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Strategies to Help the Socially Awkward
This month's Camping magazine, a publication that goes out to all ACA accredited camps, had a great article by Dr. Christopher Thurber that I wanted to pass on. While his article, Rejectology: Helping dorky kids fit in requires understanding social rejection, focuses on what all camps can do to support children who are socially awkward, I thought Dr. Thurber presented many solid tips that can be spread across many different environments including school and home and were worth sharing. The plan for this newsletter is to present several of the ideas put forward by Dr. Thurber and then to expand about specific ways to support children who struggle with being socially awkward.
Dr. Thurber starts with a description of some socially awkward characteristics that some children struggle with:
You know them when you see them: the boys and girls who don't mesh. Maybe their shorts are pulled up a tad too high; maybe they don't know the rules to common games; maybe they blurt out dumb jokes at inappropriate times; maybe they prefer to be alone; or maybe they don't see how other kids perceive their behavior. [1]
Dr. Thurber goes on to further detail "socially clumsy conduct" that often can get kids labeled as a "dork" and lead to rejection including:
1. Dressing in a way that departs from a functional, if not fashionable, standard in the host culture.
2. Jumping into a game or group activity without being invited or asking permission.
3. Failing to adhere to generally accepted norms for cleanliness.
4. Making assertions or comments that are patently unrelated to the conversation.
5. Displaying a noticeable lack of basic coordination in a game or sport.
6. Trying too hard to be funny or trying to impress peers with exaggerated stories.
7. Revealing a lack of culturally relevant knowledge about topics that have social importance for the group. [2]
Dr. Thurber noted that these kids typically want connections and friendships and these behaviors often serve as an "accidental social wipe-out." He also provides a list of how programs can teach children with social awkwardness how to more likely avoid these social wipe-outs and create less rejecting environments by:
1. Teach consideration--to prosocial peers since people who are responsive to others needs are seen more positively.
2. Teach sportsmanship--by calling out poor sportsmanship and teaching what should be said or done instead.
3. Teach appropriateness--by not sugar coating your feedback and instead being clear and direct.
4. Teach fairness--about how when more prosocial peers leave others out it is "unfair" and how they don't want to be seen this way.
5. Teach hygiene--being direct about how poor hygiene is affecting them socially.
6. Teach healthy risk taking--about how to positively encourage children to try new things since not taking these risks is viewed negatively socially.
7. Teach playfulness--by teaching and encouraging children how to invite others to play and why they should say yes sometimes when others invite them to play.
8. Teach imaginative behavior--by finding what a child who is awkward is good at and giving them opportunities to teach other kids.
9. Teach humor--by modeling a good sense of humor and trying to teach telling appropriate jokes at the right time. [3]
I think that these are great strategies that can be used across a variety of environments (camp, school, and home) to teach kids necessary skills and create an environment that is inclusive. I feel lucky that at Quest we get to target these social difficulties on a large scale since our whole program is set to specifically address these areas for children with mild to moderate social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties.
Some strategies that we use at Quest:
1. Create a positive environment that is supportive, structured, and that celebrates effort. Having a large reward structure that is well defined with many opportunities to provide specific feedback to children and highlight successes is a cornerstone to the Quest Therapeutic Model. The kids we specialize in working with tend to need 4-5 times the amount of rewards that other children need. I can tell you the healthy risks kids will take when they feel supported and have high incentives is pretty amazing from jumping off 50 ft. ziplines, playing soccer or asking a peer to play despite feeling rejected in the past, and setting their own personal goals to achieve. My best advice is if you are having difficulty getting movement or buy in from your child or children you serve first look at how positive, encouraging, and rewarding the environment you are providing is to the child.
2. Teaching needed skills in very direct ways is to me the other crucial component to helping children who struggle with being socially awkward. I continue to be obsessed with the area of teaching social thinking as a way to assist children who struggle with many social nuances that can be tricky for kids since they often don't intuitively read others facial expressions or body language and miss many "hidden rules" of social interaction. Michelle Garcia Winner's body of work at www.socialthinking.com provides great resources and research-based approaches to teaching needed social skills. At Quest, we use our group therapy time as well as our social thinking group to teach needed skills. We have a "hidden rule" daily that provides children with information that is crucial for social success. Our daily hidden rule acts as a vehicle for us to teach needed skills and ideas related to the importance of controlling emotions, how to enter a group, aspects of how to have a successful conversation with others, the importance of manners and hygiene, etc.
A key component for us is related to helping kids understand the social thinking concept that others have thoughts and feelings about them and their behavior. Basically, when we do "expected" behaviors people have positive thoughts and feelings about us and we then have positive feelings about ourselves. In contrast, when we do "unexpected behaviors" others have negative thoughts and feelings about us, which then leads us to have negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves. We go back to this formula again and again and plug children's specific positive and negative behaviors into this model to further promote their understanding and ability to engage in social thinking.
Another key area where specific skills are needed is emotion regulation for our kids. Our campers often struggle with recognizing their emotions or the emotional experiences of others. It is critical to also be direct in your teaching in this area as many people who naturally read other's facial expressions or body language assume that kids are picking up their cues--sadly kids with social struggles rarely do without support regarding how to decode these cues from others. We specifically teach many skills for emotion regulation including how to utilize relaxation strategies (deep breathing, imagery, progressive relaxation), to using a number scale to identify and discuss various emotions and their intensity. For example: we might say, "Right now I am a 4 out of 5 for frustration on our scale. Some cues that might tell you this are that my mouth is down turned, my eyebrows are angled, my hands are on my hips, and my voice has started to raise."
Ultimately there are many ways to transform the various environments that a child who struggles socially is in to be more supportive and directive to help kids to develop the friendships that they crave. Dr. Thurber is correct that it is critical to understand rejection and to help develop skills for kids who have deficits regarding social skills. I believe it is also important to help kids become social thinkers so that they will be able to generalize more skills and understand how their behaviors impact others and how this can impact them socially.
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