Practical Social Skills for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Designing Child-Specific Interventions (Norton Professional Book)
Kathleen Koenig
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0393706982
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Building a child’s “social repertoire” for more effective autism treatment.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are an alarmingly prevalent topic of conversation in the news, in pediatrician and therapists’ offices, in classrooms, among concerned parents, and at home, within families. The rate of diagnoses seems only to rise. It’s not surprising that professionals who work with kids on the autism spectrum are eager for effective resources on how to help children and their parents or caregivers manage it. And with this book, readers have a new tool to add to their arsenal.
Drawing on her work at the Yale Child Study Center, Koenig explains how critical it is for kids to not simply learn new social skills that fit their individual needs, but to be able to seamlessly integrate them into a range of day-to-day situations, from the classroom to the lunchroom to the dinner table at home. Building their "social repertoire" in this way, she argues, is key to effective autism treatment. Unlike other autism books that tend to be prescriptive in their approach to social skills training, this one teaches that the best social interventions are evidence-based, child-specific, and meaningfully integrated.
Guiding readers through the overarching considerations and principles for designing successful social interventions, Koenig presents a host of specific techniques―visual strategies and supports, scripts and role play, developmental play approaches, video modeling, peer mediated approaches, technology-based instruction, group instruction, self-monitoring strategies, parent-delivered interventions, and much more. Case vignettes illustrate how each intervention can be implemented, and what trouble-shooting techniques can be used when a child isn’t responding well. Koenig also provides advice on how parents and professionals can work together as a team, how to help kids “generalize” their newly learned skills across contexts, and how to measure progress in a sensible way.
With a foreword by renowned child psychiatrist Fred Volkmar, Practical Social Skills for Autism Spectrum Disorders is sophisticated in its methodology but highly accessible, hands-on, and user-friendly. An invaluable manual for clinicians, educators, school counselors and administrators, parents, and all those who work with kids on the autism spectrum, it unravels the nuances of effective social skills training by showing how to really create intervention programs that take kids' own aptitudes and needs into account. With time, the right teaching, and compassion, they can achieve a life of full engagement with their families and communities.
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Some simple strategies may take weeks to teach, and it is difficult for parents and professionals not to become discouraged. Attention to the child’s team as a functioning unit is needed (see Chapter 6). Designing a successful social intervention entails the following: 1. Identifying the target behavior. 2. Considering the child’s learning profile with regard to the behavior to be taught. 3. Identifying possible strategies that may be appropriate and feasible to implement. 4. Considering
underestimate the degree to which disruptive behaviors set a child apart from peers, from the peers’ point of view. Children are quite aware of their peers’ behavior in the school setting and may steer clear of children who exhibit these kinds of challenging behaviors. Further, children are influenced strongly by their teachers’ behavior toward a child with challenging behavior (Mikami, Lerner, & Lun, 2010). Returning to the issue of identifying a social behavior to target for teaching, it may
would like to make friends and spend time with other girls her age, but cannot seem to connect with these girls during recess. She is not invited to social gatherings outside of school, and although she is not aware of this, her mother is. How can we help Susan connect with other girls her age? It makes sense to take stock of Susan’s strengths and weaknesses in the cognitive and language domains and to understand what is motivating to her, whether it is tangible rewards or perhaps opportunities
lists the team members that might be included in the care of a child with autism. • Representative of School administration • Parents • Regular education teacher • Special education teacher • Speech-language pathologist • Occupational therapist • Physical therapist • School psychologist • Guidance counselor • Community professional, such as social worker, psychologist, occupational therapist, or speech therapist • Social worker • School nurse • Pediatrician • Psychiatrist •
Entire books have been written on how to measure behavior from the most simple to the most sophisticated, and there is no way that this section (or this chapter) can cover the detailed science that has gone into designing accurate measurement methods. At the same time, learning some basic principles will help with understanding standard measures and help to evaluate measures to design and use. Validity Validity means that the method you use to measure a behavior actually measures that behavior.