Social Skills Therapy

For some children, social rules just don't come naturally. Saying hello and having a conversation can all be tricky things to learn. This could be because they have Autism Spectrum Disorder, which affects communication skills, or a Pragmatic Language Disorder, which only affects social skills. Even children without any underlying disorder may have difficulty socializing and understanding HOW to make friends or have a conversation. 

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In this day and age, technology has reduced the amount of time we spend actually talking to another person, face-to-face. Children notice this, and begin to follow our examples, too. That leads to reduced eye contact, not initiating a conversation, and not being able to maintain a topic for more than a minute. 

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Some children may also have difficulty expressing themselves in appropriate ways - they may scream, cry or hit instead of using methods to calm down and regulate their emotions. 

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Here's what a speech therapist can do:​

• teach simple initiation of conversations

• teach how to make comments, respond and keep the conversation going

• conduct social skills groups to work on turn taking, finding shared interests and making friends 

• model appropriate body language and tone of voice 

• replace negative behaviours with positive, more socially appropriate behaviours

and a lot more!

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It's important to remember while we are trying to improve social skills, we aren't trying to change the child, and still respect their interests and personality. We also use some methods from Social Thinking© and Zones of Regulation©.