Social Skills on the Playground - There's No Stress Like Recess

Erik’s troubled parents called us in the spring of his second grade year. He was having meltdowns at school and regular temper tantrums at home. He was a “good reader”, but was struggling with comprehension. To make matters worse, he was starting fights on the playground.

Erik’s evaluation was scheduled for two weeks later. In walked a handsome boy with thick, wavy, brown hair and big, timid, brown eyes.

His profile was typical for this day and age: his intelligence tested well above average....his vocabulary acquisition exceeded his years, and his memory for numbers was outstanding. He could also read any piece of literature you put in front of him; or rather.....he could call out the words.

Erik was hyperlexic. He had mastered the phonics system and could sound out words with ease. But he was bored with reading; it was the last thing Erik would choose to do in his free time, and his reading group at school was stressful and challenging.

This young man struggled severely with reading comprehension. When Erik read a word, it did not generate a picture in his mind. If he read the word “dog”, he didn’t see a furry animal with 4 legs and a long tail. Having difficulty at such a basic level, he struggled even more when he had to visualize phrases like, “The white dog raced down the beach for the ball.” At the second grade level, the literature isn’t written in single words or phrases, it is written in paragraphs, pages and chapters. Erik was completely lost!

Once the reader has an accurate picture in his head, the reader must think critically about the literature; making inferences to figure out the conflict in the story as well as the characters’ motives and feelings.

The reader must also make predictions about the literature and then keep on reading and drawing conclusions to see if his predictions were right or wrong. These critical thinking skills are the reader’s anchor to the text....they are the reasons that readers enjoy literature and hunger for more. It was not happening for Erik.

The other skill that is closely linked with comprehension is “social thinking”. That means being able to think about others, even when they are not present. To succeed in social situations, children must be social detectives and figure out what other people are thinking. They must study body stance and eye gaze and figure out people’s feelings and motives and then decide to enter the situation or not. If their teacher is standing on a chair reaching up to get the globe, is that a good time to go up and ask for help with a math problem? If a peer group is tightly huddled in a circle, is that a good time to enter that group?

When asked about his school day, Erik said that recess was his worst time of the day. He didn’t know how to play with friends. He had his own interpretation of rules for games, took personal offense to anyone who violated his rules and then started arguments if they didn’t agree.

Erik didn’t know how to begin conversations; it didn’t occur to him to ask about a friend’s interests. Erik only knew how to talk about himself.

We enrolled Erik in our combined language, social thinking and literacy program six hours a week.

In his language intervention, Erik learned to listen to a story and, after making a mental movie, to think critically about the literature and then draw conclusions and make deep inferences and astute predictions. He learned to organize the events into a logical sequence and retell a captivating story.

In his social thinking group, Erik learned to use the expected behaviors like keeping his body, brain and eyes in the group and always thinking about the other participants. He learned to read people’s plans and then say something that would make them feel better about themselves, which, in turn, would make him feel better about himself.

He learned to make a brain file on his peers and then start a conversation by asking a question that would interest them. He eventually learned to continue a conversation by adding a supportive comment like “cool” and then a follow-up question; ending with a same-topic comment about himself. Erik was becoming a master at conversation!

Erik’s literacy intervention was a lot like language intervention, except that Nancy, his instructor, asked him to read. He read a sentence from his story and told Nancy what he pictured. When that was understood, Nancy asked him to make a prediction …was Toad going to give up on growing a garden or would he persevere?

Sometimes Nancy asked Erik to make an inference.....how did Toad feel about his challenges?

And to help Erik relate to the literature and appreciate it, she asked him to make a connection......did Erik ever feel frustrated when, like Toad in the garden, he was really trying to accomplish a project with little to no success?

In all the years we have been offering combined language intervention and literacy intervention, we have seldom seen a child progress as quickly as Erik. He began with poor language comprehension and minimal reading comprehension and, within 6 months, progressed at least 2 grade levels up to the second grade. He learned to read stories and retell the plot. He even learned to write book summaries with a complete description of the plot.

The greatest accomplishment of all, though, is Erik’s social interaction. He is our shining star! He is popular with the other participants, because he keeps files on them and asks questions about their interests. He is a humble winner and a gracious loser when we play games. He turns on his social detective skills and tries to get inside their brains and make comments that make them feel good, because he knows that making them feel good will make him feel good about himself.

Now that he’s had 6 months of intervention, it looks like Erik will have a pretty typical life. He’s not completely adept at reading comprehension or social interaction, but he is well on his way. If he keeps making the kind of progress he has made so far, he will close the gap between his skills and those of his peers.

Erik is an excellent example of what can be done with appropriate early intervention. If you know someone who could use help with comprehension or social thinking, please call us at 858.509.1131.

For the speech therapists and instructors at Jodie K. Schuller & Associates, it doesn’t get any better than working with Erik.

Helping him makes him feel good which makes us feel GREAT about ourselves!