The concepts of teaching Social Thinking and related social skills were developed for students with social learning challenges who were spending much of their day in a mainstream setting.  This fall I celebrate my 10th anniversary of speaking about these concepts in front of a national audience.  As the years have passed, not only have I started to dye my hair but the concepts have deepened and the teaching strategies multiplied.  One of the very cool thing is that Social Thinking concepts and strategies are now being embraced by inspired mainstream teachers who realize they need to teach more explicit social concepts to all students. While the ILAUGH model has brought awareness of what it takes to be a social thinker, it is really the more practical use of the Social Thinking Vocabulary and then Stephanie Madrigal's creative discovery of using “Superflex” to work against “Rockbrain” that has been so appealing to mainstream teachers.  This is lovely in many ways:

It's no secret that our students with social learning challenges (Autism Spectrum Disorders; ADHD, NVLD, undiagnosed murky kid...) struggle through various aspects of their education. Whether their struggles are due to difficulties establishing peer based social relationships, completing academic assignments or both, our kids have not had it easy. Given a lack of development in the pathways to participating in related aspects of a school day that most of us develop intuitively (e.g., social thinking and related social skills, organizational skills, inferencing and synthesizing information, etc.), all persons who have come in direct contact with our students have had to think out of the box to develop more lessons and opportunities for learning explicitly what neurotypical students learn mostly implicitly. It's not this "easy" for our kids with social learning challenges, nor is it easy for their parents or their teachers.

I have seen too many "bright" kids with Asperger Syndrome, high functioning autism and ADHD march off to college programs only to fall apart and drop out. Stewing in anxiety and depression a number of our students don't take steps to progress in their learning and independence, they instead slip into dysfunction with few safety nets to catch them.

I think a lot about how to avoid this descent for those who experience it.

When I started working for a high school district in 1995, one of the first things I noticed about my students with social learning challenges was that there appeared to be a strong association with weak written expression skills. In fact, behavior and mental health problems in the form of anxiety and bouts of frustration were detected during tasks requiring written expression. My knowledge about the problem has come a long way from my early observations but the problems related to written expression can be profound for some of our students.

"I don't care!" is a heavy topic to cover in a blog but here is my shot at it:

Many kids say "I don't care," "I don't want friends," "I don't like people," etc. I have heard these lines from elementary kids through adolescents. I rarely hear these from adults.

Here is my spin on this. Our kids struggle to do something that appears so easy and seamless to everyone else. Those that are "higher functioning" begin to notice that they are not fitting in, but they don't know how to make it right. At times our students have sat in "friendship groups" that didn't teach them what they needed to know, or the message was that "using good social skills" means you have friends but they sat in the group and they still don't have friends. They start to build walls around themselves and then fortresses: they need to protect themselves from thinking that they lack worth since they lack friendships. (Friendships do in fact help to validate our existence.)

Bright kids who have social-learning difficulties often (or usually!) experience a "home/school paradox." This question from a parent describes this well:

I have an 8-year old Aspie son mainstreamed in a high-performing public school who is, according to IQ, Raven's and state tests, gifted, but he only performs above average in class, unlike his typical gifted peers who get selected for GATE programs because of their superior classroom performance. At home, he does amazing things, but not in class. Is it a lack of motivation -- his own or the teacher's? Is it simply a "Hidden Curriculum" issue?

Here's my take:

Change is hard work. And change is all about being a teen. Boundaries are tested, conformity is rebelled against. I recently responded to an email about a challenging teen. The question helped me focus on the issues that you might face as you work with and live with your own teens.

Think Social Publishing will not typically publish books unrelated directly to the topic of social thinking, but when my dad requested I help him get his book back into print, how was I to refuse? My childhood was very much about my mom helping my dad to recover from the Holocaust.

Why is a book on the Holocaust being sold through our publishing company? To begin with, this is a book that was being written as I grew up. My dad is the Holocaust survivor described in this book, and his story of coming to terms with it is really in part a major story of my life. My mom was a writer; my dad had been out of "the camps," as we called them at home, about 11 years when he met my mom. They fell in love and married quickly. Little did my 1950s mom realize that she was going to "raising her husband" out of the camp experience and the related loss of his entire family, while she was also raising us three kids.

Due to concerns from some parents about the misuse of the term "weird thoughts" by adult teachers with their students, we have revised our definition of this concept in our You Are A Social Detective book. In the next printing of the book, the concept "weird thought" will be changed to "uncomfortable thought." Please read the updated definition and note to parents and professionals using these concepts.

I recently wrote an introduction to a booklet of mine that is being translated into Chinese for educators and parents in Hong Kong. The booklet summarizes the basic concepts of Social Thinking and the introduction shows how these concepts span cultures. I thought I would share the introduction with you...