Will make eye contact

"Ironically, teachers have less and less time to concentrate on teaching social skills to children on the spectrum because they are too busy teaching to the high-stakes tests the sponsors of this website actively promote. This is especially true in the older grades, which is when a lot of these kids finally have the language skills and drive to be social! "

"Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room! I've tried to find resources for 'social stories' and been frustrated with the shallowness of the instruction. No matter how much we talked about the behavior we wanted to see our son develop, and how much he seemed to understand it conceptually, we haven't seen significant improvement over the past five years. I agree that going back to the core skills is essential to see lasting change. At lease I hope so :) What resources are actually 'out there' to help develop social skills?"

"Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room! I've tried to find resources for 'social stories' and been frustrated with the shallowness of the instruction. No matter how much we talked about the behavior we wanted to see our son develop, and how much he seemed to understand it conceptually, we haven't seen significant improvement over the past five years. I agree that going back to the core skills is essential to see lasting change. At lease I hope so :) What resources are actually 'out there' to help develop social skills?"

"I have been teaching social skill to children in small groups for the past 15 yrs. Cognitive comprehension of why social skill is important can not be achieved by many of the children I work with and for them, just learning personal space and personal safety is the most important basic skill. Many children with sensory issues are not even aware when someone is intruding in their space or touching them. That brings up being able to pay attention to their environment and situation. Making eye contact for many children on the spectrum is too much sensory information especially if they are trying to listen and process what the other person is saying. I teach children it is important to face the person speaking with their body and their head and look at that person's forehead or left ear or chin since no one can tell exactly where the child is looking. That takes a lot of pressure off the children I work with. I tell them it makes the other person feel good thinking they a! re interested in what they are saying and ask them what things make them feel good. Once they have identified what feeling good means, they understand how their paying attention to others make them feel. In a school setting, social skill needs to be taught in small groups so children are not only dealing with adults but with same age peers which is where most of the trouble is apparent. Board and card games at sessions and at home teach personal space, taking turns, paying attention and good sportsmanship. No game should last more than 20 mins. and games like adult Monopoly and Life are too complex, take too long and all the lessons that could be taught above, fall into winning or losing and feeling helpless. Board and card games teach random luck which means anyone could win even without strategy. I would love to see social skill on an IEP but who is going to teach it. Budgets are strained as it is and cannot provide art, music or sports in many states and there are more children that could gain from those activities than the minority of those needing social skill. That is where peer counseling could take off not to mention required classes in Jr. college and universities that bring students into the primary and secondary schools to work for credit not money and have an opportunity to see what working with 'at risk' or 'socially challenged' children is like which helps them to make better career choices. Also parents have tons of resources at their fingertips for teaching social skills at home and in small groups. Waiting for the schools could take years - years your child doesn't have. There are social skill curriculums out there on sites like Future Horizons,Childwork-Childplay, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. Usually if you want something done and you're working against large institutions, I believe parents need to take control and start working on social skills with their children. I run 18 groups per week and find no loss in my business as parents are now aware that social competance will be more important in getting a job one day than all A's in college. As you know there are thousands of college grads out there who cannot find a job. On an interview you must be able to face the interviewer and look interested and act 'as if' you want the job. Hope I have inspired some parents out there to return to their youth when people played games in the kitchen at the table or in their den on the floor. Be social with your children if you expect them to model your behaviors."

"and a parent can help by reading a applying social skills trainings such as the ones describe in a good book I read from Cathy Cohen called 'Raise your child social IQ', I certainly recommend it."

"'More than the ability to make eye contact' Indeed. What 'experts' do understand is that social intelligence is cognitive, and the development of social intelligence is slow and/or different in persons identified as autistic. You provide some good guidance on issues and methods for stimulating progression in this domain. "

"Wow, another thoughtful article, Ms Dwight. I worked for many (30+) years with the spectrum of addiction, much of it evaluating the care of children with fetal alcoholism in the foster care system. 99.999% of these children are never diagnosed at birth (purposefully, who wants to adopt a child w/FAS, knowing they often become violent during adolescence). The point is, that it's now believed that many of our FAS children become 'violent' (aggressive), because they lack the development of frontal lobes, which ARE developing in other children, along with those children's increased language capacities. Particularly the ability to comprehend and initiate non-verbal language. ie - how to 'flirt' with a girl becomes critical at age 13. the focus of folks who are fortunate enough to have received the FAS diagnosis in their infants, has been language and social skills FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. When I lived/worked in New Mexico, there were a number of Native American reservations who had devestating 3's of FAS children, up to 80% of the tribe population in one case. As a result, there were programs being instituted in those schools (San Juan Pueblo, for one). I wonder what there findings were, and if they found a better way to teach children social skills already? thanks for the thoughtful article, LMark, RN"

"With a grandson who has had 7 years of various therapies and is emerging rather to have high functioning autism, social skills has been one of the 2 hardest pieces of the puzzle to solve. The other is focus/attention. So, so little training and literature that I have found on social skills. Thanks for the article and hoping that this will be addressed more and more in the near future."