By Michael C. Selbst, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Many children with social skills difficulties and pragmatic and social language needs require support and instruction throughout the summer months in areas such as friendship-making, manners, expression of feelings, self-control, social problem-solving, anger management, organization, conversation skills, play skills, and the “hidden curriculum” to name a few.
While some children lack these skills, others have acquired them but struggle to use the skills when and where they are needed. Often, these children avoid social situations or may try and often fail.
Best Practices for Teaching Social Skills
Like reading and math, social skills can be taught. Best practices for helping children acquire, perform, and generalize social skills involves a comprehensive, consistent, and individualized approach. Having a systematic plan is at the heart of successful programming.
The plan must have several components:
The child’s parents, school personnel, and any private professionals involved should work collaboratively throughout the process. The child should be included and treated with respect and dignity.
The team should select relevant social skills to target for intervention. These should be socially meaningful and important. Like all other aspects of the IEP, social skills objectives should be specific, observable, and measurable. The team should obtain baseline data regarding the child’s social skills strengths and weaknesses.
The plan should include a variety of evidence-based strategies including systematic teaching of skills, modeling the desired skills, video modeling and video self-modeling, role play, behavior-specific feedback, reinforcement, and training to fluency so the child can use the skill quickly in a social situation.
Programming should be continuous and ongoing.
There should be a systematic plan to generalize skills across environments, with coaching to provide prompting and feedback.
The team should plan carefully to incorporate classmates with good social, behavior and language skills who can be positive peer models.
The child’s progress should be monitored throughout the year, using a data-driven approach allowing the team to determine how the child is doing, decide whether the plan is effective, and identify when modifications within the plan are needed. The student should be observed across social situations in school, the home, and community by multiple observers. Data should be collected regarding the specific objectives. It is possible to use norm-referenced rating scales to monitor progress. Children can also be included to self-monitor.
Children who struggle with social skills are at-risk for continued problems: internalizing (e.g., depressed mood, anxiety) and externalizing problems (e.g., oppositional and defiant behavior, aggression); school-related problems (e.g., failure, quitting school); and family issues (e.g., discord, stress). When a child is not making progress in developing and using social skills, the team should collaborate and discuss additional supports and services to help the child.
The Benefits of Extended School Year Instruction
For some children, Extended School Year (ESY) services are needed. ESY refers to special education and related services that are provided to a student with a disability beyond the normal school year. ESY services are provided consistent with the child’s IEP. The IEP team determines whether the child requires programming. ESY services are based upon the child’s needs, the child’s progress throughout the year, the likelihood of regression of skills, and many other factors.
When a child demonstrates social skills difficulties, the team should carefully consider the following questions to determine the need for E.S.Y. programming:
Has the child mastered the social skills, social-language and/or emotional-behavioral goals and objectives in the IEP?
Has the child generalized these skills across environments?
Does the child require more intensive, systematic, and individualized social skills programming than he/she has been receiving throughout the year to demonstrate progress toward the goals and objectives?
Does the child have a history of or is the child likely to regress after an extended break during the summer?
Does the child have difficulty recouping any deterioration or loss of skill within a reasonable amount of time (e.g., 1-2 months upon returning to school)?
If the team can answer “yes” to any of these questions, then serious consideration should be given regarding the appropriateness of ESY programming. If and when the team considers ESY programming, there should be careful planning to ensure that the program or intervention is aligned with best practices. This should be a collaborative process based upon information specific to the individual child’s needs. Ultimately, the recipe for social skills success requires a careful blending of teamwork, sustaining efforts to help the child, and adhering to evidence-based approaches.
When considering a summer program to teach social skills, parents and school personnel should learn about the approaches used at the program, the skills that may be targeted, how progress is monitored and what they should expect regarding generalization of skills to the “real” world. Staff should have training and experience working with children who have social skills difficulties.
It is important to review the program’s daily schedule, looking for a balance of formal social skills instruction, sports and recreational activities, and opportunities for creative and child-directed activities. Staff members should provide frequent feedback to the children, including behavior-specific praise, activity rewards, and/or tangible rewards. Strategies should be shared with the parents to transfer skills across environments. And with all quality programs, there should be ongoing data collection to ensure accountability for the student’s progress and to evaluate performance.
Michael C. Selbst, Ph.D., BCBA-D is Director of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A. in Somerset, New Jersey. He is a Licensed Psychologist and a Certified School Psychologist in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He is also a Board Certified Behavior Analyst at the Doctoral level.
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