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How Teachers Can Help Children With Autism With Social Skills

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one in 91 children in the United States has an autism spectrum disorder. One of the hallmarks of autism is difficulty understanding social cues, along with challenges at making friends or relating to peers. This means that increasingly more educators are being assigned the difficult task of teaching social skills to children with autism. Many different therapies and methodologies are available for teaching social skills. Since ASD children’s abilities and challenges vary, it’s important to keep in mind that not all methods will be effective for each student. This is why it is so important that schools design and follow a student’s IEP, or Individualized Education Plan, which is designed to address the social skill deficits tailored to that specific child. An effective IEP will incorporate social skills training throughout the student’s day from a variety of sources.

  1. Conversation Skills

    • Conversation and listening skills are two key components to teaching social skills to ASD students. These skills are best taught in small groups, comprised of children with their typical peers. The typical students can model appropriate skills, such as asking and responding to questions, making choices, taking turns, showing empathy, maintaining personal space and non-verbal communication. The ASD students need to learn these skills and practice them in a positive, safe environment. The best way to engage in these types of conversations is during an organized “lunch bunch.” Lunch bunch sessions typical happen during lunch, where the students eat and play an agreed upon game together during the period. Picking the game itself is part of the lesson. Any game that involves taking turns can be helpful, while certain games that involve asking questions and making choices are especially beneficial for the lesson. Additionally, the typical students should have some basic training on what to expect from the ASD students, and need to be advised to be non-critical of the deficits that will no doubt arise during the time together.

    Friendship Skills

    • Teachers should discuss ways to approach others, how to make friends and how to keep them with their ASD students. Depending on how verbal a child is, social stories can be effective, in addition to peer modeling one-on-one or in a small group environment. It can be helpful to set up different situations with a typical student to demonstrate the right and wrong thing to say and act out a variety of scenarios that the ASD student will encounter.

    ABA

    • Applied Behavioral Analysis, or ABA, can be an effective method to find out what behaviors are being triggered that make the autistic child stand apart from typical children, thereby impeding social skill progress. ABA requires training and writing down extensive data; teachers who are willing to write down each time a child has an incident or meltdown, along with the behavior before and after the incident, will have helpful data for the team to analyze and determine what is standing in the child’s way of success.

    Varied Settings

    • Teach social skills to a child in variety of settings and situations throughout the school day. The more varied the settings, the greater chance a child will learn to generalize the skills and carry them through in and outside of the school environment. Settings could include in class, on the playground, in the gym, in the school library, or during art or music class; each of these locations offer different social skills challenges for an ASD child. Social stories can be effectively used to prepare the child for a difficult lesson. Immediate feedback and positive reinforcement should be used to help the child learn in a productive, non-threatening manner.

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