Its So Much Work To Be Your Friend

1
Its So Much Work To Be Your Friend

• Zelene Lovitt
• April 27, 2006

2
All Environments Are Social

• Kids go to school for a living.
• School is the primary activity of childhood.
• Academic pursuits are compomised by social
  difficulties
• Families are like waterbedswe all feel the
  ripples together.
• Unless we live in a closet, we cannot avoid
  social situations.

3
Have You Heard This Before?

• Nobody is my friend.
• Nobody wants to play with me.
• They are all mean.
• Why cant they be nice?
• Im nice to them but they dont like me.
• Why cant I play my Gameboy?

4
What Does It Mean?

• All students have special gifts.
• Those students who are skilled academically and
  socially are on the top.
• Those who are skilled socially come next.
• Those who are skilled academically are still
  okay.
• Those who have difficulty in academic and social
  areas have a rough path ahead.

5
Why are social skills important?

• Life is fun if you have them and not if you
  dont.
• We see ourselves through our relations with
  others. We either like ourselves or not,
  depending on how others react to us.
• All of us want to connect in meaningful ways with
  others.

6
What Are Social Skills?

• They are behaviors that a person knows how to use
  at the right time and place.
• How to take turns in a conversation
• Expressing interest in anothers point of view
• Disagreeing appropriately
• Ways to enter a group
• Sensitivity
• Flexibility
• responsiveness

7
Poor Social Skills Lead To

• Rejection
• Loneliness
• Isolation
• Inability to predict consequences
• Poor school performance
• Limited tolerance for frustration and failure
• Behavior problems
• Fewer social opportunities in which social skills
  can be developed or honed
• A future down a negative path

8

• Social skills are the ultimate
• determining factor in the childs
• future success, happiness, and
• acceptance.

9

• These children are immature socially.
• View them as 2-4 years younger on
• social scales and treat them
• accordingly.

10
Friendship

• Be interested in and know about someone else
• Be sensitive to needs and feelings
• Compromise on activities
• Laugh off differences
• Allow freedom from you
• Open/honest communication
• Absorb disagreements
• Change and grow with your friend

11
The Three Stages of Friendship

• Exploratoryfinding common interests, skills,
  backgrounds (acquantance level)
• Trustemerging of bonds of trust and
  understanding (companion level)
• This is often where our children stub their toes
• WE must help our children get through this stage
  successfully
• Compatabilityacceptance is solidified (genuine
  friendship level)

12
5 Questions

• Is this person similar to me?
• Does he make me feel good?
• Can I trust him?
• Can he help me to meet my goals in some way?
• Is he fun to be with?

13
Four Major Social Skills

• Ability to join or enter a group
• Ability to establish and maintain friendships
• Ability to resolve conflicts
• Ability to tune in to social skills

14
Think About How Your Child

• Handles emotions and social challenges
• Handles peer situations
• Handles authority
• Handles stress

15
ADD/ADHD Blessings

• Impulsivity
• Distractibility
• Difficulties in the ability to
• Observe
• Understand
• Respond appropriately to social environment
• Plan
• Self-regulate/self-control

16
Impulsivity

• ReadyFireAim
• Limited reflection and forethought
• The gift of time to think prior to acting is
  critical because often they dont really
  understand what it is that they are being asked
  to do.

17
Inattention

• Disorganized
• Forgetful
• Poor follow-through
• Boring, repetitive, unrewarding tasks often lead
  to inattention

18
Organizational Skills

• One of the primary causes for social isolation
  and rejection is an inability to organize and
  structure oneself.
• Do YOU want to be friends with someone who is
  unpredictable and undependable?

19
Kinds of Organizational Skills

• Material-spatialthings
• Temporal-spatialtime sequence
• Transitionalshifting gears
• Perspective retrieval--memory

20
Parents Role

• Select environments that provide opportunities
  for interactions with others
• Discourage excessive TV, computer, and other
  solitary activities that fail to provide
  opportunities for peer interaction
• BOARD GAMES require social skills and provide
  invaluable opportunities to learn and reinforce
  those skills

21
Talking With Your Child

• Difficulties are often a source of shame and
  embarrassment
• Avoid criticizing, interrogating or lecturing
• Remain calm and nonjudgmental
• Select a time and place for talks that will be
  appropriate and effective
• Restating childs comments and reflecting on them
  can be helpful

22
Learning Social Skills

• Typically learned along the way
• For our children, they must be taught directly
  and explicitly
• Our children must have structured opportunities
  to learn and practice the skills

23
How Do I Teach Social Skills?

• Practice
• Immediate feedback
• Instruction
• Positive reinforcement

24
Board Games

• Negotiate
• Take turns
• Follow rules
• Be gracious in defeat and in victory
• Share
• Have patience
• Strategize
• Allow for giving positive reinforcement,
  affection, and encouragement

25
Figuring Out The Problem

• Ask the child to explain what happened.
• Ask the child to identify the mistake he made
  (the behavior to change).
• Assist the child in determining the actual social
  error that he made. (could have v should have)
• Come up with a scenario wherein there is a story
  that has the same basic moral or goal as the
  social difficulty.
• Social homework.

26
Helping Your Child Get Organized

• Help with external structure to compensate for a
  lack of internal structure.
• A structured environment is simply one that is
  predictable.

27
Three Questions

• What is the job that I need to complete?
• What will I need to use or do to complete this
  job?
• How did I do?

28
Self-Evaluation

• Delay self-evaluation until the task or a chunk
  of the task is completed.
• This is often overlooked but enables disorganized
  children to judge their own performance and
  possibly make corrections or improvements.

29
Control What You Can

• One-on-one v group/team activities
• The environment
• Outlets for energy/frustration
• Consistency
• Focus on strengths to remediate weaknesses
• Anticipate and prevent/avoid problems

30
More

• Encourage and foster independence
• Reinforce, praise, encourage to remain success
  oriented
• Assist in dealing with failure and frustration
• Provide unconditional love and acceptance

31
Playdates

• One-on-one playdates provide an opportunity for
  children to learn and practice the critical
  social skills of sharing, negotiating, problem
  solving, intimacy, and turn taking in a less
  threatening environment.
• Choose the playmate with care.

32
So Its Okay For Them To

• Have playmates who are younger
• Have playmates who are older
• Have playmates of the opposite sex
• This allows them to practice the skills they are
  lacking with children who will be less of a
  threat or who will be more accepting/supportive.

33
School Resources for Help

• Classroom teacher
• Counselor
• Behavior resource specialist
• Coach
• Principal

34

• KIDS NEED LOVE MOST
• WHEN THEY DESERVE IT
• LEAST