Developing Social Skills in Autistic Students

Incorporating Social Skills in Students with Autism

Jun 3, 2009

An autistic person can acquire a fair number of social skills, if properly taught by a specially trained autism teacher or therapist.

Autism may be defined as a brain disorder that affects the child within three years of birth. One of the chief symptoms of autism is impairment of social skills – or in simpler terms, a sheer inability to interact with others.

There may be a variety of treatments available for autism but not one of them can guarantee a permanent cure. However, an autistic person can be made to acquire a fair degree of social skills, if properly taught by a specially trained autism teacher or, preferably, by a social skills therapist.

Role of Social Skills Therapists in Autism

As the number of autistic children is steadily increasing, there is a growing demand for Social Skills Therapists to train these disabled children and adults. It is unfortunate there is no certification course for Social Skills Therapist or autism teachers. Thus, social skills practitioners are basically volunteers and come from different background and training.

It may be said, social skills therapists are social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists and speech/language therapists who are interested in working with autistic people. Since there is no official approved certification course for social skills therapists, the methodology each one of them adopts may vary.

Children and adults are grouped by age and severity of the ailment, and trained in social skills according to some sort of a general curriculum developed by successful practitioners of social skills therapy.

Due to the rapid advancements in electronic capabilities, today’s social skills training methods include video modeling, video interactions, computer-based training, and animation films. The aim of social skills therapists is to provide people on the autism spectrum with the ability to converse, react, play and work with other autistic children.

Social Skills Training in Schools

There are certain proven methods by which a teacher can unobtrusively inculcate social skills in autistic students in the classroom. Experts advocate the setting up of a classroom workstation having not more than three or at best four children. Here the four children can be taught to interact with one another and behave like friends. The teacher should necessarily be present to compeer the proceedings.

Instead of asking autistic students to read and understand from text books, ask them to listen to stories that are simple, short and easily comprehensible. As a matter of fact, it will further help matters if the story-telling sessions are made interactive with student participation.

Social skill development should be closely supervised by the teachers, and the students rewarded as a motivating factor.

It is critically important to keep the parents updated about the child’s progress. It is rather unfortunate that most schools' curricula for children with autism does not include social skills therapy and as such it may be worth a parent's time to regularly get informed about the child’s progress from the concerned teacher.

The early symptoms of autism are easily discernible as autistic children babble much less than other children. They may also exhibit unusual gestures and abnormal vocal sounds and fail to react to the orders of the caregiver. Medical analysts believe that if parents report symptoms of autism in a child fairly early, then it is much easier to inculcate social skills in the child – although the disorder cannot be cured.

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