All of these symptoms can make it difficult for a child to feel comfortable with, be aware of, or feel capable of learning social skills. Therefore it is really important that we work with them in stages to help them build up their interaction and social abilities.
How do you teach autistic children social skills?
First of all, it is important to express how each child with autism will have varying social abilities, and so the ways that you try to teach social skills will have to be tailored towards their individual needs. Some methods will work better for some children than others and, just like with the general teaching of children with ASD, it can often be driven by trial and error to find the best strategies. As a result, teaching autistic children social skills can be challenging at times, and so as a parent or teacher, you must try and remain resilient and as supportive to the child as you can, regardless of whether the day has been good or bad. You must remember to:
- Forget your own social assumptions and be patient.
- Educate yourself about your child's needs as they learn, finding out about any courses or events that can improve your own understanding.
- Remember it's all about ‘expected' or ‘unexpected' behaviour, not ‘right' or ‘wrong'.
- Be an active play mate and role model, through promoting observation, practising and self-monitoring.
- There is no simple solution but you are giving your child the best start by helping them on a daily basis.
Although it can be hard to keep these mantras in mind, when you start seeing the results of your support it will feel more natural to think in this way.
But, how can we start helping autistic children with their social skills?
Well, it is sometimes possible to have a therapist support a child with ASD at school or nursery, and they can provide a lot of activities that you can try out at home. Alternatively, if you want to build up a little library of ideas yourself, then there are many different strategies below to try. In the main, they particularly seek to target play skills, conversation skills, emotional skills and problem-solving skills.
Play and problem-solving skills
Any strategy to support play and problem-solving skills should help to provide structure and predictability to social events, simplify language, enable children to work in pairs or groups with good cooperation, provide multiple and varied learning opportunities, support self-awareness and self-esteem, and provide a space to practice skills for real life settings.
A brilliant method that helps to achieve this is playing different games on a regular basis which include turn-taking, following rules and coping with winning and losing. Movement games such as red light/green light, Simon says, hide-and-seek or tag can be really affective and fun. On top of this rolling, bouncing or kicking a toy or ball between partners or group can be used, and then developed further, depending on the interests and needs of the autistic child. Playing table top games such as Connect Four, Jenga or chess can be the next level up for older children, and this will help them refine their use of more complex language and help them to solve problems more quickly. It is important to remember that this use of language needs to be encouraged throughout all the games played so that it becomes easier for children with ASD to follow the rules, and to know when they have played well. Do not forget to praise them!
Equally, role-playing is an exceptional strategy to help children learn and practise social skills in an imaginative way. Role play can be set anywhere and the children can be anyone they want to be. This can be extremely playful and comforting when a child with ASD is exploring how to play and take turns generally, and relieves stress by not representing a real place all the time. However, role play can also be helpful when an autistic child is in need of practising how to act and socialise for a new imminent event. For example, before another child, neighbour, or family member comes to visit, you and your child could:
- Create a role-play where your child suggests what to play with the other person, exploring what might be worrying and what will be fun.
- Play the games that they might play together, practising the rules and performing the emotions that might fill the game.
- Practise talking about all the things your child has done recently, watched on TV, read or been thinking about.
Conversation Skills
The big crutch for developing conversation skills is ensuring your child gets to talk to, or experience the talk of, their peers and other family members as well as yourself. The people your child socialises with will help them to learn skills that you may not be expressing at home, and this is important because when an autistic child leaves the house they will be faced with a much wider and unpredictable range of social experiences. It can be very useful to practice using the same social skills in a different environment, supporting the child to notice the differences and the similarities – sharing a book at school and sharing a book with a friend who visits one day.
Although it might seem logical not to allow a child with ASD to socialise with children who have a similar condition, favouring the fact that they can learn from a socially comfortable role model, being around and interacting with other autistic children can actually provide a greater sense of belonging and sometimes put them at greater ease. Therefore do not write off the idea, and perhaps let your child lead the way with this strategy. Above all it is important that whoever a child develops a relationship with, these connections are based on understanding, acceptance and patience.
Another helpful strategy to improve conversational skills is to use visual prompts and time tables. These simple cards carrying cartoons, words or photographs can help autistic children to explain what they want, think, or feel, and can also enable them understand what other people are trying to tell them. The child can carry these with them, and again it is useful for the teacher, parent and other children around them to keep more copies close by. These visual prompts can be a source of conversation topics, and can be used to explain how to play a particular game. For example, pictures could represent the different steps in a shop play sequence – check the list, pick up the food, say hello to the person behind the till, put the items into a bag, pay with money. It is important to note that to make sure conversational skills are being built up, then these visual prompts should be used to support the child with speaking or understanding, and should not be used non-verbally as an alternative to speaking unless sanctioned by a therapist.
Emotional Skills
Emotional skills are mostly developed through strategies that help a child to prepare for an event, or reflect on something that has happened. This repeated reflection to gain greater understanding can be comforting, and help children with ASD break down their barriers of uncertainty and fear.
Video-modelling is where you make videos of appropriate behaviours in different settings, and also record the language that is usually expected. After watching the video, the child can re-enact what happened with yourself or a friend, and have a go at using the language. This has been particularly useful for turn taking, and for introducing the child to a new school or classroom. Video-modelling is also helpful for teaching more intangible behaviours, such as emotions. If you can video people in different settings and social situations, but then pause the video and ask the autistic child how the person might be feeling, or what they might do next, then this gives them time to really think about how they would act if they were there instead. You should point out the tone of voice, facial expressions and body cues used to explain how the people on the video might be feeling. This can easily be achieved through TV programs or films as well.
Another method to support emotional skills is the use of social stories. Social stories can be written by parents, teachers or children with ASD and often follows the actions of a person during a particular social event, such as starting school, moving house, learning how to share, what to expect when going to the dentist's, or remembering trips. They are very good at targeting how to understand how others feel, how the child feels about something, how to cope with unexpected changes, and how to regulate emotions. They can be bought, be handmade or created on word processing programs, and often have a few sentences per page alongside a key photo or picture from the scene. These stories will further illustrate how people behave when interacting with others and look at the best ways to help solve different problems. As a result, most children will feel better about their worries or concerns, and perhaps feel confident that they will have a way of coping with them in the future. If your child is an avid reader, then this approach could be the most effective strategy to follow.
We hope that this discussion about social skill development has been helpful. Whatever the social situation an autistic child you know is now facing, it does not have to stay that way and, if you are resilient and committed to supporting them, then you can make a massive difference to their lives.
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