Opinions on Social Skills class?

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My son is 8, has been working on his sensory issues and trying to deal with them. He is very outgoing, but struggles with social skills. He gets angry and has a a rude tone he will use with the teacher and other students when they annoy him or his sense of fairness has been pushed. We have been working a lot on him breathing and taking deep breathes, counting, etc. We are trying to get it to gel with him that just because he keeps his mouth shut, doesn't mean he agrees with the other person. For example, last Friday he got worked up because the boy behind him kept talking about something in the lunch line. He was worried about them getting sent to the back of the line and being last to get pizza. He got worked up telling the boy to be quiet. The teacher working lunchroom sent him to the back of the line, while the other boy stayed in place, which he felt was unfair (I do to actually, but since he gets annoyed and angry, he ends up drawing all the attention to himself.) He then argued with the teacher about the situation until she gave him 5 minutes of think track. Then when his teacher came back, the kids in class then tattled about him getting angry at the other teacher. So he is angry at the other kids for tattling. We talked with him and tried to work it out with him so that next time he could just stay quiet, ignore the boy and then he could be the one to get sent back, instead of him. Of course this is easier to do planned at home than in the moment at school. These type of misundertandings of small things that get blown up until he gets frustrated happen weekly. He also has trouble with eye contact and waiting his turn to speak when he is wound up.

We are about to put him in a social skills class. It is facilitated by a therapist and a co-therapist. It will be a small group of boys. All 8-9 years old that also have sensory problems and social skill issues. They will talk about the frustrations they had during the week, things that worked and didn't work. The therapist will ask for us to fill out a sheet each week to gage how well the week went as far as eye contact, conversation skills, etc.

Has anyone had their child in a class such as this or did anyone themselves ever do this? Did anyone feel like it helped?

I was in Social Skills classes, and I don't feel they help a whole lot. They only teach you the very basics. They don't go into enough details and the social stories are too general.

It sounds like the problem is idiotic school rules. I mean, no talking in the lunch line... Why in the world is that rule even in place? If they instituted that rule at a fast food restaurant they would go out of business by the end of the week. And seriously, he isn't allowed to state his case to the teacher who is trying to punish him? That is hardly fair at all.

But as for social skills classes, it depends what they teach. Most of them just teach superficial and fairly useless stuff like making eye contact, and making small talk. If you are trying to teach him to stay calm and not yell angrily then I am all for that. But unfortunately most social classes focus more on superficial appearances then things like emotional regulation.

They are allowed to talk in the lunchroom. They have some light system and if it gets too loud in the whole cafeteria, then they whole cafeteria has to be quiet for a period of time. Now that you ask, I am unsure why he thought he would be sent to the back of the line. I will ask him about that again.

It was a difficult day for him. They had an assembly, which is loud and crowded. His teacher offers to let him find a spot out of the thick of it to better enjoy it, but he didn't want to move. We run into that a lot. He wants to be in the thick of everything, even if it agitates him. I think it annoys him that he even has sensory stuff and sometimes he doesn't want to do what is in his best interest. He is still only 8. Sometimes he will politely excuse himself in karate, go outside for a few moments and return and finish class. I am hoping that with maturity, he will get better at doing those type of things for himself, instead of being so stubborn.

As far as the social class goes. We had a meeting with the therapist in charge of the class today. She got some background and what we were hoping to work on for him. After our meeting, she had what she felt were our top 5 goals for him socially. Each week, we will fill out a paper on how well he did in those areas. The boys will talk about their week, what frustrated them, what they think went well, etc. Guidance and alternatives will be offerred. She said they have gone back and forth with having a specific topic with the class. At this time, they aren't, but rather letting the boys lead, while also keeping in mind the specific goals they are each trying to reach.

In some ways, I think think he needs more positive practice. It would be nice to think we could do this at home since he has 4 sibs. We do some of this with one another and I do think having so many sibs (He has a twin and triplet sibs that are only 2 1/2 years younger.) has helped him positively in many ways. However, they are still his sibs and they can annoy you and drive you up with wall too. I think sometimes he doesn't distinguish well between behaviour at home versus behaviour away from home.

As a recent Aspie I find the ideas of social classes scary but I can tell you what has helped me and I can recommend it.
Being 42 I am a late diagnosis, I was always a "different" child that was labled stubborn, thick and slow. School hurt but thankfully both of my brothers were brilliant and on their coat tails I got to go to Grammar School in the UK.
During my formative years I taught myself some social skills for interaction, using comedy and goofyness to diffuse abuse and get focused on tasks BUT my knowledge of subtle body language and social interaction was flawed. These flaws continued and as I grew my coping stratergies got more and more extreme to the point of self abuse and the need to destroy myself.
At this point I was placed in an Partial Hospitalisation Program where I was being treated for anxiety and depression but we had a structured course of DBT, Dialectical behavior therapy, which teaches emotion regulation, boundaries, social interaction and self soothing.
It has changed my life as I now have the ability to call "time outs" and remove myself from a situation or know when the stimulation triggers hit and self sooth or use other tools.
Its not a cure but if I'd had exposure to this at an earlier age I would not have been in the state of sheer self loathing and destruction I was.

There is benefit and finding one that has emotion regulation and self soothing at its core to help with interaction then I'd say take a look.

The therapist also asked me if I had ever considered bio feedback. I will admit, I have done no research on this. This is the first I ever heard of it. I don't even think they do it where she works. She said they hook them up to monitors and they play games. However, the game only works if they can regulate their body. Their monitors can tell how agitated, stressed, etc they are and shut the game off, teaching own to control their emotions in order to play the game. I don't know if something like that would be beneficial. I don't even know if I would want to him to do that. His problem is being impulsive when he gets stressed or agitated. He is usually over most upsets quickly and is always sorry if he made any poor choices. We just need him to use his head when he gets upset.

We keep telling him that keeping his mouth shut doesn't mean he agrees the other person is right. Gee, that is something I need to learn too.

I'm generally in favor of social skills groups. I was skeptical at first, but my son's been in two different groups and they have had a lasting, positive impact on him. One group was in 7th grade and the second group has been in 8th grade. I switched groups to make a shorter commute. And they didn't just cover the superficial stuff. They covered things like how to keep track of friends' phone numbers, goal-setting, dealing with bullies, difference between laughing with you vs laughing at you, and other substantive topics that were age-relevent. There really was some worthwhile substance. But the changes are subtle and long-term, and it wasn't like he came home one day and could suddenly keep track of stuff. But that's ok, I didn't expect anything to change, just wanted my son to have a chance to make friends, and the key metric was "did you have fun" to which he always replied "yes." The instructor of one group also runs high-adventure sleepaway summer camp sessions in the summer, so there was a bonus in that my son got to be friends with several of the kids he saw again in camp.

That being said, I tend to be very skeptical and cautious, and I checked out these groups thoroughly before I made any commitments. I met the instructors, interviewed them, and satisified myself that the groups were on the up-and-up. I also made a deal with my son that he would try the classes for one month, and if he absolutely hated them then he would not have to continue. So my suggestion is, look at your options, meet the instructors and ask them a lot of probing questions, talk it over with your child, and, if everything seems to align, give it a try. Best of luck!

I went to a social training class for a few years, but I was at least twice that age. It helped me, but I can't say how or if a kid that age will act differently.

My brother, who has AS, used to also get in trouble for reacting to other kids' misbehavior, and he used to have meltdowns at school sometimes. He was in a social skills group when he was about your son's age. It was helpful for a while but then he outgrew it. It consisted of freeform interactions with 2 kids with AS whose social skills were even worse than his, and the teacher would give feedback periodically and remind them to take turns or respond to what the other kid just said. It was nothing like a real social interaction, and it didn't teach him how to deal with the everyday social dilemmas you get in a classroom of NTs. it didn't address self-regulation either; it would've been cool if he had had access to the sort of games you were talking about, but they didn't do that. He was also in a karate/social skills class for special needs kids, but it didn't do much for him, although I can't remember why.

My brother learned more just from being in a small class in a private school that he started going to after that. He also had a teacher who got him and didn't impose a lot of arbitrary rules like the lunch line thing; it helped that he had an ally at school. He'd come home and talk about what happened and we would help him interpret what happened and tell him what he should do next time. He's still a little odd, but he's accepted and fairly well-liked by his (mostly NT) classmates.

I know a family that tried the bio-feedback and, basically, decided it did nothing. It is one of those experimental therapies and I guess it isn't harmful, other than the fact it will burn quite a bit of your money. Basically, in my opinion, it depends on if you have the money to burn.

Interesting how you describe it, because I never really ventured into finding out what was involved. My son works on teaching himself to control his own emotions all the time, he has told me, to the point where he creates subconscious scripts that determine his actions for him. The problem we've encountered with that is that many of these were written when he was quite young, and the scripts didn't really allow for all the real life variations. When what he wants comes is in conflict with a subconscious script, it freezes him, and he can't act. So, yes, your concern about if teaching such a thing is a good thing is definitely valid. Do be aware that it isn't uncommon at all for AS kids to be doing exactly what my has done, so the whole question here, to me, is how do we help the kids write the RIGHT scripts? I didn't learn about my son's until life started coming into conflict with them.

Thanks for posting this question Twinplets. My son has done things exactly like those you've described your son doing. We have him signed up for social skills class in a few weeks, but I spent a long time debating whether we should. In the end, I guess the only way to know if it works, is to try it.

The other option to consider in addition to social skills class, is a Speech Therapist. If you can find one trained and experienced in ASD issues, they can teach conversation skills and how to recognize non-verbal cues (body and facial language etc). That's something we're also planning to look into.

I think the key with any of these therapies is that your child needs to enjoy the experience on some level. It shouldn't feel like discipline, or like they are being coerced or forced to change who they are. It's a fine balance, but I think it's crucial not to make them feel like there is something wrong with them that we are trying to fix. We tell our son that there is nothing wrong with the way he does things, but because it is so different from most other people, we want him to understand how other people work, the same way we want them to understand how he works.

I would also second what some of the other posters mentioned in terms of the school's role in this. For a kid on the spectrum, it sounds like he may not have stood a chance against such a rigid application of the rules. I would hope his teachers would be more sensitive to the types of triggers that he had, and therefore would recognize that sending him to the back of the line would start a chain of events leading to a larger problem. Discipline is only worthwhile if it helps alleviate problems, not when it simply causes more of them.

I've always suspected its so that the teachers can get ego trips out of being dictators on a small scale.