The Importance of Social Skills
By Amy Coleman

For children with learning challenges, navigating social situations and forming friendships can be a struggle. With patience, persistence and support, however, children can make great strides.

As adults, many of us take social skills for granted. Communication among our business associates and personal circle of friends is so much a part of our daily lives that these social encounters most often run seamlessly and without much thought.

For many children with learning challenges, however, good social skills can be far from automatic. Richard Lavoie, a former special education teacher and administrator, writes that most every learning challenge has a social component attached, and failing to master social competence can have catastrophic effects.

“Social skills are the ultimate determining factor in the child’s future success, happiness and acceptance,” Lavoie writes in his book, It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend. “The research here is overwhelming. The adult success of the person with learning disabilities is largely dependent upon his social-emotional relationship skills—not his academic skills.”

Although parents can’t predict all the social situations their children will encounter, there is still much they can do to help. The best approach for parents might involve getting educated about the complexities of social interaction, categorizing a child’s social strengths and weaknesses and carefully reviewing the various programs and methods used to treat social skills deficits.

Sizing Up Social Skills
Does your child need help with social skills? If you’re unsure, become a careful observer. Watch your child at play to identify if there are specific deficits that need intervention. If your child has weaknesses in some of the following areas, he could be a good candidate for social skills intervention. Assess your child’s ability to:

join a group
initiate conversation
use proper voice pitch (neither too loud nor too quiet)
resolve conflicts without hitting or retreating
control his tempe
speak positively of self
use good proximity (does not stand too close or too far from others)
maintain eye contact
follow the rules of games
wait for his turn
initiate play with others
use appropriate facial expressions
express empathy
follow a conversation
maintain interest
maintain topic of conversation
make friends
maintain friendships

In addition to taking this inventory, it is also important to understand and recognize some of the underlying reasons why children with learning challenges struggle socially. “The child simultaneously may be confronting problems in the areas of attention, memory, organization, language and impulse control,” Lavoie writes. These problems can often impede social success.

Children who struggle with language processing and/or pragmatic language (See related story) also might need intervention from a speech and language therapist. Language processing and pragmatics include numerous issues such as the ability to maintain a topic of conversation and the ability to recall words without hesitation or long pauses. Brook Todd of Children’s Therapy Group, Inc. says it’s important for parents to understand the link between language problems and social skills. She describes language problems as “understanding (what is said) and knowing what to talk about.”

“Closing Circles:”
The Greenspan Approach
Social skills intervention takes many forms, but most of the programs begin by developing skills on the individual level and then progressing to two-way and small-group communication. Finally, the skills practiced extend to family life and then to school and the community.

One method that can help children improve social interactions is Floortime, a method developed by noted child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan. In his book, The Child with Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth, Greenspan explains the importance of “meet ing a child where he is” by talking about the child’s interests and expanding on them. By doing this, a dialog can be established and “circles” of communication are opened. These circles constitute the first step toward intimacy, one of Greenspan’s emotional milestones.

Kathleen Platzman, Ph.D., a psychologist with Floortime Atlanta, describes Greenspan’s method as a “philosophy” and a “technique” of dealing with children of all abilities. Floortime Atlanta is a multidisciplinary group of practitioners who are trained in the Greenspan method and have incorporated the principles into their practices.

Platzman finds that children with special needs have core deficits: they sometimes don’t relate easily to people or have difficulty maintaining eye contact, for example. In other programs, Platzman says, often what is measured is compliance, such as whether the child sits when he is told. Instead, Floortime allows the child to lead the interaction. Platzman says she knows the program is working when the child is having fun, begins opening the dialog and a genuine feeling of relationship begins to develop.

At Floortime Atlanta, parents are taught the Greenspan approach and encouraged to practice it at home with their children. Often parents inform teachers and other caregivers about the approach, and the child becomes immersed in social skills training outside of therapy. In some cases when the method is being implemented successfully at home, the therapists at Floortime Atlanta turn into consultants.

Parents have told Platzman that they have seen their children change from a “puzzle” to a “real person” after some Floortime intervention. Platzman says she’s seen children change so radically that she knows they’re going to be okay. “Most parents come away from Floortime knowing their child more intimately as well as having a child who understands his own motivation and is a better companion than they ever thought possible,” Platzman says.