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Will You Be My Friend?
Social Interaction for Children With Autism By Emily Gorovsky
Making friends in school can be challenging enough for kids, but children with autism face even greater difficulties while learning how to interact with their peers. "[Children with autism] have to learn what we don't have to learn ... They don't have some of the natural, built-in instincts we have to attract people," says Gary Mesibov, Ph.D., a professor and director of Division TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped CHildren), a service, training and research program established at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The program has nine regional centers in North Carolina and affiliations throughout the world.
According to Mesibov, one of the "natural, built-in instincts" children with autism lack is finding social interaction enjoyable. Therefore, it is important for parents and teachers to make the interaction enjoyable for children with autism so that they will want to be around others more. Just as reading can be a difficult skill for typically developing children to learn and enjoy, children with autism often struggle with being comfortable around others and enjoying conversation or human contact. When helping a child with autism to socialize with his or her peers, it is most meaningful to "have fun first, then do it right," says Mesibov.
So how can parents and teachers make social interaction enjoyable? When children with autism see their parents enjoying an activity, they are more likely to give it a try and enjoy it. Mesibov suggests initially using simple, mechanical activities that the child already enjoys, such as playing in a sandbox or swinging on a swing set, to promote interaction. After the child learns to enjoy the activity with a parent, he or she may be ready to have a peer join in. Once children with autism enjoy social interaction at home, they can start learning effective ways to communicate, play and make friends at school.
Learning to Interact
While attempting to teach social skills, however, it is important to fully understand what factors affect a child with autism's ability to learn. Children with autism learn best when they are given concrete models and rules to follow for completing a task, says Mesibov. Yet such models and rules are not clearly articulated in social interaction, making it difficult for children with autism to participate or act appropriately. For example, a child with autism may not know to make eye contact during conversation and may look down while speaking with others. This, in turn, can affect how other children perceive and approach a classmate who is autistic.
Much of what people do socially not only lacks clear guidelines, but also often is spontaneous, imaginative, abstract and disorganized. Children with autism may have played a ball toss game successfully five times, but when the rules or progression of that game are altered in any way, such as more participants joining in or more balls being thrown, that child may not be able to easily adapt to the new rules. Many children with autism also have a delay in their response time, so keeping up with a fast-paced game or adjusting to a new rule can prove very challenging.
To help address the issue of understanding the progression of a game, particularly when it ends, Mesibov suggests having special ways to teach children with autism how to count down to the end of a game. For instance, in a ball toss game, facilitators can lay out five balls to be thrown. After the child has picked up and thrown all five balls, he or she will be able to tell that the game is over because there are no more balls left to toss. This will then help the child better understand game progression.