When I lived in Atlanta, I developed a passion for working with middle schoolers with social skills deficits. Over almost 6 years, I developed many social skills groups while working as a Speech-Language Pathologist for The Howard School. I had fun implementing a social skills cooking club, social skills movie club and social skills writing workshop. I found the most success when allowing students to have some autonomy in the direction of the group as well as explicitly sharing the purpose of the group to the students.
Learn more about what science and research says about using autonomy and purpose to improve motivation here: Drive by Daniel Pink
After moving to Western North Carolina, it took some time (almost 3 years), but I’m VERY excited to announce that I will be starting a social skills group in Asheville, North Carolina!
If you’ve seen my blog before, you’ll have noticed that I LOVE finding social skill nuance references in commercials and on TV. I know it’s been a few months, but last week I found a new one and it’s great!
The way you say things matters. Your TONE OF VOICE can easily change the meaning of what you say. Just watch this Wendy’s commercial to see how the same sentence can mean two very different things.
If you have students that struggle understanding differences in tone of voice or students who struggle monitoring their own tone of voice, check out my new Teachers Pay Teachers activity here:
If you’ve visited my blog before, you know I love using commercials to help get a conversation going with students about a topic. So, when I saw this Nike commercial it reignited my interest in helping students develop and strengthen their executive functioning skills. Use this video to help explain and teach executive functions to your students.
A few years ago, I was part of a team that developed a program to help middle schoolers learn how to use “self-talk” to navigate social situations and problem solve situations on their own. What we discovered in the process was that many students lack the inner dialogue necessary to effectively complete school tasks, figure out social situations, and get to where they needed to be on time and with the necessary materials.
The culture in schools is slowly changing, but for the most part, executive functions are not directly taught in schools. And, many school-aged students simply have not developed the skills necessary to get their work done and be socially successful in school.
So my advice to parents and educators would be…
DO NOT ASSUME children have fully developed organizational systems to complete tasks or socially savvy inner dialogues to navigate nuanced situations.
It’s your responsibility to explicitly teach them and provide opportunities for them to develop and refine these executive functioning skills.
I have found many resources out there to help students become more aware of the ability to use an inner dialogue to help them problem solve and successfully navigate the social world. See one of my favorites below.
When you’ve taken the time to help your students build stronger executive functioning skills, use your own “self-talk” to tell yourself, “Good job.” ; )
When it comes to social skills, CONTEXT is very important. You can say one thing in one place or situation and it will mean one thing, but if you say the SAME thing in another context, it can totally have a different meaning.
When it comes to social situations, some things are “OK” to DO in one context, and considered not “OK” in another. Students who struggle with social skills have a hard time figuring this out. They may start digging for a booger in the middle of class and not understand why that is SO not “OK” and the entire class is screaming, “Eeeewwww!”
You may find it uncomfortable to think about, but I explain to my students that it’s not “OK” to pick your nose in public, but it IS totally “OK” to do so in the privacy of your home as long as you use a tissue to discard of the findings and wash your hands after. You know you do it too… Don’t deny it.
The booger picking example is an extreme one but actually the list of examples of how context matters goes on an on. The booger one is just an attention grabbing one that most students can relate to.
When it comes to social skills, CONTEXT matters when it comes to what is considered “OK” to say and do. I love using this book to help my students learn more about context and the role it plays.
I’ve also created an activity on my Teachers Pay Teachers site to help students learn and discuss this topic. Check it out here.
Talk with your students and come up with a list of what’s “OK” and not “OK” to SAY and DO in different contexts and don’t forget to laugh and have fun with it!
“When my voice sounds harsh, that means I’m frustrated.”
“When I raise one eyebrow up, it means I’m confused.”
I’m pretty sure the answer is NO.
That’s because traditionally, parents and educators typically don’t have to “teach” children the basics of social interaction or the nuances of social situations. However, interacting with others can be both confusing and frustrating for many children. Children with poor social skills are often socially isolated and that along with lack of social awareness can have life long effects.
Check out the article I wrote for the Carolina Pediatric Therapy blog by clicking the link below. I came up with six basic talking points to help parents and teachers educate students who struggle socially.
“My friends know me so well. They can tell what I’m thinking just by looking in my eyes.” -Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston’s friends must have good social awareness! They are able to tell what she’s thinking by looking at her eyes. I suspect… is what they’re REALLY doing is looking not only at her eyes, but checking in with her entire face and body to figure out what she’s thinking. They are observing and paying attention to her non-verbal language.
Non-verbal language is how we communicate nearly half of our verbal message! Many students struggle to pick up on this social skill. Think about how much meaning they are missing or how much they misunderstand if they struggle to understand the importance that non-verbal language has on communicating meaning.
What IS non-verbal language? Well, in the most basic sense non-verbal language includes:
Facial expressions- Movement of eyebrows, eyes, forehead, cheeks, lips, etc.
Body Language- Posture, hand gestures, proximity or change in closeness during social interaction, etc.
Tone of Voice- Differences in the way the voice sounds, different stress or emphasis placed on words or phrases
If Jennifer Aniston wasn’t trying to sell eye care products, she would’ve said,
“My friends know me so well. They can tell what I’m thinking by paying attention to my entire body and to the way my voice sounds.”
Use this commercial to get a conversation going with your children or students about the importance of non-verbal language and the meaning it conveys or how it can change the meaning of what people communicate.
I’ve created some lessons specifically teaching non-verbal language and the importance of paying attention to it during social interaction on my Teachers Pay Teachers page. You can find them by clicking the links below:
He believes (and I do too) that skills such as self awareness, emotional mastery, motivation, empathy and social effectiveness have a greater impact than traditional intelligence on career success.
To learn more about the importance of social intelligence, watch this talk he gave at Google in 2007:
Another innovator in the field of social cognition is Michelle Garcia Winner. She is a speech and language pathologist who has devoted her career to helping those with social cognitive deficits. When attending one of her Social Thinking conferences a few years back she beautifully explained the importance of social skills.
She explained that our social skills directly impact how others feel about us. This impacts how we are treated, how we feel about others, and ultimately, how we feel about ourselves.
To learn more, watch this video where she speaks about her approach:
At her Social Thinking conference, I also loved how she defined SOCIAL SKILLS. She defined social skills as “adapting effectively with others” and “sharing space effectively”.
That really put things into perspective for me. Being social is not just about conversational rules to follow and having good eye contact. Social skills is about judging each situation you’re in and figuring out what’s expected for that situation. When I first began helping students with social skills, we talked about following the rules of conversation. That meant making sure to say hello, trying to keep conversations going, remembering not to interrupt others and making sure to look at others when speaking. Now I’ve learned that it’s much more complex than that.
Now I help students become social observers who focus less on rules to follow and more about thinking about each social situation and what’s expected for that specific situation. I help them build self-talk so they can:
Think About Their Own Thinking
& Think About the Thinking of Others
I help them learn and realize for themselves that social rules change based on the situation. So in order to be an effective social communicator, you must learn to pay attention to many things. You must use executive functions to build awareness of yourself, understand the thoughts of others, and be a problem solver based on the clues you’re getting from others’ non-verbal language and tone of voice. You must make inferences based on the context and prior knowledge because often people say one thing, but mean the opposite and/or they don’t actually say what they truly mean.
To get the conversation going with your students or your children, ask them to define what they think social skills means. I’m always surprised to see how they verbalize it. Once you do that, then you can help them build the skills they need to effectively adapt to different social situations and share space effectively with others.
Here are a few very useful materials I’ve discovered over the years to help students build better social language skills over the years.
