Ways to Improve Social Skills for Children with Autism

PIN FOR LATER

Every parent wants the best for their child. They want their children to be ready to cope with society, make lots of friends, do well in school, and be happy. However, not every child has the same capability to develop these skills so easily. Children sometimes have a hard time developing social skills, especially children with autism. In many cases, this lack of social skills can cause more anxiety and distress to the child.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) consists of multiple disorders like the inability to develop social skills, connect with others emotionally, and even fail to communicate with others. Signs of autism show at an early age of about two or three, but there are cases where it occurred at a later stage in life.

Children with autism often lack natural social skills in different scenarios, such as not understanding how to approach or respond to people, failing to express emotions, and understanding how to react to other’s emotions. They face difficulty in interacting with and adjusting to their surroundings.

There are some ways that can help children with autism develop their social skills, but these are the steps that need to be practiced daily and need to be incorporated with their daily life.

Strategies to Improve Social Skills

Social Stories:

Social stories are effective ways to help your child understand basic social situations and how to act upon them. Children with autism have difficulty understanding general social cues like body language, gestures, and postures, so the idea of social stories is to explain social scenarios through tailor-made stories that involve the particular points the child needs to learn.

To make these autism social stories, the child first needs to be diagnosed by a professional to identify the key concerns, then based on those concerns, a story is formed. The story is then read by the parents, teachers, and other members of the child’s community, and those stories can even be acted out for better results. Social stories have been very effective for children who suffer from autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Role-Playing:

This is a very fun way to teach your child about social norms. You could do a role play with your child where it is his/her first day at school, and you are a student there. By role-playing, you can teach your child how to approach others and respond to conversations. You can even role-play and help your child learn about playing, following rules, and working together. You can be very creative while role-playing, making difficult aspects very easy to understand for your child.

Finding a Parent Support System:

A parent support system is a great way to learn new things about how to develop the social skills of your child. The improvement of the child greatly depends on their parents. It sometimes gets very difficult for the parents to understand what steps and approaches they should take to teach their kids social skills.

A lot of times, it gets very emotionally draining. By finding a support group, parents can find similar people who are going through similar emotions. By discussing and sharing their feelings, thoughts, and opinions, they not only learn, but they also regain confidence. This confidence is extremely important for both the parent and the child.

Video Modeling:

Children learn by watching others and imitating them. The idea of video modeling is to show the children who have autism videos in which it shows basic social cues. These can be videos showing how to share food with others, how to talk with others, or even how to use the bathroom, brush their teeth, and other daily activities. Video modeling can help a child learn behavioral aspects one at a time. You can show videos like these regularly and help your child learn slowly.

Being Consistent:

This is the most important part. You have to be consistent when dealing with a child with autism. To teach social skills, you have to study more about different methods and try them out with your children. You have to be careful about what methods you will try out and most importantly be patient about the entire process because it will take time. You have to make it a part of your daily life, and by doing so, you can teach your child social skills.

People without autism also sometimes have difficulties being social and sometimes tend to avoid social contact in general. You can only guess how hard it can be for a child who can not even properly grasp the general concepts of socializing to develop these skills. That is why you have to be consistent.

Picture- based tutorials of social norms:

If we talk about social skills, social norms are something that needs to be considered as well because social norms are unofficial rules of a society or the boundaries of a society. If we draw pictures of how to interact with people, how to behave, and other basic elements, it will be easier for the children, and they will be able to learn more quickly than the random method.

Illustrate / Draw to develop and strengthen self-awareness capability:

 Self-awareness mainly helps children with Autism to face difficult situations and bring out themselves from that situation on their own. This also allows the person to know his/her strengths by overcoming their challenges and building their confidence.

One can illustrate the general ways of dealing with problems and also how to behave, how to handle a situation, and how to overcome it as well. By doing this, they can grow a basic knowledge among the kids

All children are delicate, some more than others. It takes time for children with autism to learn basic social skills, but you have to be patient and believe that over time your child will be able to overcome barriers and learn social skills.

New researches are being conducted every day to figure out more ways to help these children, but the interaction with others remains to be the most effective solution yet. So parents, teachers, friends, families, and other members of society all have to pitch in to play our parts in helping them learn and grow even more.