Strategies to Support Social Skills in Clients Diagnosed with ASD

If your client is diagnosed with ASD it is like they may experience significant difficulty engaging in social interactions with same-age peers.

To address your clients difficulty making and maintaining friendships, the following strategies may want to recommended:

• A social skills training program.

• Provide direct instruction on specific social skills, including how to approach an individual or group and the skills needed to interact with peers.
  • Provide interpretations of social situations, including verbal explanations of specific social skills, including facial expressions and social pragmatics. 

• Explain problematic social situations, and in doing so, let your client know that there are specific choices to be made and that each choice has a specific consequence.
  • Specific steps in this process are as follows:
    •  Help your client understand the problematic social situation (i.e., who was involved, what happened, etc.)
    • Facilitate your client’s brainstorming of options for responding to the situation in the future.
    • Help your client identify the consequences for each option identified.
    • Have your client identify the response that has the most desirable consequences.
    • Develop an action plan. List the steps for your client (either a written list or visual). 
    • Practice the appropriate response to the problematic social situation by role playing and practicing with a peer.
    • Identify specific motivators and rewards for following the plan and responding appropriately to the social situation.

• If your client demonstrates strong creativity skills and shows an interest in drawing, the use of cartooning and comic strips can be used to illustrate the rules of social situations.

• Structure social opportunities around your client’s special interests (when appropriate).

Social Story Strategy

Make use of social stories.™ – A social story is a short story that explains a specific challenging social situation. The goal is to find out what is happening in a situation and why.

■The following is an example of a social story: Sometimes other students get upset and cry. When this happens their teacher might try to help them. The teacher might try to help them by talking to them or holding them. This is okay. Sometimes when other students get upset and cry, it makes me upset and angry. I can use words to tell my teacher that I am upset. I can say, “That makes me mad!” or “I’m upset!“ It is okay to use words about how I feel. When I get upset I will try to use words about how I feel.

■ For more information on social stories: https://carolgraysocialstories.com/social-stories/