Important Areas and Strategies for Instilling Play & Social Skills

Important Areas and Strategies for Instilling Play & Social Skills

When considering play and social skills for autistic children, there are a few different areas to think about. Here are some important points to address:

• Take into account that unstructured play times can be the most difficult times for autistic children so adding some type of structural guidelines to those play settings would be a beneficial contribution.
• It helps to narrow in on social development in areas of intrigue and ability for the child. Creating a play scenario where language and fine motor abilities are higher than where the child is currently functioning may cause an overwhelming experience.
• It is important to acknowledge that a child with autism is probable to have anxiety before, during and after social scenarios. This may cause the child to want to avoid the situation or have inappropriate behaviors. Building social skills will eventually reduce this anxiety.
• Generalization and the ability to think flexibly are often taxing for students with autism. So, for example, playing dodge ball is usually not a wise idea. Since you are asking the child to understand that the ball can be thrown at other children, but not adults, and only during this game, it can be very confusing! Try to keep it simple at first.

Here are some strategies that one can use when supporting social skills development:

• Celebrate what the student does well socially—use behavior-specific praise and tangible reinforcement if needed to shape the pro-social behavior.
• Try modeling social interaction, turn taking, and reciprocity for your children with autism.
• Break the big picture of social skills into small component parts. Then, teach these skills through supported interactions and you can even use visuals as you see fit.