Social skills and early intervention

One of the three core skills noted to be deficient in children with autism is their apparent lack of social skills. I've come to know from my own experience with my son, who's on the spectrum, that this deficiency goes a lot deeper than what the average person understands of the definition of social skills. It is not merely about saying hello, making small talk with another person or about manners such as saying please and thank you – courteous behaviour parents of young and typically developing children encourage in their offsprings. When we are talking social skills in children with autism we are looking at difficulties in making basic social connections such as eye contact, joint attention (e.g. pointing to direct someone's attention to something, following the direction of the object pointed at or holding something up to show) before learning to take turns or share or join in. Each of these steps is a learning goal for that child and need extended period of actual training before moving on to the next skill. When these skills are somewhat in place, he/she is ready to begin practising the learned skills with peers. This again would have to be practised repeatedly in a contrived or controlled environment such as a social skills program before the child is able to internalize the steps to making basic social connections that would allow him to form relationships.
Participating in a social skills program involves a huge amount of repeated exercises of the skills, which are then extended to the home environment to maintain memory retention and easy retrieval of required steps.
Then there's the generalization skill that he/she will have to learn. Generalization is a skill that allows a child to practice what he/she has learned in one situation, environment or with one individual and extend it to a whole new situation/environment (school, home, homes of extended families and friends, place of worship, shopping malls, grocery stores among others) individual (e.g. group of people, young, old, family members, friends, neighbours, community agents - teachers, therapists etc.) and others. This is a skill that comes easily to most typically developing children but each one of those components throw a challenge in the life of an asd child who might be able to learn and execute the skills step by step in one situation but may not be able to apply it to another at all. Bridging that connection is a whole different ballgame requiring patience, endurance and thorough understanding of the way the mind of the child with autism works. According to a study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health and published online in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, early intervention programs for children with autism that include targeting deficits in social skills show improved results in social and communication skills.
To read more on this topic go to: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/210914.php