Social Skills: Teaching Today for Success Tomorrow

By: Michael C. Selbst, Ph.D., BCBA-D

It is recess. On the playground, groups of children run to the swings; others play soccer or shoot baskets; some walk together, talking about a funny episode of Sponge Bob; a few are jumping rope. "Johnny" stands out – he, walks around the perimeter of the playground, watching. Eventually, he approaches a group of boys from his class, but struggles and finally goes back to the edge of the playground where he sits down again to watch. His parents and teachers have tried to help him develop friendships. In fact, targeting related skills is part of his I.E.P., but they haven’t seen much improvement.

There are many children like Johnny who lack the skills to initiate and maintain conversations, engage in successful play interactions, and resolve conflicts in a calm manner. Because they struggle to problem-solve in social situations, they may simply avoid them.

Luckily, like reading and math, these 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 on-going.
• 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 who have good social, behavior and language skills.
• The child’s progress should be monitored throughout the year. A data-driven approach allows the team to determine how the child is doing, decide whether the plan is effective and to 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.

For some children, Extended School Year (E.S.Y.) services are needed. E.S.Y. refers to special education and related services that are provided to a student with a disability beyond the normal school year. E.S.Y. services are provided consistent with the child’s I.E.P. The I.E.P. team determines whether the child requires programming. E.S.Y 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 I.E.P.?
• 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 E.S.Y. programming. If and when the team considers E.S.Y. 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.