Social communication and interaction

What do we mean by social communication and interaction?

Social communication is the exchange of ideas or information between individuals. Children who have difficulties with social communication may:

• struggle to understand what others are trying to communicate to them,
• struggle to successfully communicate with other people,
• communicate using speaking or non-speaking methods of communication, such as using body movements, eye contact, facial expression, body language, echoed phrases, words or changing the tone of their voice, and / or
• need support to learn new ways of communicating.

Social interaction is engaging with others to form social relationships which are reciprocal, involving some give and take. Children with social interaction difficulties may:

• find it hard to understand the thoughts, feelings and motivations of other people, and
• often struggle with forming successful friendships.

What can I do to help my child?  

Webinars 

JOIN — Top tips for developing social interaction

Top tips for developing social interaction webinar!

• Watch a free 12-minute webinar
• Learn about JOIN! (join, observe, imitate, naturally model language)
• For parents/carers, setting staff and health professionals
• Aimed at supporting children who are autistic or who have social interaction and communication differences

Please note captions are available by clicking on the square box with lines at the bottom.

 

 This handy postcard summarises the JOIN strategies for you

Join me in my play: Play your child’s way, even if this isn’t playing with a toy in an expected way, we don’t need to change their play, let your child take the lead.

Observe what I’m interested in: It’s important to take a step back and notice what your child is interested in, we can then join in with what they really love.

Imitate me. When you imitate your child, it helps show them you are interested. Copy what your child is doing, if they are jumping, you can jump, if they are lining up toys, copy this as well.

Naturally model language. Model a range of natural language such as single words and phrases, such as to request, share joy, get attention and to initiate a game.

 

SAY, SHOW, WAIT - Top tips for developing social communication webinar! 

• Watch a free, short webinar (click on the image below)
• Learn about the strategies SAY, SHOW and WAIT
• Learn to support a child by giving them opportunities to develop their communication
• Learn how to help a child to develop the ways they communicate
• Suitable for parents/carers, setting staff and health professionals

Say: Use words and phrases your child would if they could, model these from their perspective and in varied intonation such as “I want bubbes!” or “I did it”. Try to reduce questions and instead model language for a range of reasons including requesting, to express feelings, to make comments.

Intonation lovers: Accept and acknowledge their phrases by repeating them. Model phases including their perspective and continue to use varied intonations.

Show: Show them more ways of communicating for a range of reasons, such as requesting, share joy, to get attention and to initiate a game, using a Total Communication Approach, which means we want to model different types of communication, this might include pointing, using pictures, gestures, facial expressions or objects. For example, when going into the garden, you might want to show your child their wellies.

Wait: After we say and show, we want to wait to give your child an opportunity to send a message back to us. This will help to encourage a back-and-forth interaction, this might look like them taking another turn, making a comment or vocalisation.

 

Celebrating autistic neurodivergence

Understand, accept and celebrate neurodivergent communication in autistic children and children with social communication and interaction differences.

 

 

•    Celebrating and supporting neurodiversity is everyone’s responsibility 
•    We describe the different neurotypes in the world as neurodiversity, within this there are neurotypical people, and neurodivergent  people, which includes differences such as Autism.
•    Differences are not considered deficits which need to be fixed. We are not trying to change people who are neurodivergent and instead need to celebrate their differences by helping them with any difficulties and needs they may have. We want to remove barriers which exclude neurodivergent people, this may include changes to the environment and how we adapt our communication. 
•    We want to use more positive, descriptive and non-judgemental language, also known as neurodiversity affirming language. Some examples of language we encourage you to use instead of “doesn’t make eye contact” we can say “prefers to look at the object they are playing with rather than their parent”.
•    Some differences in communication styles you may notice are: 
o    Communicating in a direct manner
o    Watching the same things over and over again
o    ‘Info dumping’ about intense interests
o    Using less eye contact
o    Echolalia
o    Autistic play
•    The Double Empathy Problem: social interaction is two-way and understanding in social situations is NOT just the responsibility of autistic people. This is based off key evidence that breakdowns in communication are due to a mismatch in communication between an autistic person and a neurotypical person, rather than a deficit in the Autistic person.