Please tell me about social skills group and what I need to set up one.

[someoneoutthere]

We live in the U.A.E and in my area, there is no support group for children with ASD/ADHD. Whilst talking to a friend this morning, we talked about how we could do something about it and one of the things we discussed about was to run a social skills group for our kids.

I know that a lot of your children attend social skills group. Would you be kind enough to tell me about what type of things they do in the group? What I need to start things and actually how things are done? We left the UK before DS went to school, so he was never part of any. I have read all the post about how a social skill group helps children on the spectrum on MN and am hoping that you lovely MNer's as usual can point me towards the right directions.

Things I will be able to organise easily are- Venue to run it, speech therapist (as we will be paying for it, it won't be a problem), two ABA therapists who are willing to participate. We have four children who will take part in the group, but obviously it will increase when people find out about it.

Things I don't know are the actual content, i.e. what is taught in the group, how it is taught, the materials etc.

Thanks in advance.

i went on 4 parent courses in the past,and they all had great advice and lots of help and tips,ive got draw fulls of course work i did,
the best one i did so far was called the carolyn webster stratton course,it was amazing!
im also doing another course in dec and that will tell me alot of what i should have in place for my ds,
as i dont have a clue!!! alot of people just dont know what to do once they get that dx,
if i went to a support group id like to be pointed in the right direction in areas like that,and some behavioural tips,
and of course to know im not the only one!
another course i did i had homework each week, eg:do new rewards charts,house rules,play with your child,let them pick an outfit for you,they taught us how to put in rewards and conseqenses,etc
they had videos aswell of senarios and that got the group talking about there experiances and what worked for them.
i think its great what your doing
good luck xxx

I was recommended the book 'Socially Speaking'. Unfortunately, I needed more children than just mine and school did not want to know.

Also, your speech therapist and ot should be able to recommend some social skills games, listening games etc that are suitable for the group to work on.

So we need some games like board games for the kids to play together? Is it done in a pair, or all kids join in one game? The ABA therapists will be able to deal with any behaviour issues, but they are not sure what they meant to do in the social conversation side (they are quite new tutors).

Thank you for the book recommendation. I will look for it and see if I can get it delivered here.

You want this sort of stuff taskmaster

I wouldn't know which ones are better than others, but there's quite a few kits with different games and activities.

You might be able to get them somewhere else, I don't know I've never looked - I buy pencil grips from there and sometimes nosy at the other stuff, lol

You can start with REALLY simple stuff. I. E all have to sit together still with hands on ankles whilst you read a book. For each child that meets the 3 minute time, they get an exchangeable token. However if the whole group manage it then they all double their tokens.

When they have mastered that you can ask a child a simple question about the book. You reinforce them and then ask if anyone can tell you what they just said, and give them a token too.

Commenting games are good. Take in turns. My mum's car is blue! Children have to take turns to comment. You can do this a billion times when they are playing with playdough. I.e I am making a snake, I am making a triangle etc etc. Then again ask 'what did x say she was making?' with a reinforcement for responding.

Thank you gloria, that was really helpful. It tells me about the skills I need to target for and how to go about it. I was not sure what is actually targeted in a group like that as I have never been to one.

Tabulah, thank you for the link, off to have a look around.