Peers may not be the best people to have as tutors for social skills, in the first place.
Honestly, that has always mystified me a bit-- the notion that kids learn those skills "best" at the tender mercies of their age-mates and peers.
Totally agree. What I'm talking about is that IME an appropriate education for kids with social-skills delays involves direct instruction, from adults, that builds these skills in the settings where the skills are needed.
So much of adult life is learning to sit in meetings and contribute productively to teams and so forth. One needs to know how to engage with peers at least some of the time. This is a teachable skill-- not teachable by the peers, (trial and error, ugh)-- but teachable by adults in the school setting.
apm, if the school hasn't been following through on their promises thus far, my guess is that they won't. Not unless you do have an IEP that says that they have to introduce particular interventions and measure outcomes.
Yep. IEP would be useful and necessary for getting the actual instruction implemented. We also needed an advocate to get this into place-- school dragged its feet. We are still, overall, happy that we kept DS12 in school.
