Socia Skills Therapy for High Functioning ASD

Social Skill Deficits | Asperger’s

Good social skills are critical to successful functioning in a child’s life. Social skills allow us to know what to say but also know “how and when” to say things. Good social skills allow us to be successful in making good choices, and help us to create long-term friendships.

While most children learn appropriate social skills through their everyday interactions, some children do not and have difficulty learning from casual modeling within every day activities.

Children with poor social skills can have difficulty:

Making relationships and friendships with peers’
Can have increased frustration or negative behaviors
Miss social and contextual cues (e.g. nonverbal, gestural)
Difficulty understanding body postures (e.g. facial expressions, personal space)
Difficulty reading or understanding other’s emotions
Difficulty understanding other people’s perspectives

Therapy Methods

At Kara Dodds & Associates, we realize that children benefit from a variety of therapy methods and approaches. As such, our team of multi-disciplinary pediatric therapists obtain advanced courses and trainings and specialize in neurological and developmental delays. Therapy is delivered in a one-to-one setting but also in small groups in a systemic, structured, but play-based teaching approach. Our specialized therapy methods include

Picture Exchange Communication Systems (PECS) is using a series of visuals to teach a child to initiate by giving a picture to a communicative partner.
Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets (PROMPT) is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to clients articulators to help guide them through a targeted word or phrase.
Kaufman Speech & Language Protocol is a way to teach children with apraxia of speech the easiest ways to say words until they have increased motor –speech coordination.
Hanen Center (More Than Words®) teaches techniques on how to use visual systems for transitioning, requesting, understanding the schedule or “what’s” next, how to shape echolalia speech patterns and more in everyday activities.
TalkTools is a muscle-based oral motor programs designed to promote speech and improve oral motor (lip, jaw) by utilizing oral placement tools (chewy tubes, z-vibes, horns, whistles) to improve verbal output, feeding, and speech production skills
DIR/Floor time is a developmental, individuated relationship based *This website seems to be down. (www.circlestretch.com) programs that are used to improve social connects between children and communicative partners.
Social Thinking Developed by Michelle Garcia Winners her programs target social skills programs with techniques used based on “ILAUGH” model (www.socialthinking.com)
The SCERTS® Model Social Communication, Emotional Regulation and Transactional Support (www.scerts.com)
Social Stories developed by Carol Gray, these method uses visuals and individual stories to teach social skills or appropriate expectations of behaviors through visual models (www.thegraycenter.org) *This website seems to have changed to a coupon website., and Video Play Modeling.

At Kara Dodds & Associates, our speech therapy programs are tailor made to help children organize and learn social skills in a manner supported with visual examples (e.g. social stories, personal stories), along with therapy activities supported with modeling and materials that allow for structured teaching making it easier for children to learn the art of appropriate social skills.

Call us today to speak to a therapist at 619.692.0622 or click the button below to set up an appointment to find out more about our programs.

Make an Appointment