Teaching Social Skills to Students with Special Needs
It is not uncommon for junior and senior high students to struggle with friendships. For students with special needs, making and keeping friends can be especially difficult.
As a special education teacher, here are some ways I have seen junior and senior high students struggle with issues related to friendship:
- Students take jokes or sarcasm seriously and react by lashing out in anger.
- Students don’t realize that there are differing protocols for socializing with acquaintances, casual friends, and good friends.
- Students have difficulty reading facial expressions and body language.
- Conversely, students may not be aware of the message being conveyed through their own facial expressions and body language.
- Students think they are being a good friend when they help a peer cover up a misdeed.
So what can we do to help these students navigate the often confusing social scene they experience daily at school? In The Learning Center, we focus on improving relationships in a variety of ways:
- Work on friendship skills daily as the need arises. For example: “You were scowling at Mary in the hallway. What message do you think a scowl sends?”
- Incorporate social skills training on friendship in the curriculum. For example, in our Bible class we recently learned about the special friendship between David and Jonathan. This leads to lessons on learning to be a good listener and learning appropriate ways to interact with peers based on the level of friendship.
- Teach social skills from a Christian worldview. Students may be challenged to forgive as Christ forgave or to pray for someone they consider to be an enemy.
- Involve families. When there is an ongoing issue between two students, the students and parents may be asked to come together to resolve the problem. About six months after one such intervention, a student commented, “It’s good to know I can be friends with someone who was my enemy last year!”
It is so encouraging when students learn the skills to maintain friendships. I have seen students who were once enemies going out of their way to be kind and encouraging to one another.
For a list of books on helping students develop social skills, visit: http://www.homeschooldiner.com/specials/special_needs/social_skills.html
