Learning social skills
A friend of mine posted a link to this article on Facebook last week. It’s about a program to teach social skills to kids who don’t naturally pick that sort of thing up:
Yet until now, it’s always been assumed making friends is something that young people should learn to do by themselves — even if some are naturally better at it than others. Now that idea is being turned on its head by a new approach that treats problems forming social relationships in the same way as a learning difficulty, like dyslexia … But in the same way as techniques have been developed to help with those with academic learning difficulties, there are now skills that can aid children with poor social interaction, according to American child communication expert Michelle Garcia Winner, who first devised the Social Thinking programme to teach “bright but socially clueless students” at high schools in California.
Take a look. I think it’s brilliant that such skills are being taught, although it’s not quite as groundbreaking as it might seem: old-fashioned “charm schools” had a similar curriculum, without edifying jargon about “theory of mind” or “mirror neurons” to validate it.
There’s a tendency, I think, to consider social skills indicative of the kind of person you are, of one’s essential nature or moral quality. The idea of learning social skills has an unpleasant whiff of manipulation, of Becky Sharp, about it.
I know I would have benefited from this kind of training when I was a kid. As I’ve written often before, I tend to be good at analyzing social situations precisely because I don’t have a “natural” sense of it. (I have a natural sense of balance, and I couldn’t teach another person how to take a fall without injury if I had to.) I discovered etiquette books when I was in my early teens, and devoured all sorts of self-help and tips and tricks for the next decade or so. Studying theater helped even more.
What about you? How did you learn to make sense of the social world when you were growing up? How do you coach your kids — do they only need instruction in “manners,” or do they need help with some of the deeper, more tacit, aspects of the social dance?
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7 Responses to “Learning social skills”
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I was definitely the kid who interacted better with grown-ups than kids. I come from a very mannerly background, so etiquette books were never much help; I knew how to do things properly, but wasn’t good at the more subtle side of things. (As an example, I knew to wait until someone else was finished to speak, had trouble figuring out when that was. And one of my big problems has always been that my mind is so all-over that a comment triggered by something someone else said often seems totally unrelated to the conversation).
I finally started getting my act together in late high-school and college, and I think the greatest factor there was being able to hang out with enough other “weirdos” that I got to practice more in a more excepting environment. In the math and drama clubs I was at the high end of the social skill spectrum, so I made some friends and had enough social interaction to see that some things worked better than others.
I’d never put this together with my current ability to analyze and advise well on behavioral and relationship issues, but now that you mention it, Robin, I suspect that some of my ability to analyze and advise on that coming at it the long way around and not having it come naturally helped develop that skill set.
My mom ran a daycare out of our house when I was growing up. I was always the oldest and so was often put in charge of activities. Now I am comfortable when in control of a social situation, however in informal settings when there are more than four people in the room I tend to withdraw. It’d be nice to be able to relax at a party but I never learned how.
One skill I would have liked to have learned is how to follow one person’s voice when the room is full of talkers. I find it helps to watch their mouth but that’s not always practical.
I was always fine in social situations as a kid…then puberty hit and all my understanding and comprehension of social scenarios went down the tubes along with my ability to successfully make friends.
Now I understand that confidence in oneself is the key to interacting socially, and it’s confidence that doesn’t look like arrogance. I became good friends with a coworker and his confidence in me gave me the capability to have confidence in myself. Now I’m more at ease socially and don’t need alcohol to provide the social lubrication
I’m a big fan of autism memoirs (Tim Page, John Elder Robison) and this question is a big part of the reason. What can be learned on purpose, that other people never seemed to have to learn at all?
My experience mirrors Shulamuth’s. I was kind of a nerdy child, had some trouble figuring out when I was overwhelming people, especially if my topical attention had got sidetracked. (It now seems clear that I was some friends’ social charity, which was nice of them.)
But high school in a magnet school re-calibrated the social scale, and I began to catch on. It helped that there were not too many of us, and we had more unstructured time to work out our relationships.
I handle myself pretty well, now, but there’s still a small element of calculation involved; not to call it hypocrisy, but sometimes intentional charm involves dialing up my interest in the person I’m talking to.
As for the class described in the cited article, permit me a moment of geezer-harumphing at another case of ‘reinventing the wheel, with the adults in charge.’
If we hadn’t wrung all the art, music, and drama classes out of kids’ school days, not to mention recess, perhaps we wouldn’t have to invent new classes to correct the deficits those activities might naturally improve.
For one thing, kids will find more acceptance when there’s an outlet for their particular gifts. So what if Sally brings weird lunches–have you seen how well she draws horses? And maybe Greg only has two shirts, but you want him on your softball team, because he can catch anything.
Of course, not everything kids work out on their own is benign; I remember finding out in about third grade that one way to fit in with Meg’s group was to make catty comments about Debbie. Not something you’re proud of, but neither do you want to be cast into the outer darkness with Debbie.
And some activities will just make a klutz feel more like a klutz–the less said about seventh grade gymnastics, the better.
But — simple choral music, i.e. round singing, is all about waiting your turn, and fitting in with what people around you are doing;
and you wouldn’t have be preparing a major theatrical production to enjoy simple improv games, like keeping a conversational topic in circulation.
Depriving grade-schoolers of useful skills like these, in the name of reading scores, is a heart-breaking mistake.
In response to Carolyn’s comment, I’d like to toot my church’s horn for a moment. Our middle schoolers and high schoolers have been having fun with Improv theater games (we have some experienced adults leading them), and now they’ve started a monthly Open Mic Improv Night at the church for all those kids (inside and outside the church) who would like to have fun at something that isn’t sports. Around here (central PA), sports for kids is huge and there really isn’t anything else. We’re providing a place for those artsy,nerdy, creative kids who will never hit a hole run or kick a field goal. Wonderful way to build self-confidence and make new friends.
Thanks for the good news, Judy!