School Aged Children with Autism: Developing social competence in children with Autism is imperative, as it significantly impacts their
ability to form social relationships, maintain friendships, and succeed academically. Socially
competent children are better at communicating with peers, working in groups, and understanding
the rules of conversations, including nonverbal cues. However, children with Autism often face
challenges in social communication, leading to various deficits in their social skills.
School Aged Children with Autism: Common Social Communication Deficits in Children with Autism:
- Difficulty taking turns in play or conversation.
- Inability to engage in conversation effectively (initiating, maintaining, ending conversation). They
often use repetitive or irrelevant statements to start a conversation. - Difficulty understanding emotions. They may find it hard to understand that they should
apologize if someone is upset with them. - Challenges with personal space, often standing too close to others.
- Struggling to ask for clarification when they don’t understand.
- Difficulty inappropriately requesting and greeting others in various situations.
Parental Tips to Develop Social Skills:
- Encourage small talk about topics like weather, traffic, holidays, favourite food, and movies.
- Promote initiating conversations through greetings or asking common questions.
- Engage in interactive board games/guessing games that emphasize turn-taking, encourage
asking questions and also improve teamwork. - Hold family conversation time, allowing the child to choose topics that interest them, ask
questions, and share opinions. - Watch movies together and discuss them, asking open-ended questions What was your
favourite part in the movie? Which character you like the most and why? - Prepare the child for social situations like birthday parties, providing guidance on appropriate
questions to ask, and how to greet others. - Teach the child how to request in their daily routine effectively.
- Instruct the child on using different greetings for different situations, e.g., “Merry Christmas”;
during the holiday season, “Get well soon” for someone who is unwell. - Encourage observation of others; conversations to learn social cues (” social spying”).
- Use recorded voices with different emotions for the child to identify and understand.
- Play dumb charades with different body language cues for the child to interpret.
- Teach the child to maintain personal space by standing at an arm’s distance during the conversation.
Smita, Brilliant guidelines for parents. They are pretty handy and easily doable.
This post is very simple to read and appreciate without leaving any details out. Great work !
Good helpful tips. My name is Victoria Titiloye. I am an occupational therapist based in the US. I will like to maintain professional communication with you. I have worked with children and adult with autism (neurodiverse community) in different settings including public and private schools. I believe we can learn from each other and share information that can further facilitate types of services provided to the people we serve.
Dear Victoria, you can contact us or Whatsapp uson +91 845999253,
You can register to our worldwide Directory to serve people on Autism, register on the link sent https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0pN-yL7lDtJ6iiveJSXItUr1e4b8jxN-AG3tyZVus0a4kmg/viewform
thank you