Strategies to Deal with Difficult Social Experiences
Bullying and Difficult Social Situations
Your client may experience bullying or encounter adverse peer experiences. These strategies may be helpful in these instances:
- Provide your client with strategies for dealing with bullying when it occurs. For example, how to act like you do not care what others think of you or how to look confident.
- Ensure that teachers are made aware of the bullying occurring during class time and encourage them to be vigilant when it happens. If comfortable, the student and teacher can create a secret signal that the client can use to alert the teacher to the bullying. Encourage the client’s teacher to discuss the situation with the client afterward and develop strategies to implement the next time the bullying occurs.
- If the client is interrupting the teacher to report social situations, set up a step-by-step guide for the client to follow before interrupting the teacher.
- For example, the client can write down their feelings in a journal after it occurs.
- Additionally, setting up a pre-arranged “special time” for the client to discuss their social problems with the teacher can help prevent interruptions and provides the teacher an opportunity to monitor social problems and work on social coaching with the client.
- Encourage the client’s parents to monitor an activity period between their child and another student.
- After the outing, the client’s parents can engage in social coaching to help the child realize their behaviours that may have instigated any adverse peer experiences.
- For example, “Do you remember today at lunch how you grabbed Tom’s french fry? Did you notice how angry he became?“.
- Encourage the parent to discuss positive interactions as well, for example, “That was excellent how you shared your ice cream with Janice
- For example, “Do you remember today at lunch how you grabbed Tom’s french fry? Did you notice how angry he became?“.
- After the outing, the client’s parents can engage in social coaching to help the child realize their behaviours that may have instigated any adverse peer experiences.
- Enroll the client in an activity that the client enjoys and is successful in, taking into account the child’s profile fo social skills. Individual sports, such as swimming and skiing can be noncompetitive and fun to participate in. Once the client develops better social skills and strategies, begin introducing them to group activities.
For more information and targeted interventions on dealing with difficult social experiences, see these handouts: