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!
