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Teaching Interpersonal Relationship Skills to the "Friendless" Child on the Autism Spectrum

One of the most significant problems for children with Asperger’s (AS) and High Functioning Autism (HFA) is difficulty in social interaction. AS and HFA also create problems with "mind reading" (i.e., knowing what another person might be thinking or feeling).

Most young people can observe others and guess (through a combination of tone and body language) what's "really" going on. But without help and training, AS and HFA children can't.

What comes naturally to “typical” kids does not come naturally to kids on the autism spectrum. The lack of interpersonal relationship skills makes it difficult for these boys and girls to make and keep friends – and often leads to social isolation. Now for the good news: Parents can learn to teach interpersonal relationship skills to their “special needs” youngsters.

Indicators That Your Child Needs Social Skills Training 



Here are some concrete ways to give AS and HFA children the tools they need to interact appropriately in social situations:

1. Practice reciprocal interactions. Some kids with AS and HFA have very one-sided conversations. They often talk only about their favorite subject, fail to ask questions to the peer they converse with, and fail to acknowledge interests of the peer. Thus, teach your youngster how to ask questions during a conversation, and practice taking turns while talking. Let your youngster ask a question, answer it, and let him ask another question. Do this exercise regularly to teach him how to have a conversation.

2. Rehearse social situations through role-play. If your youngster has difficulty in a specific social situation, practice it beforehand. Kids with AS and HFA must be taught what to say and do in specific situations. Engage in role-play with your youngster to physically act-out the situation. Tell him what he is expected to say or do, and then actually have him act it out with you.

==> Teaching Social Skills and Emotion Management

3. Consider involving your child in a skills-acquisition group. Relationship skills groups offer an opportunity for children with AS and HFA to practice their interpersonal skills with each other and/or “typical” peers on a regular basis.

4. Teachers can play a crucial role in teaching social skills to students on the autism spectrum. These skills need to be learned and understood well enough by the AS or HFA students to generalize them to outside situations beyond the classroom environment. Thus, to promote “skill generalization,” interventions should focus on orchestrating peer-involvement by prompting students to engage and initiate social interactions with classmates.

Teachers can also work with each individual student to practice new skills learned. Involving outside people (e.g., moms and dads, other family members, other classrooms) to promote different interactions can easily support this. Additionally, field trips can help provide natural and safe settings to practice interpersonal relationship skills outside of the classroom. Lastly, intervention sessions should be used to practice skills (e.g., assigning homework tasks) to increase repetition of training and ensure long-lasting learning.

5. Interpersonal relationship skills should not be a set of hard-and-fast rules. You can’t force AS or HFA kids to memorize them the way they would a set of multiplication tables. Different situations call for dynamic thinking. Thus, teach problem-solving and new ways to approach a particular challenge.



6. Parents can teach their youngsters how to recognize the feelings of others. Many kids with AS and HFA have great difficulty understanding how others feel by reading cues. This greatly impacts their social interactions. Therefore, use picture cards, books and magazines to point out facial expressions to your youngster. Teach her what each facial expression is and what it means. Let her practice by telling you what each facial expression is and what it means.

7. The biggest mistake parents can make is to assume that interpersonal relationship skills can be taught once and remembered forever. Social interaction is fluid, with so many variables that it can be daunting even to a “typical” youngster. For those on the spectrum, the training must continue far longer. Challenges get more and more complex as a youngster ages, bringing more things into the picture. So, be sure to go over the skills your child learned in the beginning on a regular basis, adding in more skills that can help her fine-tune her interactions.

8. Make use of “social skills training” materials. There are many tools and interventions available that involve using videos, software or virtual-reality programs to teach complex interpersonal relationship skills (e.g., recognition of emotions in facial expressions and tone of voice).

9. Make use of social stories. Social stories are simple stories written from the youngster's point of view. Each story describes a specific situation, what other people will do or say in that situation, and what your youngster is expected to do or say in that situation. Information on how to write social stories can be found HERE.

10. Locate resources in your area. Drama therapy, for example, is somewhat unusual, but where it's offered, it has the potential to be both fun and educational. Video modeling, video critiques of interactions, group therapy and other approaches may also be available in your area.

Training an AS or HFA youngster in relationship skills may take months – or even years. You may not see any improvement at first – but over time, it will happen. Stay the course, try new training methods, and be there for your youngster as he matures. Positive results will come if you keep at them.

Take into account the many facets of social interaction. Think about your youngster's strengths and weaknesses. Know his abilities as well as his language skills. With plenty of forethought, you can implement a good social skills training program for your child.

==> Teaching Social Skills and Emotion Management
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How to Improve Your asd Child’s Chances of Finding and Keeping Friends

"My child is so desperate to find just one close friend. It breaks my heart when he tries so hard to make friends but eventually gets rejected. How do you teach friendship skills? How can I help?!"

For most children with ASD [High Functioning Autism], the most important part of a treatment strategy involves the development of communication and social competence.

This emphasis doesn’t reflect a societal pressure for conformity or an attempt to stifle individuality and uniqueness. Rather, it reflects the clinical fact that most children with ASD are not loners by choice, and that there is a tendency (as these young people develop towards adolescence) for despondency, negativism, and depression as a result of the child's increasing awareness of personal inadequacy in social situations and repeated experiences of failure to make and/or maintain relationships.

The typical limitations of insight and self-reflection experienced by children with ASD often preclude spontaneous self-adjustment to social and interpersonal demands. The practice of communication and social skills doesn’t imply the eventual acquisition of communicative or social spontaneity and naturalness; however; it does better prepare the child to cope with social and interpersonal expectations, thus enhancing their attractiveness as conversational partners or as potential friends.

The following are suggestions intended to foster relevant skills in this crucial area:

1. The child with ASD should be taught to monitor her or his own speech style in terms of:
  • adjusting depending on proximity to the listener
  • background noise
  • context and social situation
  • naturalness
  • number of people
  • rhythm
  • volume

2. The child should be helped to recognize and use a range of different means to disagree, discuss, interact, mediate, negotiate, and persuade through verbal means. In terms of formal properties of language, the child may benefit from help in thinking about idiomatic language that can only be understood in its own right, and practice in identifying them in both text and conversation.

It’s also important to help the child to develop the ability to anticipate multiple outcomes, to explain motivation, to make inferences, and to predict in order to increase the flexibility with which he or she thinks about - and uses language with - other people.

==> Teaching Social Skills and Emotion Management

3. The effort to develop the child's skills with peers in terms of managing social situations should be a priority. This should include:
  • ending topics appropriately
  • feeling comfortable with a range of topics that are typically discussed by same-age peers
  • shifting topics
  • the ability to expand and elaborate on a range of different topics initiated by others
  • topic management

4. Explicit verbal instructions on how to interpret other people's social behavior should be taught and exercised in a rote fashion. Facial and hand gestures, gaze, non-literal communications (e.g., sarcasm, metaphor, humor, figurative language and irony), the meaning of eye contact, tone of voice, and various inflections should all be taught in a fashion not unlike the teaching of a foreign language (i.e., all elements should be made verbally explicit and repeatedly drilled).



5. The same principles as described in #4 should guide the training of the child's expressive skills:
  • Self-monitoring techniques (e.g., practicing in front of a mirror, listening to the recorded speech, watching a video recorded behavior, etc.) should all be incorporated in this program.
  • Social situations contrived in the therapeutic setting that usually require reliance on visual-receptive and other nonverbal skills for interpretation should be used. Also, strategies for deciphering the most salient nonverbal dimensions inherent in these situations should be offered.
  • Encounters with unfamiliar people (e.g., making acquaintances) should be rehearsed until the child is made aware of the impact of her or his behavior on other people's reactions to her or him. 
  • Concrete situations should be exercised in a therapeutic setting and gradually implemented in naturally occurring situations.

As a final note, all those in close contact with the ASD child should be made aware of the program so that consistency, monitoring and contingent reinforcement are maximized.


Simple Ways To Teach Social Skills to Your Child 



==> Videos for Parents of Children and Teens with ASD


 COMMENTS:

•    Anonymous said... I have a 16 yr old son with aspergers. He has really come out of his shell this year. I attribute it a lot to the fact that we have talked alot about the positive aspects of aspergers, showing him all the greatly successful people with aspergers and we also got him a book for teens written by a women who has it. If you ever want to talk I'd be happy to share with you what has worked for us
•    Anonymous said... My son has aspergers and I have had such a hard time finding a therapist who has made a connection with him to help in any real way if you have any suggestions would love input.
•    Anonymous said... My son is almost 13 & we could use it here too!!!
•    Anonymous said... Our son has recently been diagnosed with HFA and this is exactly the sort of training he needs but have no idea where to turn to get him it. We try at home but it's difficult as he feels it more as a criticism of his current lack of skills rather than we're trying to help. I'm sure professional help would be so much better. As I say, I just don't know where to turn to access such support?
•    Anonymous said... would love to hear what's worked for your family! I have 14yr old boy in denial so can't mention it without him getting very defensive. He shows all the traits mentioned in the post! I have bought an ebook for teenage AS and I'm waiting for the next melt down. I will then open the bedroom door, throw it in, and take cover!!

Please post your comment below…
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Behavior-Management Techniques for Children with High-Functioning Autism

"How can parents tell the difference between deliberate, defiant and manipulative behaviors - as opposed to symptoms of autism (high functioning in this case)."

Children with Asperger’s and High Functioning Autism (HFA) often exhibit different forms of challenging behavior. It is imperative that these behaviors are not seen as willful or malicious; more accurately, they should be viewed as connected to the child’s disorder and treated as such by means of insightful, therapeutic and educational strategies, rather than by inconsistent punishment or other disciplinary measures that imply the assumption of deliberate misbehavior.

Parents and teachers need to recognize the difficulties that the youngster with HFA brings to each situation as a result of his or her neurologically-based disorder. Among the common traits of this “special needs” child include the following:
  • A need for predictability and routine
  • A tendency to respond based on association and memory, which leads the youngster to repeat familiar behaviors even when they produce consistently negative results
  • An overly reactive sensory system that makes ordinary noise, smell or touch irritating or intolerable
  • Considerable difficulty organizing himself to do something productive in undirected play activities, in stimulating public situations, or when waiting
  • Emotional responses that are apt to be extreme and are often based on immediate events, leading to rapid changes (e.g., from laughing to screaming)
  • Lack of embarrassment or concern about other people's impressions of them
  • Limited ability to recognize another person's perspective or opinion or to empathize with others
  • Poor recognition of public versus private behavior
  • Problems shifting attention
  • Problems transitioning from one activity to another
  • Recovery from emotional upset is often immediate once the problem is removed, but for some kids on the spectrum, irritability and secondary upsets can continue for hours
  • Significant difficulties with understanding language, especially in group situations
     
Note: These traits are not the result of poor parenting or teaching. Also, they are not deliberate, willful or manipulative behaviors. They are simply common traits of kids with HFA.

==> Discipline for Defiant Asperger's and HFA Teens

Symptoms of Asperger's and High-Functioning Autism that Cause Behavioral Problems



Specific problem-solving strategies can be taught for handling the requirements of frequently occurring, problematic situations (e.g., involving novelty, intense social demands, frustration, etc.). Training is usually necessary for recognizing situations as problematic and for selecting the best available learned strategy to use in such situations.

The following steps will help parents and teachers implement behavioral management techniques for children and teens on the higher end of the autism spectrum:

Step #1: Prepare a list of frequent and challenging behaviors (e.g., perseverations, obsessions, interrupting, or any other disruptive behaviors). When listing these behaviors, it is important that they are specified in a hierarchy of priorities so that both parent and child can concentrate on a small number of truly troublesome behaviors.

Step #2: Create some specific interventions that help with the challenging behaviors whenever the behaviors arise. Here are just a few examples of appropriate interventions:



• Instructional intervention is used with a child who already wants to change his behavior, but simply doesn't know how. This is one of the easier behavior intervention strategies, because you simply need to tell the child what to do and how to do it. Once he has this information, he can change his behavior on his own.

• Positive reinforcement is a good behavior intervention technique, because it doesn't even recognize the negative behavior. To positively reinforce a child, you just tell her that she is doing a great job or otherwise reward her whenever she does the right thing. This creates a situation where she associates the right thing with a good outcome and has no such association with the wrong thing. This helps to positively change behavior without having to punish, yell or otherwise negatively reinforce behaviors.

• Negative reinforcement is the opposite of positive reinforcement. Rather than positively reinforce the correct behaviors, negative reinforcement reinforces the incorrect behaviors. This is good for more serious issues (e.g., if the youngster consistently climbs on the counter next to a pot of boiling water, you need to negatively reinforce that behavior immediately, because the consequences of knocking over the pot are so dire). Examples of negative reinforcement include stern words, loss of privileges and other forms of discipline.

• Supportive intervention is when the child needs help reinforcing a behavior. She may know it theoretically, but she may not always apply it as it is not yet internalized. So, supportive intervention is when the child is gently guided through positive and negative feedback. It is different from other forms of behavior intervention, because it has a specific spot in the behavior management cycle – specifically, after the behavior has been learned, but before it is consistently applied.

Step #3: Make sure that the interventions listed above are discussed with the HFA child in an explicit, rule-governed fashion so that clear expectations are set and consistency across adults, settings and situations is maintained.

Step #4: Help the child to make choices. Do not assume that he makes informed decisions based on his own set of elaborate likes and dislikes. Rather he should be helped to consider alternatives of action or choices, as well as their consequences (e.g., rewards and unhappiness) and associated emotions. The need for such an artificial set of guidelines is a result of the HFA child’s typical poor intuition and knowledge of self.
 
 ==> Preventing Meltdowns and Tantrums in Asperger's and HFA Children

Additional behavior management strategies that are critical to the success of the HFA child include the following:

• Stick to a routine: This is necessary for both the youngster and the parent. A youngster with HFA thrives on routine. Being able to anticipate what comes next is soothing and satisfying. Routine lessens anxiety, and a less anxious youngster has fewer outbursts. Adhering to a schedule is a necessary behavior management tool. If the youngster is complacent with her schedule, it eliminates some behavior issues. Behavior management for kids on the autism spectrum is about anticipating what will cause unwanted behavior and eradicating those situations. Because of insufficient social skills, the youngster often has to memorize the rules of situational norms (e.g., eating in a restaurant, waiting in line, sharing with friends, etc.). Routine-based behavioral management techniques focus on the prevention of the negative behaviors that accompany an unstructured or weak routine.

• Encourage the child’s special interest: The HFA youngster will often have a very specific interest and obsess about it. Some moms and dads are apprehensive about encouraging this peculiar behavior, but it is actually a helpful coping technique. The youngster’s special interest can be used to encourage positive behavior (e.g., “If you share with your friend, we will go to the library and check out another book about dinosaurs”). However, don’t use the special interest as a disciplinary tool. Taking away the youngster’s “go-to coping skill” is denying him a form of self-imposed therapy.

• Issue rewards for positive behavior immediately: Kids on the autism spectrum are often unable to relate cause and effect, especially if a lot of time exists between the two. Thus, reinforcements should be given immediately. The youngster can’t relate a reward received at the end of the day to a behavior exhibited earlier in the afternoon. Also, rewards should be chosen carefully, and moms and dads need to follow through with the incentive (e.g., if stickers or other tokens are being used to encourage successful behavior, be sure that these rewards are readily available at all times – and in all settings).

• Use visual schedules: Kids on the autism spectrum crave structure, and visual schedules are helpful in creating order, clear choices and expectations. A visual schedule is a series of pictures that lists the day’s activities and choices (e.g., a morning schedule posted on the bathroom mirror can have pictures depicting the youngster brushing her teeth, washing her face, and getting dressed …or at breakfast, there may be a visual schedule showing meal options). Depending on the needs of the youngster, the schedule can illustrate more detail.


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