Teaching Social Skills

RDI Consultant Sarah Wayland wrote a very interesting article published on RDI Connect about the difficulty of teaching social skills to children on the Autism Spectrum. She gave some very insightful information about how certain brain connections are associated to different areas of the brain, which effect children socially. She emphasized the importance on teaching our children WHY social interactions are important through doing RDI activities with them.

"Kids who cannot learn social skills through normal social interacting must be taught differently. The most common approaches teach these skills using a structured curriculum that first explains the skills, and then helps the child to practice the skills in increasingly unstructured situations. Examples of these skills include making eye contact, taking turns, and correctly interpreting facial expressions. The focus with these approaches is on teaching the “what” of social interaction.

But what about the “why” of social interaction? Would it help to explain why a child should care about eye contact, why it’s important to take turns, why facial expressions matter, and why children with social communication disorders don’t know the answers to these questions?"

Click here to read the rest of the article by Sarah Wayland