Social Skills
In the last few weeks it has been made perfectly clear that I am not the best at teaching my kids social skills. Though I am able to be a social butterfly, immediately after wards I am bombarded with all of the conversations I had, I analyze my words, their words and then begin to have anxiety about all of it. I wonder if anyone misunderstood me, what I could have said differently, did I give enough information or possibly too much information. I have all kinds of thoughts, though I have gotten a lot better and do not spend days on this now, I still do it. I try not too but I don’t know how to make it stop. Currently the best remedy to this has been talking it through with David and he helping me to understand that none of it matters. It really doesn’t and most people only read what they want to anyway from conversations or body language and facial cues so who cares.
I am beginning to understand that I cannot make people understand what I mean so let it go.
Most of the time I cannot articulate what I want to say anyway in physical conversation, I do much better in written form. I have been learning about this whole social underworld that is going on and has been going on right under my nose for my entire life. I had no idea that people were saying things with their face or their arms or that they do not tell you what they really are thinking. I mean I had my suspicions but to read other people’s words describing these rules that I was unaware of but knew something was causing me confusion, has made a lot of things make sense for me. It has also made me very aware of my inability to understand these things and teach my children about them. In the past few months it has been more obvious that both Ariel and Joshua are on the spectrum and I would venture to say that if we took them in to be evaluated they too would be placed somewhere on the spectrum.
The older they get the more obvious it is that they do not understand the social cues nor do they see them.
As I have been observing this, I realized how I need to do something to help them. I have been researching social skill curriculum for a while but never really understood the point. However, after seeing the kids around other kids and adults it has made sense now. As a child I was taught certain things that were a social must from my Grandparents and my mom. My Grandparents were the picture of Ozzy and Harriett and they taught me those kinds of things. I was demanded to respect my elders, say hello, be polite and when I said things that were inappropriate I was punished. I learned from that, I didn’t understand why but I understood that I would be punished someway. I have not done that to my kids. Of course I do not allow them to talk back or be rude but I also understand that there is a difference from truly being rude and saying what you see or feel.
The problem is the world doesn’t think that way.
SO I have taken small steps, one of them was the dvd curriculum from Model Me Kids and I like them so do the kids. We are also getting Social Skill Builder to help with this stuff. We decided that learning social skills in our family is just as important as any other curriculum. As I have considered these things I have taken a look in my past and even now, I now understand that during my school years a lot of my issues with school and learning had to do with my social stresses. I skipped school, I quit school (I went back), all through elementary school I was tardy over a 100 days each year and missed at least 10 or more. It’s a good thing that they didn’t send a truant officer back then! I did well in school when I didn’t have social stress but the majority of my school years were filled with social anxiety and confusion. I believe had I been given these kinds of skills I would have been better equipped to do school and do well.
I want to give that to my kids.
I know that I am only capable of teaching them from my perspective and that will not help them understand how this world of social underlining works or how to behave when people act a certain way. One of the things that has helped me is to finally understand that people are not purposely mean and many of the things that I feel are mean or unjust they do not. I may not understand it but now I know that, which has helped me to let things go much easier and quicker. I am finding that the social skill books and curriculum are helping me as well. I have tried social stories, free ones right now but I have looked into them and used them on several occasions. The problem that both Daniel and I have are that they use pictures that are cartoonish or like clip art. He has a hard time transferring himself into the situation so to him it is just a story with a picture and it has nothing to do with him. I totally understand that, what is the point of telling me a potty story using a bear??
I have decided to take the stories and use pictures of Daniel.
I have made several books with his picture and pictures of actual places or things that we use or go to and make a social story. He really likes this. I have taken pictures of him with a great big smile and used it to apply to social stories that he has anxiety about to help him apply that emotion to the experience. It has worked with the couple of them I have made. I am going to make a potty one next. I couldn’t understand why the social stories wouldn’t work at first because all of the things I read the people claimed that the child finally got it or it had changed their lives and brought great understanding but not for us. Needless to say I was discouraged a bit but then it dawned me that as I read them and looked at them I found myself rolling my eyes at the pictures or thinking this is silly. Those thoughts made me question why and I discovered that the pictures were a problem for me, I couldn’t envision myself with those pictures so I thought that Daniel may feel the same way.
And he did.
I have been trying to be creative in teaching these guys so another thing I have been doing is video taping our family time and role playing situations. I am making videos of us taking turns playing games, meeting someone new, doing school those kinds of things so that alongside the other curriculum that shows other children and families doing this they can all see us doing it too. I believe that this will help Daniel be able to envision himself. I hope so. I watched a video of a mother who had done this and thought it was a very good idea. I have been making videos since they were born and they all love to watch themselves so I figured we could video tape our family being ourselves and use it to teach social skills. I am hoping this helps our children gain the knowledge of the social goings on that I never knew about and the ability to understand that not everyone thinks like them and that it is ok.
I also hope to instill the courage in them to be able to say ” I just can’t socialize today” and to feel perfectly fine with that too. (I am working on that one still.)
Tags: social cues, social skills, social stories
