Social Skills

The following are resources to use at home for additional social skills practice. Please look for your child's social skills goals as listed in the Annual Measurable Academic and/or Functional Goals section of their IEP.

Social Thinking https://www.socialthinking.com/

• a great resource for parents to see how to help their children at home.

Zones of Regulation http://www.zonesofregulation.com/index.html

• A framework to foster self-regulation and self-control.

Social skills can be practiced at any time, simply by having a conversation, playing a game, or engaging your child in an activity.

The following are suggestions to help improve your child’s social language skills at home. (This list can also be found under the Social Skills heading).

1. Encourage your child to maintain eye-contact with the speaker. Remind them that if they are not looking at someone, the person will not know if they are listening to them. You can make it into a game by doing periodic checks, asking them, “What color were the person’s eyes?”

2. Conversation is a two-way street. Encourage your child to participate and ask questions. After you ask them about their day, you may cue them with, for example, “Do you want to know how my day was?”

3. Help your child to recognize when they are interrupting the speaker and have them wait until the person is done speaking before they interject.

4. Help your child to think of things they can talk about with various people.

For example, before they call their grandmother, talk about what they could ask and tell her that would be of interest to her. If they have difficulty calling a friend, review ahead of time what they could talk about. You can even role play the conversation.

5. If the child unexpectedly changes topic, call their attention to it by saying “We weren’t talking about that, we were talking about...” Provide them with ways they can introduce new topics. For example, “Do you mind if I change the topic?”

6. If your child has a tendency to ramble on about things, give them a limit. “Okay you can tell me about your video game, but you have to tell me in 3 sentences.”

7. If your child says something hurtful and it wasn’t intended to be that way, help them to identify ways to rephrase their comment so it doesn’t offend.

Encourage your child to monitor their tone of voice. Not too loud, and always friendly. Remind them how loud voices will annoy their peers and teachers