Ep. 73: The Problem With Social Skills Training
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys.
And
we're here every week to
bring you neuroaffirming
tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift?
Let's do this! What is up, everyone? I think we are going to have a fantastic episode. You're gonna learn a lot from this episode because I think when we work with our autistic students, we oftentimes hear social skills training is the end-all be-all solution for everything.
What is social skills training and why is it problematic for autistic students?
And I'm here to tell you some information about why that might. not be the case, some research and what are some ways that we can reframe social skills training? What are the alternatives so that way we can help our students thrive? First I want to talk a little bit about my background in this realm. I have been working in the school setting now for a little over 20 years. I also worked as a supervisor in private practice. And what has oftentimes been pushed is social skills. training and I want to talk just a little bit about that. What is social skills training? on the surface level so that way we can get a better understanding of what we're talking about here. Okay, so what is the goal of social skills training?
The goal is to teach kids how to imitate. Social skills. That their peers might have. So what is referred to as the neuromajority. So what are the neurotypical peers doing for their social skills? And then training a kid to imitate those skills. So the person who's training. can view that as what they think is appropriate or normal. Okay. Does that make sense? So let me give you an example. It could be about back and forth conversation exchange, right? Teaching a kid that they must interact with the back and forth conversation exchange. It's called reciprocal communication uh in speech terms. But so that's like talking about a subject and then the next person has to add a thought and then talk back and forth, kind of like a game of ping pong a little bit.
And the thing about that is the person who's the judge of that is the adult who says, Okay, that's normal, but that's the problem with it. One of the one of the challenges is that In the act of doing that, you it it it inadvertently tells the autistic student to suppress who they are, to suppress their characteristics and traits. We'll dive into some of the uh studies and a little bit about why that's harmful, but that's basically the surface of it. Social skills training is teaching a kid to imitate other people. The way that might look in a setting. So this isn't just for speech therapy. This can be for a multiple uh Other therapies outside of speech therapy could be with ABA therapy, could be in a in a clinic.
Um, and so what this might look like is Video modeling, right? So you'll show a video and then the kid will watch other kids performing this and then they're told, okay, now you have to act like what you just watched in the video, if it's you know, neurotypical social skills. So that's one thing that we see. Another thing that sometimes we typically see in social skills training. Are role playing scenes where the neuro majority Social skills outcomes are the goal. In ABA terms, this is called behavioral rehearsal. Behavioral rehearsal. And so basically you're just saying, okay, we're gonna do some role playing so that way you can develop your skills like the neurotypical classmates. Again, at the same time.
Telling the student you have to suppress the way that you have been successful in communicating or the way that you feel is comfortable and natural to you. You have to hide all of that. You see where I'm going with the some of the challenges that can be. Um, leading to some of the harms. And then some of the goals that are targeted. I just mentioned one that seems to be a pretty popular one, back and forth conversation exchange, but some other neurotypical Goals that are targeted in social skills training might be tone of voice. You might have a student who may have, you know, somewhat of a monotone voice, and they're like, okay, well, we want you to speak like this.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:08–0:52
2
What is social skills training and why is it problematic for autistic students?
0:52–4:53
3
How does traditional social skills training encourage masking and affect self‑esteem?
4:53–24:34
4
What research shows the negative mental‑health outcomes of masking‑focused training?
24:34–26:19
5
Why does teaching neurotypical “norms” increase anxiety and burnout?
26:19–27:24
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
Ep. 125 How to Run Successful Social Groups
Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)