conversation skills 16y/o

[seema]

My 16y/o dd, ASD, has had great difficulty with conversations. She did not have any speech delay, but had difficulty with self expression and , has had speech therapy on and off for yrs, and also has been going to weekly social skills group for last 7 yrs, however small talk is still extremely difficult for her. She struggles with narratives, perspective taking. she will just answer in 1-2 words for any questions when visiting family members, and has difficulty reciprocating. I am at a loss, how do I help her improve conversation skills? The weekly social skills class she attends for high functioning ASD , she does better there according to the teacher , however I don't see any carryover with us at home, or at school.

I am so worried, as this is the most basic life skill. Please help advise...

Thanks

[PeterPan]

7 hours ago, seema said:

The weekly social skills class she attends for high functioning ASD , she does better there according to the teacher , however I don't see any carryover with us at home, or at school.

Yeah, they're probably prompting her or using predictable patterns that she has gotten used to. Real life has a lot of curve balls. You might consider getting an SLP to work with her on conversation.

                                            Talk With Me: A Step-By-Step Conversation Framework for Teaching Conversational Balance and Fluency                                       Here's a book Ruth Aspy recommends. I have it, and it's way complex for my ds at my point. Would be great to work through with a 16 yo, yes. It's written to an SLP, but you could do it or use it as a way to figure out what you're trying to make happen. 

You could also look into narrative language. MW/SGM teaches a "Six Second Story" in their ASD kit that might be useful to her. They might have it on their blog somewhere too. 

I think it's also easy to assume there's no syntax issue. How is her reading? Has it leveled out? And how is her writing? 

Is it possible she's *anxious* with these people? What happens if she's talking about a topic she's interested in? 

She's going to need to go meta to make progress. Ruth Aspy talks about this, how it's not just enough to say well we had a playdate, we went to a group, whatever. The dc needs to have a goal, KNOW they have the goal, and then have a bit afterward to talk with someone about how they did with that goal. Then you can actually make progress. So that's why I'm saying don't be afraid to try to help her make some progress with this yourself. You could take ANYTHING from the TWM book, anything you could wrap your brain around, work on it a bit with her and say THIS IS YOUR GOAL. Then she goes to the event and afterwards you talk about how she did on her goal. Rinse and repeat.

[seema]

Thank you PeterPan. She struggles with writing too, reading comprehension has improved some with practice. She has always had most difficulty with narration, and expressing emotions with story telling. I am looking for any resources to help her expressive language.

[PeterPan]

Yup, seems to be the day for it as several threads are hitting the same thing.

With expressive language we have so many components, and it's really that question of how much you want to do. In ABA we talk about FFC (feature, function, class), and the SLPs work on the same stuff with other terms (vocabulary). Then the SLPs will talk about concepts and syntax. From those language pieces we build together and go through the stages of narrative language development. Your narrative language connects with your expository writing, your conversation, everything.

So how far do you want to back up? There are middle of the road ways to back up, like the EET. Then there's the OCD, and now we will back up so far far far like what I did with my ds. My ds was reciting/scripting paragraphs out of books and not making original sentences. He failed the PRESCHOOL version of the SPELT=structured photographic expressive language test. This was last year, age 9. He tested as reading at a 6th grade level at the end of 1st. And like 9th gr vocabulary. Kinda screwy and contradictory, eh?

So me, I'm a fan of backing up, no assumptions. My theory is get it solid and get it every way. You want to understand it in conversation (receptive), you want to be able to read it and understand it (reading comprehension), you want to be able to GET IT OUT in a sentence, you want to be able to GET IT OUT in a narrative. And you could take it farther and say you want to be able to get it out as narrative and expository.

That's my theory.

If you want the all the way back answer, here's http://www.e4thai.com/e4e/images/pdf2/100_vocabulary_primary.pdf  and then you flesh it out with SPARC books and other workbooks from Linguisystems. That's what I did. Then, as we built the skills and could make sure he could understand it when reading it and say it as sentences, then we built it into narratives. I like the Story Grammar Marker, ASD kit, whatever you want from Mindwing Concepts and I like SKILL (Gillam). MW does a better job of showing development and slowing it down and showing the syntax necessary to hit each stage.

It took me a crazy long time to wrap my brain around that. Once I saw how all the pieces were connected, how one thing became the foundation for the next, then it was obvious where my ds needed to start. So my suggestion is to wrap your brain around the flow, try to find the developmental charts from MW (I would just order their ASD kit and be done with it), and then think through what her next step is. You're looking for where she is in the progression of each skill (vocabulary, syntax, narrative language) and why she stalled out and what would help her take the next step. She might be uneven, so you might find you need to even her up a bit, like getting her applyign with narrative language the skills she already has in vocabulary, that kind of thing. 

And no, even though these are SLP materials, I couldn't find someone to do it for me. But you know, try if you want. There are SLPs who specialize in literacy. If you found one, that would probably be a whiz bang amazing option. They're going to own the tests and understand how these issues relate, find where she's stalled, and get her moving forward. It could be really efficient working with someone like that.

[PeterPan]

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/autism-spectrum-disorder  Here's something to get you started. If you're going to do the work yourself, just take some steps. As YOU learn the pieces, you'll be able to make things go better. This kit is excellent and would get you somewhere fast. Also look through that pdf I linked you and see if she could do easily that type of material. For my ds it was fatiguing. I had him read everything aloud and answer in complete sentences. The SPARC books were excellent for applying it then to narratives.