Social Communication Skills that All Kids Need

Effective communication is one of the most critical skills kids need to succeed both socially and academically.

Good communication ability plays a fundamental role in making and keeping friends.  A child or adult with well-developed social communication skills incorporates the needs of conversational partner(s), situational and emotional factors, appropriate language rules, and social mores, and can shift the level of language necessary based on the demands of the moment.  These are complex skills that most children learn by the time they are of school age.

Communication is also critical to success in school.  Both spoken (oral) language and listening (aural) language are the foundations of literacy, and difficulty in either contributes to difficulties with printed language.

So how can parents gauge whether a child has appropriate social interactive skills?Here is what speech-language pathologists look for:

1. Language Skills

Good language skills are essential both to interpret and produce words. This requires having an adequate vocabulary - grasping multiple meanings of words and contemporary slang - and being able to access those words. Effective communicators also have reasonable grammar, enabling them to be understood, follow along with what others are saying, and know that there are different ways to say things.

Some children with language skill deficits are left out of social situations because they cannot keep up with their peers. Either the conversation goes too fast, the topics change too quickly, or they can’t keep up with the slang.  Others cannot maintain the interest of their peers. For example, those who can only talk about one or two topics, or who don’t give others a turn to speak often find it hard to keep friends.

 2. Social Cognition

Social cognition is the ability to analyze, sum up, and establish goals for a situation, then decide what strategies would be appropriate to achieve those goals. This includes judging how to talk to people in different situations (e.g., it is inappropriate to send a singing telegram announcing that someone has passed away). Social cognition also involves gauging whose turn it is to talk in a conversation based on facial expressions and other nonverbal cues of conversational partners.

A poor communicator has difficulty recognizing and appreciating the patterns of interaction among listeners, as well as understanding each listener’s perspective.

3. Executive Functioning

Language skills influence a child’s executive functions and conversely, executive functioning affects language. Many children with learning differences lack the decision-making and “managerial” skills required to engage with people and make the required shifts in conversation. Specifically, they may struggle with:

• Maintaining attention for the duration of a conversation
• Making quick decisions, including coming up with the words required at any given moment
• Changing focus when the conversation or the tone of the interaction shifts (which entails flexible thinking, particularly when encountering obstacles)
• Planning, organizing, and initiating an action prior to speaking, as opposed to impulsively saying the first thing that comes to mind. This often requires managing one’s emotions.
• Time management, including knowing how long a turn they are taking and adjusting turn-taking based on their assessment of the situation.

Other Factors to Watch For

Social communication also involves both verbal and nonverbal components.

School-aged children should understand topic-related and turn-taking rules, as well as stylistic variations in speech production such as sarcasm and intonation (e.g., if the intonation does not match the situation, it changes the meaning of the words).  At this age, a child’s speech should be clear.  Other things to watch for are unspoken communication cues, such as physical closeness and contact, facial expressions, eye gaze, as well as body posture, gestures, and other movements.

While not every child possesses the gift of gab, most develop the skills to communicate successfully. However, children with difficulty in language, ADHD, and other learning disabilities often struggle with key components of communication including listening, analyzing, finding the words to prepare a response, and organizing those words, all in a timely fashion. For those children, explicit interventions are necessary to help them engage fully with others and develop the communication skills needed to reach their potential in the classroom and on the playground.

Take Action

For children who lack the skills to be competent communicators, simply saying, “Go talk to those kids” is not enough. They require explicit interventions including direct skill instruction, modeling, and practice with feedback. If you suspect your child needs help to improve her social communication skills, begin with the following:

• Start with a comprehensive assessment that encompasses all facets of social communication including language skills, social cognition, and executive functioning.

• Based on assessment results and with the help of the evaluator prioritize the skills requiring interventions.

• Beginning with one or two identified skills, provide interventions to address those weaknesses, incorporating multiple formats (e.g., direct instruction, modeling, behavioral rehearsal with feedback) and contexts (e.g., teacher, peer, and clinician-mediated interventions).

• If your child has an IEP, include these skill needs along with appropriate benchmarks and measures to indicate progress