Social Skills Practice

Unlike many social skills training groups, we will not put your child in a group and expect him or her to generate conversation with another child who may not be of their age group, cognitive-, or interest-level.

Nor will we write up a rote conversation or ask your child to talk to a child in a group when the conversations are obviously therapist-driven only.

Instead, we believe in addressing social skills in an individual therapy setting first, and catering the skills to your child's exact therapy needs. For example, perhaps your child is 11 and having a hard time in middle school meeting friends, or even maintaining friendships.

We would then set up a plan to address why this may be occurring, and how to implement a conversational "flow" for the child so they can be ready in all peer groups. Another example may be your teen-ager who does well with a couple of friends, but is having a hard time understanding sarcasm and humor in a larger group.

We here at the Pediatric Speech, Language, & Learning Center understand how imperative social language is for a pre-teen or teen to be accepted in a peer group, and will work through role-play, and plans based on your child's strengths and weaknesses every week to improve social language skills.

Following a period of improved social language skills one-on-one with the therapist, we will then set out to find an age-matched, cognitive-matched, and most importantly, an interest-matched peer to put the new social language foundation into use.

Your child may demonstrate excellent receptive and expressive language skills and do well academically, but you don't want to hinder their opportunity to achieve age-appropriate social language skills in a fun and safe environment at the Pediatric Speech, Language & Learning Center.