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Social skills videos or books with activities to do at home?


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My son is ADHD/bipolar and struggling with social skills. He is 9-1/2 currently and has always struggled with it, typical for ADHD. He does not pick up easily on nonverbal cues, and does not learn the "rules" by just being around people. He has to be explicitly taught pretty much everything, not to interrupt, to talk about things that interest people, that learning someone's name is important, not to stand too close, on and on.

 

He is currently in a partial hospitalization program, and they too are commenting he lacks social skills, which they blame on homeschooling and suggest I let him interact with kids more, suggesting I take him to a park or where kids go. :001_huh: I guess our park day of 2+ hours every week and a playdate of 4-5 hours a week just isn't cutting it, in addition to PE classes and having siblings and playing with kids in the neighborhood every day. Okay, rant over. :glare: They suggested public school. He is not socially lacking because he is homeschooled; he is homeschooled in part because he is socially lacking. If public school is the cure, why are all the other kids in his program part of public school and still there.

 

In any case, their only suggestion was I take him to the park to let him play with some kids once in a while. He very very obviously needs more than that. I know this must be a common problem in not only ADHD but autism and other disorders where social skills are impacted.

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I don't know the titles, but my child's therapist plays board games with him to help him develop better social skills. Hopefully others can give you some specific titles.

 

FWIW, our therapist isn't even enrolling DS in their offices social group yet because she feels he's not ready so she is definitely not pushing him to be in PS! Maybe once your child is out of the hospitalization program you can find someone who is willing to work with him one on one.

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There are some iPad apps designed to help model and teach social skills. I just downloaded the free version of one to try it out with my DD-they're expensive, but cheaper than therapy, since DD doesn't meet the threshold to qualify for an official label for anything but "gifted".

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RDI starts at age 0 and works up with all of the nonverbals and thoughtful thinking that is the foundation to learning social skills.

 

I could have paintakingly eeked out individual social skills for mine to use by rote, but it wasn't till we got the nonverbal foundation in place that the skills in Model Me could be applied in varying situations.

 

:glare:And same thing for us. We were getting plenty of play, but ds wasn't "picking up" the social cues/ rules. Now that I've learned more; how could he ? Those communication channels were nonfunctioning. Nonverbal is 80% of all communication.:grouphug:

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:lurk5:

 

My 7yr old is also lacking in social skills and has been in a social setting including PS since he was 2yrs old. I had him in daycare while I worked at home to help. I am bringing him home to HS now. I was just referred to a social skills office through out medical insurance provider so I don't know what comes next but I love the responses here. I am liking the social books on Amazon.

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Those skill sets are called pragmatics. My oldest ds was in speech mainly for pragmatic work. They talked, played games, role-played, went on walks to talk to the different employees in the hospital where the speech office is located, etc.

 

He went from not interacting anywhere near an acceptable way around other children to making eye contact and playing pretend and games etc. He was able to be on a soccer team this past fall whereas before that level of noise, interactions with others on the team and the rules of a game like that, being able to attend to who he needed to and tune out the other noises (the other teams coach, various parents yelling etc) just would have been hard.

 

I also really like this site http://jillkuzma.wordpress.com/

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We're looking for this too - DD wants to learn how to interact with other children she doesn't know. Right now she has trouble initiating play behaviors with unknown children, but she will parallel play with them and play with them if they initiate playing with her. She has ASD that we know of, but we are just starting to get her diagnosed.

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Thank you all for the suggestions!

 

DS is massively outgoing, a problem in and of itself at times. He is too much in their space, in their face, talking hundreds of miles a minute. Some in his bipolar/ADHD but then he fails to note he is really making people angry until they blow up completely. He misses the warnings.

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Thank you all for the suggestions!

 

DS is massively outgoing, a problem in and of itself at times. He is too much in their space, in their face, talking hundreds of miles a minute. Some in his bipolar/ADHD but then he fails to note he is really making people angry until they blow up completely. He misses the warnings.

 

 

You may want to look for the book Teaching your Child the Language of Social Success at your library. It has lots of easy to do activities to help improve a child's understanding of non verbal language. I have found it very helpful.

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There are some iPad apps designed to help model and teach social skills. I just downloaded the free version of one to try it out with my DD-they're expensive, but cheaper than therapy, since DD doesn't meet the threshold to qualify for an official label for anything but "gifted".

 

Is the one you have the Social Express Lite?

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Have you looked at "Hidden Curriculum" As discussed by Brenda Smith Myers? Helped hugely with my 7 year old. You may have to tailor a few to his specifics. Helps with unwritten social rules, subtle messages and expectations in social situations And skills necessary for everyday social success. As mentioned by someone else on this thread Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) is also very, very helpful. It builds these skills from bottom up but, is very intensive as you have to meet an RDI consultant, set up scenarios of the targets you are working on and then video your child almost every week performing these activities and send them to your RDI consultant for feed back. You are not only changing the childs ways of communication, but also yours. As I said, it is very intensive. it is not a therapy, but a way of life, in my opinion.

 

"Model me Kids" and " Social Skill Builders" are also very helpful.

Hope this helps.

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