Expert: Valerie Herskowitz - 6/18/2011

Question
Dear Valerie,

My son is autistic and is 13 years old and is in a special needs classroom  in Middle School.

He has always been more comfortable with adults, than children.  Every IEP we make social skill goals to engage with a peer, and while the teachers always say he's improving, there's no data to back it up, so I'm a bit frustrated.  He still avoids being around other kids, but will at least he will try to engage with adults on some of his preferred topics.

Now my son has a great speech teacher in Middle School and she is doing some video modeling with him with social skills and conversation skills. My son requires a quiet classroom to do this so going back her office helps improve his concentration.  My son's time with her is limited, so she does not have time to go back to the sped classroom.

  The problem is I don't think he generalizes these skills over to his other classroom.   The teacher of the sped classroom and speech therapist are reluctant to use a visual prompt  to have him remember to do some of the things that he learned with the speech therapist.  The Sped teacher said he doesn't want to prompt him and take "data" because he said he want his interactions to not be forced, but more natural.   

My opinion is that since he is 13, and still hasn't developed social skills with other kids, there needs to be more of a plan to generalize what he learned in speech over to the other classroom, and will take some kind of prompting to give him the repetition he needs to feel confident with other kids.  Nobody at the recent IEP meeting seemed to agree with me.

I am anxious for him to improve in this area, and don't have high expectations for another year if something different isn't done.  What do you think?

The speech therapist has been working on conversation skills - answering a question, then asking the same question to the person that asked it.  He has made improvements in this area.  He can not however respond to another person's opinion.  "I like chocolate ice cream"   then he would say "I like vanilla", or him just knowing he can say something different in response to other. Do you have any ideas on how to help him with this?

Thanks very much.

Missy


Answer
Hi Missy

I agree with you!

Usually, it is the protocol to work on a social skill in a therapy environment and then to facilitate the skill in the regular environment. I am thinking that they are not doing that. I would certainly try to push this. This is a right and wrong way of facilitating interactions. In the beginning, we use scripts, which do have a little unnatural feeling to them, but eventually, we hope that the child uses some spontaneity in addition.

I don't know if your team is aware of how to encourage social skills in the classroom. You might have to look into this