Why does my child struggle with social skills and how can I help?
Many children, especially children with Autism struggle with social skills. So why is this, and why is it so important for us to work on these skills with our kids?
As parents, especially if your child is in therapy you may hear the word pragmatics a lot and not quite understand what it means.
For most people when they say pragmatics, they are referring to social skills. And while this is super common, and we will refer to them both here, it’s good to note that in reality while pragmatics is a large part of social skills, the terms in reality are not necessarily interchangeable.
Pragmatics is actually the conversational or language portion of social skills. It’s the ability to communicate and adjust your communication appropriately in different settings and based on the situation. It also refers to using language in the proper context. So in reality, pragmatics makes up a huge PART of social skills, but is not the only part.
However there are other important things that make up effective social skills as well, including things like effectively using and understanding facial expressions, tone of voice, gaze, common gestures and body language. It also encompasses use of appropriate personal space or proximity between others, behaviors and social actions.
Social actions refers to how someone acts vs. what is typically socially expected (for example this could be waiting patiently or being polite). It’s using and understanding language appropriately based on the situation, and also understanding social rules and being able to adjust appropriately based on the situation.
Effective social skills are what helps people to successfully engage with each other. Whether this means making friends, or being able to interact in a school, community or workplace setting effectively.
For many kids this is all innate. Kids naturally learn as they develop and experience different situations. Kids learn the skills over time from the peers and adults around them, and the experiences they have.
However for some kids, these skills do not come naturally, but instead then need to be explicitly taught.
So what makes up social skills?
- Understanding turn taking and the balance between when one person talks versus the other person, and how much you talk versus the person you are talking to. This includes recognizing signals that it is your turn to speak, or that your communication partner would like to speak.
- Ability to listen to others and hold your attention to what they are saying
- Effectively using and understanding facial expressions, body language and other social cues
- Recognizing the social cues that may indicate how the other person is feeling about your conversation and being able to adjust appropriately
- Understanding feelings – what feelings mean and why people may have them. It’s important to understand how you might hurt people’s feelings and/or appropriately respond to someone else’s feelings in a conversation.
- Recognizing if the other person is not understanding what you are saying and being able to rephrase or adjust
- Understanding what it means to be polite, including choosing your words and using the tone of voice, facial expressions and gestures that are appropriate to the situation. (As well as understanding these things in others).
- Understanding the difference in communication when you are talking to a child vs. adult, friend vs. authority figure, family vs. stranger
- Understanding personal space or appropriate proximity to the person you are speaking to
- Being able to stay on topic and/or understanding the cues when there is a topic change
- Communicating appropriately based on your location or situation. For example: library vs. playground vs. classroom vs. home
- Understanding figures of speech, slang, and different expressions
Some of the most common challenges for a child with ASD when it comes to conversation and social skills include:
- Using appropriate volume
- Having a flat tone or not changing their tone of voice based on the situation
- Scripting memorized portions of tv shows, videos or movies
- Not being able to stay on topic of the conversation
- Difficulty with turn taking in conversation; Taking over conversations and/or not knowing when to let others talk
- Perseverating on 1 thing, sentence or phrase
- Difficulty recognizing facial cues and body language
- Difficulty understanding common phrases, expressions, jokes or sarcasm. Taking things very literally.
- Telling the truth even if it is not appropriate at the moment or can hurt someone's feelings
Social skills are important not just for making friends and interacting with peers, but also for interacting with adults in school, in the community, and with the police or other authority figures, as well as for when teens transition into adulthood and the workforce.
While some children early on may not realize that a certain social situation or communication was inappropriate or ineffective, often as they grow up and have bad experiences in social situations, they may feel bad, frustrated or defeated and then want to avoid these situations more and more. This can lead to difficulty in school and the community and continue to have a huge impact as they move into adulthood.
This is why it is so important for us to do what we can as parents to help our kids with their social skills. Now depending on your child and their current level of communication, this may look very differently for every child, but there are many things we can do to help them gain skills and confidence in social settings.
One thing to note is that speech therapy can be a huge asset to our kids. They are one of the best providers to reach out to for support if your child has difficulty with pragmatics or other social skills.
Some children may present with extremely strong verbal skills and have a large vocabulary, so the idea of speech therapy may not stand out to you. However, while some children often do very well with formal language and may have a great vocabulary, they may struggle in social situations because of all of the other areas we discussed above. If you have an experienced speech therapist they can absolutely perform both formal and informal assessments for pragmatics and social skills and can be a huge help for your child!
So what are some of the way you can work on social skills with your child at home?
Here are just a few examples from our therapists, as well as Autism Speaks and theIndiana Institute on Disability and Community
Practice scenarios with your child. The practice of social situations is SO important!
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- Pick out different social situations that they could find themselves in, or even just small things that could happen and ask them “What would you do if,,,,” Talk through the different examples and practice conversations.
- Set up a learning opportunity to see how they react/respond for practice
- You may need to start with a script for them or give them ideas or prompts, but over time work to diminish the scripts and support or prompts from you so they can generalize the skills for different situations or conversations.
Use social stories, videos, books, movies and tv shows to discuss different situations, people’s feelings, reactions and conversations:
- Ask your child open ended questions about a book, tv show or movie (Practicing conversation topics about something they know or are interested in).
- Ask them about characters feelings and thoughts
- Pause and ask questions like “what do you think the character is thinking… how do you think they feel… why do you think they said that or did that…”
Practice facial expressions and understanding emotions:
- Have them make different expressions and faces into your phone and take videos or pictures for them to go back and look at! Faces that would mean happy, angry, sad, confused, scared, etc…
- Watch different videos and look at pictures in books and have them pick out how people are feeling. Talk about different reasons they could feel that way.
Use common figures of speech and idioms with them that they might hear in conversations and have them guess what they mean
Practice turn taking in general. Turn taking is an important concept in the flow of a conversation.
- Playing games – great practice for turn taking and waiting patiently. It is also great practice for how to be a good sport whether you win or lose, which is important in social situations.
Practice different greetings and manners. Make a game out of coming up with different greetings for different situations and different ways to show politeness and manners.
Work on sequencing. Talk about what comes next in different situations. This helps them practice thinking forward and predicting possible outcomes.
Have conversations with them about current topics that might come up in conversation with peers or at school, etc…
Consider enrolling them in local social groups and set up playdates for generalization of the skills.
Also, check out our interview with Ashley Romero, SLP: “Pragmatics – Improve your child’s social skills”.In our interview, Ashley discusses her perspective on why pragmatics and social skills are so important, how speech therapists works on these skills, and gives us some great ideas for parents to use at home!
Here are some additional great activities and resources for building social skills:
Social Skills Activities for Kids to Do at Home
Best Social Skills Games For Teaching Kids Social Skills
101 Books That Build Friendship, Communication & Social Skills
Social Stories for Kids with Autism: 21 Social Story Templates & Apps
References:
Meeting the Challenge of Social Pragmatics with Students on the Autism Spectrum.
“Social Communication Disorder & how it’s treated”
https://www.autismspeaks.org/expert-opinion/social-communication-disord
Decrease unwanted behaviors & promote language development at home.
