Reaching Out, Joining in: Teaching Social Skills to Young Children With Autism

by Mary Jane Weiss, Mary Jane Gill-Weiss, Sandra L. Harris

One of the most important yet difficult skills for children with autism to learn is effective social interaction. This book introduces social skills programs to parents of preschool- and kindergarten-aged children diagnosed with one of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD), including Autistic Disorder, Asperger's Disorder, and Not Otherwise Specified. The book is based on the authors' decades of clinical experience using Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a proven educational method, to teach social skills at home and school. This book focuses on four broad play skills; the language of social skills; understanding another person's perspective; functioning in an inclusive classroom. This book helps parents to work with their child's strengths to improve social skills. Following the suggestions and exercises in this book, parents can teach children pretend-play, use toys appropriately, know when to use conventional responses like - excuse me - tell jokes, recognise that others' feelings and thoughts are different from their own, and initiate social interaction with peers. Included are tips for using games, modelling, rewards, role play, videos, activity schedules, and social stories to teach social skills and make the learning experience fun for parents and children. A case study of one family's efforts and successes provides a real-life example that's informative and reassuring. Appendices listing resources such as books, games, and activities give parents additional material to explore. Also by Sandra Harris :
Siblings of Children with A Guide for Families
Right from the Behavioral Intervention for Young Children with Autism
Incentives for Motivating People with Autism Spectrum Disorders to Learn and Gain Independence
Essential First Steps for Parents of Children with Autism
Also by Mary Jane Weiss :
Right from the Behavioral Intervention for Young Children with Autism
Teaching Social Skills to People with Best Practices in Individualizing Interventions
Jumpstarting Communication Skills in Children with Autism

Genres: Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Nonfiction

225 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

Reviews

[Rosemary]

This book is based on the philosophy / therapy approach of Applied Behaviour Analysis or ABA. My personal opinion of this approach is that it is less useful than child-led therapies such as DIR Floortime (although possibly useful for very severe autism).

While the text is concise and informative, I find it somewhat arbitrary. For example, before a child learns ball play, they should be able to follow directions about 90 percent of the time. I disagree with this as it's perfectly possible to introduce ball play even though a child might not quite understand what to do with the ball.

My biggest disagreement with ABA is with the idea of giving constant rewards (such as juice, food items etc) for complying with directions. Montessori's and others' research shows that extrinsic rewards tend to demotivate once the rewards are removed:

"Very young children who receive material rewards for helping others become less likely to help in the future compared with toddlers who only receive verbal praise or receive no reward at all. This research suggests that even the youngest children are intrinsically motivated to be kind, and that extrinsic rewards can undermine this tendency". – Carter (2010)

Of course the only way to motivate a child to follow an arbitrary command is to give them a reward, which is a general problem with ABA.

There are some things to like in this book such as the table of common social occurrences on page 80 (sneezing - "Bless you", yawning - "Are you tired?" etc), so I think this book would be useful for someone who doesn't find the ABA approach jarring. I'm giving this back to the library without finishing it, so I won't give it a star rating.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a simply written book that uses a single family example throughout. The fact that the child selected was severely autistic was a disappointment for me as I was hoping for some tips on helping my child, who outwardly looks normal but has real social problems. That being said once I skipped some of the initial chapters I did get some useful information out of it. It does repeat a lot of things you find in many ABA books, but also presents them in a useful way. My son is a very good reader even at 5 and was reading the section on teaching the language of social skills over my shoulder - he loved the knock knock joke section and the expressions and idioms - it led to a very positive discussion in which we spent quite a while working out what they meant. Apparently raining cats and dogs is very funny.

[Melissa Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of the book were helpful.
I liked "Strategies for Teaching Social Skills"
What reciprocal exchange looks like- objects that can be used in pretending.

I REALLY liked "Is your child ready for an Inclusion Experience?"
- The academic benefits, and social benefits of Inclusion.

Preparing Peers and and Reducing a need for a shadow- aid to help your child around school

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good review of the social skills that children with autism need to build and how to do it using the ABA frame of mind. It was written for parents so the language was simple and easy to follow, it gave good resources.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

No new info - basic ABA methods. Seemed to be written for parents and teachers who are unfamiliar with autism