How will I know if my child has a social communication problem?
Seek the advice of a specialist if your child:
- Does not actively participate during class discussions or sharing
- Is unable to sustain a subject during discussion or play
- Does not initiate play with peers
- Does not use appropriate turn taking in conversation, interrupts instead
- Does not use appropriate greetings and farewells
- Chooses to play alone most of the time
- Makes the same mistakes repeatedly
- Has difficulty working cooperatively in a group
- Is not able to understand others’ feelings and explain reasons for behaviors
- Has difficulty interpreting facial expressions and vocal intonation associated with emotions
- Does not understand age appropriate humor and sarcasm
Tips to try with your children
- Do not assume they understand how their actions affect others ---explain
- Use visual cues such as gestures and pictures to explain emotions and reactions
- Explain cause and effect relationships as situations arise in activities of daily living and also within stories or books. Model “if...then...” and “why... because...” sentences to explain
- Brainstorm age appropriate topics for discussions with peers, and then practice questions to initiate conversations (for example, “What did you do over the weekend?” or “Have you ever played _____”?)
- Work on turn-taking through games first, then conversation
- Practice greetings and farewells
- Discuss different ways to present a message such as polite versus impolite and direct versus indirect (for example, “May I please have a glass of water?” instead of “I’m thirsty.”)
- Always encourage good eye contact
Our staff
The speech-language pathologists and educational specialists at Jodie K. Schuller and Associates are licensed by the State of California and certified by American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA). They have master’s degrees in communicative disorders and have attended numerous workshops on Asperger Syndrome, non-verbal learning disorders and social thinking. For youngsters who have learning disabilities in addition to their social communication challenges, our speech, language and educational specialists have also been trained in the Wilson Reading System (Orton Gillingham) and the Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes
®, including Visualizing and Verbalizing
®, the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing
® Program and Seeing Stars
®: Symbol Imagery™.
