Supporting Social Communication Skills

Brenda Myles discussed the need to:

1. Individualise the approach to each student.
2. Recognition of individuality and that individual needs can be met. This may allow the student to feel more included, accepted and thus strive to address his or her difficulties with social interaction.
3. Operate on autism time – recognising that students with autism process information in a different manner.

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Considering How Best to Support the Autistic Child

It is important to take some time to imagine the impact on the student, if he or she feels that someone recognises their potential rather than focusing on their areas of difficulty.

Click here to listen to Brenda Myles discuss the importance of this.

Reducing Demands

To provide this, we may need to reduce demands to be fair.

“Fair means everyone gets what everyone needs.”

Click here to listen to Brenda Myles Simple Strategies that Work.

For children and young people with autism, it may be more difficult to acquire social communication skills.

Many will guess, compensate, based on cognitive ability, what the social interaction should look like, however, that can lead to difficulty too.

Imagine reading the situation incorrectly, breaking a generally held social convention or rule? How may this be viewed by peers?

Would it hamper successful social inclusion?

For a student to be included, have friends, be part of the social set, breaking such rules could negatively impact on their self-worth, confidence and willingness to try again, which may ultimately lead to isolation.

Violation of such a rule can have an adverse effect on school performance, physical well-being and how well a child or young person is able to positively relate to the community and home.

As adulthood approaches, many may camouflage, (Attwood 2007; Gould and Ashton-Smith 2011; Kopp and Gillberg 2011; Lai et al. 2011; Wing 1981).  For example, an autistic person maintains eye contact during a conversation because they have learnt that this is socially appropriate, but this may clash with how he or she really wants to behave. Other strategies may include:

• Hiding behaviours,
• Using explicit techniques to appear socially competent
• Finding ways to prevent others from seeing their social difficulties
• Masking their difficulties and may make assumptions to be included.

For example, one might mask a difficulty in distinguishing lies from jokes by copying the behaviour of others, e.g. laughing, taking this one step further, he or she may develop a conscious rule: when someone says a nonliteral statement and is laughing, it is likely a joke, whilst not recognising that it may also be a lie. (Dean et al, 2017)