Social skill deficits are one of the most common deficits in kids with
autism in fact since it's one of the signs of autism it almost always shows
up in kids with autism and I found that parents and professionals make three
common mistakes when it comes to social skill instruction, so today I want to
cover the three mistakes to avoid when teaching social skills to children with
autism. Hi I'm Dr. Mary Barbera autism mom board certified behavior analyst and
best-selling author of The Verbal Behavior Approach: How to Teach Children
with Autism and Related Disorders. I recently did a podcast all about
teaching kids social skills and that podcast is episode number 17 so you may
want to check that out at marybarbera.com/17. But today I
wanted to do a very short video blog on the three mistakes I see parents and
professionals making when it comes to teaching social skills for two kids with
autism, so mistake number one not starting with an assessment I found for
parents and professionals want to jump into placement decisions or even goals
before an assessment it's very dangerous to say okay we have you know three
kindergartener students coming in we're gonna make these this is our usual goals
for kindergarteners with autism on social skills or on language it's a very
bad mistake to just jump in to PAT goals or standard goals it's also as a parent
a mistake to say I just want my child to be included and into kindergarten that's
really what I want, he can have an aide with him but I don't want any one-to-one
instruction or any you know social skills instruction I just want that's
jumping ahead to the placement jumping ahead to goals before an assessment so I
would say focus on that assessment before you decide on how much it
inclusion is going to be taking place if you know people say oh but I want he
needs socialization well I've had clients where they've been put into
regular daycare situations or regular preschools with or without support and
or even elementary school classes and they've either had major problem
behaviors they're wandering around I even had a little boy who was in a
daycare situation unattended and he was like wandering around licking the wall
you know that's not socialization that's that's a waste of his time so don't jump
to we want this before an assessment that's the first mistake assessing not
just their social skills but their language their self-care their
academic skills if there are they of the right age their behavior problems all of
this needs to be weaved together before we develop any goals for socialization
or teaching social skills the second mistake after not assessing the whole
child the number two mistake is trying to teach social skills that are way too
high like manners and turn-taking and greetings when I was in the early
intervention field working with birth to three-year-olds it was very common for
people to be doing my turn you know and non-vocal kids were taught to pat their
own chest and my turn your turn is very high it's VB-MAPP level three skill if
you're trying to teach manners that is almost always going to backfire
especially in the beginning and even teaching greetings you have to be really
careful and do it systematically I created a procedure for teaching
greetings it's in my online courses but I think in general teaching social
skills that are way too high focusing on I want them to pretend play or do for
exchanges back and forth I've even seen programs where it's like I have a cow
and then the child is supposed to say I have a pig that's not normal
conversation so the more we try to teach skills like pretend play
or turn-taking or reciprocal language when the child is not up there the
weirder the language is going to get and the weirder the social skills are going
to get to so we don't want to teach skills that are too high and the third
mistake I see all the time is expecting social skills to just come into play
without explicit teaching social skills is complex behaviors that need to be
taught very systematically based on assessment planning intervening and
evaluating so we don't want to leave it by chance we don't want to just push
kids into inclusion and expect social skills to just come come along the way I
was at a conference once and they were selling t-shirts that said I have autism
on the front and on the back it said don't waste my time and I think there's
a lot of well-meaning individuals out there trying to teach social skills but
since the skills are too high and they're not assessing accurately for all
kinds of skills we tend to jump in and have goals for things that are way too
high for the kids so those are the three mistakes if you want to learn more you
can listen to my podcast at marybarbera.com/podcast and if you want to
learn more about joining my online course and community I'd love it to
invite you to a free online workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop it's
for parents or professionals behavior analysts my online workshop my free
workshop does not include any BCBA CEUs but my courses do and so I would
love if you would check it out and see if adding some new knowledge from me and
my courses and community might really help to turn things around more for your
clients or children if you like this video give me a thumbs up share it leave
me a comment and don't forget to check out my free workshop at
marybarbera.com/workshop and I'll see you right here next week