Social skills groups are an excellent way for children who find social and/or classroom interactions with peers challenging to develop these crucial skills.
Social skills groups bring the world and its associated challenges to the child. As such, the aspects of interpersonal interactions that they find difficult are likely to be triggered within the group, giving them an opportunity for immediate support to:
- Understand why they are having difficulties and why the skills they are currently applying are not working.
- Be offered new skills to support them to achieve success within the interaction.
Social learning can often be accelerated within social skills groups because the children are constantly being presented with authentic social experiences and given on the spot support to develop and apply their skills.
This means that children can very quickly come to embody the skills they are working on — immediately turning theory into a lived experience that can be reapplied with far less effort in future interactions.
Social skills groups are also an opportunity to introduce new skills and develop these as a group.
This allows for group discussion and practice to give the children a broader understanding of how an aspect of socialising affects other people and learn from one another. Developing skills as a group also allows children to see that they are not alone in needing support to learn to deal with the aspects of life they find challenging.
Often, 1:1 sessions with a clinician are needed in the development of social skills to give the child the opportunity to come to a deeper understanding of the skills they are currently using, the impact this is having and to specifically learn and develop new skills. The child then goes back out into the world to apply and build on what they have learnt.
Using 1:1 sessions and social skills groups in combination can be very powerful. 1:1 sessions can be used to establish and refine skills and participating in a social skills group will then give the child opportunities to build on what was taught individually and develop proficiency.
For 1:1 sessions and group bookings please contact Fabic.
