Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Social Skills Group for kids - any experiences?

We are going to sign ds8 up for a social skills group fairly soon (we hope). We just chatted with a recommended boys group counselor yesterday, Ds liked her, as did we. As much as one can feel comfortable at a first meeting like that, I think we were comfortable.
Only a couple of things were a little off, instead of talking about 6-8 weeks, once a week work with ds in a group of boys (as had first been described to us), the counselor made it sound like that time would likely be just a good start, and that dh and I are also going to be in a parents group while ds does his work. I don't mind being in the group, but we are over-programmed as it is so fitting this is will be less than convenient. Fitting it in for the next 9 months seems really really really hard to fathom right now.
I am going to look into other programs, if I can find any other good sounding ones. Does anyone have any experience sending a child to a group like this? What did you find to be the biggest benefits? The counselor did state that ds might be in relatively good shape to go for several weeks, take a break and see how things go, which would be my inclination/hope.

I am trying not to sound too lame, trying to fit our life around the dr's advice...one of the things we were hoping to do is sign ds up at the tae kwon do school where one of his new/few friends takes class. He's taken a couple intro classes and would be signing up on Tuesday...his friend has seen him there and was so excited he was going to be starting. I guess we can figure out something else to drop.

One very good bit of news is that the school might be able to do the tiny bit of recommended speech therapy with ds, and start pretty soon - we have been told 6 mos to a YEAR wait list at the places I've called in my insurance network!!

Yes! DS6 is doing one right now. He did one session for five weeks and really, really enjoyed it. I saw results. There was no obligation to continue with a subsequent session and I didn't intend to continue with it, but the results convinced me to take him in for the second session.

I saw an increase in DS's self-confidence as well as some actual hard skills. I would watch him while we were, say, in the store and he would be deep breathing and bringing his body into control. It was really cool. Tae Kwon Do will be excellent, too, for social skils, balance and stuff, but I would try the social skills group. Even just one session really paid off for him and we didn't attend a parent group. Instead, we parents were assigned organized, quickly instructed parental homework tasks to augment our kids' training. I'd find a way to work it in.

If it makes you feel less alone, our summer schedule features brain gym twice a week, social skills group once a week, riding lessons (for balance) once a week and we plan on adding swimming. You get the idea. It's a PITA and expensive. And, when DS is practicing medicine or building rockets in twenty years, you can bet I'll be reminding him. LOL!

My son did the school's social skills group, and it seemed pretty useless. No change seen, etc. So I'm curious - where do you find an external social skills group?? I've never heard of one. I want my son to learn what to do when someone talks to him. The other day, 3 brothers dropped by and my son kind of froze and didn't say a single word, til the very end, when prompted, he said an utterly inaudible goodbye. He's not an unfriendly kid, but he's so slow to warm up, I guess, that he comes across that way b/c by the time he's comfortable, the other person is gone. It's probably exacerbated by him having done a mid-year skip. He'd been subject accelerated since Dec, but his home classroom was just a dreadful environment for him. Hostile teacher. He's in a better place now, and much happier, but I imagine that could make him feel a little off-balance in talking to other kids. I hadn't realized there were groups in other places that might teach him how to do this! it's hard, as a mom, to tell him what other young boys will think and do.

Gtc - thanks so much for posting back, that certainly helps me feel better about doing it. I've found some books and a few articles and so far 2 groups who are doing this in our area (there are probably a few more since we live in a major major metro area). After reading a bit more, I found an article which chunked social delays into 3 cause categories: child does not have skill learned, child is unable to perform skill and child can not distinguish when to use skill. I am going to call back the office to find out, after having interviewed ds, which category(ies) they think ds fits into and how their program will focus on that. From the description of a play group with counseling intervention, it sounds like some emphasis on learning skills and some on practicing them. Our initial psych eval. concluded that ds does not know the skills - has not been able to learn them intuitively so direct instruction should help. Sometimes it feels like he can't distinguish, too, but that is just my gut feeling...

I really don't know what normal play behaviors for 8/9 year old boys are!

Montana - what I have been doing is googling on the phrase 'social skills training' + our state, it has turned up the 1 group I already knew about and one other. 'SST' seems to be a used acronym for this too. I will post the links I have so you can see what sort of practices are doing this work, might help you get a lead in your area. Also, I am reading 'the unwritten rules of friendship' - while it has tons of description and scenarios which I think relate to how ds doesn't do stuff just exactly right, it is not so easy to get him to converse on the subject, so I think outside help is in order. If you can't find any groups, a book on the subject might be a good start. Good luck!

Montana -
Here is one office, with a large variety of groups.
http://www.parentingplaygroups.com/
here's the actual social skils group:
http://www.parentingplaygroups.com/socialskills.htm

A quick google on CT brought this up, don't know if any of the locations they list would be anywhere near you -
http://www.superkids-socialskills.com/index.php?page=programs
http://www.superkids-socialskills.com/index.php?page=programs#schoolage

Chris, thanks so much! that's exactly where I've been stymied...I have that book and have really liked it, but I cannot get my son to sit down with me and do any of it, and I haven't been creative enough to think of a way to sneak it in. He's been seeing a counselor and that's been much more effective - he wants to do well for her. So I think outside groups would work much better here, too. Not least b/c it's just so much less loaded hearing something from someone not your parent! but I definitely don't know the social nuances of young boys. Something I wonder about all the time...my instinct is to tamp down the wrestling/shoving, and in fact my oldest son is not very keen on it unless with his brother. But it seems like some primal way they communicate acceptance, which leaves me wondering if I ought to encourage my 7 year old to act like his 3 year old brother, and gain admiration by picking people up and throwing them to the floor. (3 did that to one of 7's friends, and the 7s were so impressed - and my 7 so proud - that I didn't reprimand 3).

oh. just for what it's worth, the 9 months doesn't sound that implausible to me. My son's been seeing this woman once every week or two for a few months, and while things are improved, I don't think they're so much what you'd call a firm part of his way of thinking now. For both schedule and $$ I'm looking forward to getting out of this stage, but I really REALLY want his negative, rigid thinking to be broken up. I think it'll make a serious difference to his lifelong happiness.

We have thirteen million activities, too, all undertaken, honestly, with the social thing in mind. We were so desperate to find our son a place in the school community where he felt happy and belonged. There's another friendship book - I think it's called Good Friends are Hard to Find - that calls for active parental involvement in the friendship finding, and says lots of parents do the activities but don't follow up into one on one playdates that firm up friendships, and that if you don't have good solid playdates/friendships coming from an activity, you need to drop the activity (assuming you don't have time for the playdates, only). I'm hoping/thinking that as ds7 gets happier and more settled, we'll all scale back and do fewer things. B/c I'm tired, tired, of this running around to baseball, soccer, scouts, and gymnastics. It's beyond nuts. Oh. And then add in shrink. So I feel your pain! It's ridiculous. And not sustainable.

Oh. Here's the book. I think Unwritten Rules was perhaps more intellectually interesting, and this one more a reassuring 'this is the road-map to making things better', and more explicitly what the parent can do to help, which helps, when you've got a kid who is NOT clamoring to be taught the Unwritten Rules.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Friends-...mp;s=books&qid=1243252480&sr=8-1

Yes, good, I'm glad you're thinking about it. DS6 had visited with a counselor before and didn't really get results with what's called "talk therapy". The SST group included other kids with assorted problems (one is HG, one is aggressive). Then, the psych explained the rules of well, friendship and then, got them hyped up. While they're excited, she reinforced good behavior with praise and treats. It was helpful because they learned skills in a safe environment where other children are being closely monitored. I think that the safety component could be replicated with cousins or the children of very very close friends who are being properly disciplined throughout the playtime.

Thank you both for the resources. As usual, I can't wait until our next library visit!

I was in one, but by the time my parents decided to do that I was burned out. I was sick of treatments, doctors, shrinks, tests, assesments, groups, reaserchers, scores, and therapists of all kinds. Maybe it will help kids who aren't as hostile towards it as I was.

Hi Arminius, thanks for posting - I really am hoping that we are catching things early, at least for the depression and social anxiety. This would be ds' first round of any sort of therapy so again, keeping fingers crossed that the doctor's thorough, thoughtful review of the results of the assessment are pointing us in the right direction. Part of why I went with a more costly initial assessment is that I didn't want to dither around and go in several wrong directions as I've read is so common.
That a play group would hit home better than one on one counseling for an 8 year old makes sense to me, and ds is open to it, for now.
I hope you are doing ok now, do you think social skills/anxiety were a major issue for you ? If you did find help, I would be curious what finally worked for you.