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Developing Social Skills

Developing Social Skills in Elementary School Children
Source: Volta Voices
Author: Robert L. Scum, Ph.D

From infancy to the preschool years, a child's social relationships are focused on adult caretakers. During the elementary school years, the focus usually shifts to relationships with peers -play activities, best friends, birthday parties, sleepovers, and team sports signify the importance of peer interaction. Children with hearing loss, however, are at risk for problems of social interaction during this development phase, and their parents and educators often express concerns about social isolation, immature behaviors, and awkwardness. But this isn't always the case. Some children with hearing loss have excellent social skills and enjoy good friendships. What makes the difference?
Consider Molly, such a bright child that her parents and teachers did not realize she was deaf until she was in first grade. As far as anyone could tell, she had normal hearing at birth. Some time after she developed speech and language, probably before the age of 4, she began to lose her hearing, and was finally deaf by 6. At 9, Molly attended a summer program at her state university. She lived in a dormitory for six weeks with other children who had communication problems. In the first week, Molly started to show behavior problems. For instance, her roommate received a necklace in the mail. Two days later, it disappeared. A search revealed it in Molly's possession. When confronted, Molly admitted that she took the necklace because she liked it and wanted it for herself. She dutifully followed directions to apologize to her roommate and obediently complied with a minor punishment, but she never demonstrated any remorse about hurting her roommate's feelings. A week later, Molly witnessed a child falling down a stairway. While other children and adults stood horrified over the child at the bottom of the stairs, Molly laughed loudly. The staff was struck by her lack of empathy and compassion.
Michael was 8 years old and hard of hearing. He attended the same program another summer. Early on, the staff noticed that he was isolated from the other children. He complained that the older children did not want to play with him. One Saturday, I took him to the basketball court where the older children were playing. I told the children that we would choose up sides and that Michael would be on my team. When I had the ball, I passed it to Michael. He promptly tucked it under his arm, ran the length of the court, and shot at the basket. The other children grabbed their heads and moaned. Then they complained to me about his “cheating.” Michael stood alone on the court, a mixture of confusion and anger flashing across his face.
Chad was 10 years old. Deaf since birth, he lived in a small farm town and had never been away from his parents, except for one overnight visit with his grandmother, until he came to the dormitory for six weeks. There he lived with 40 children. Only a few were also deaf. The rest had a variety of speech and language disorders, or other learning disabilities. That summer, I conducted a research program on the social adjustment of children with communication disorders. In interviews the children told me about their peers who they liked to play with, who they didn't like to play with, and what behaviors made the difference. Of the 40 children, Chad was picked as the best liked and most preferred playmate. He was the social star. Everyone liked him as one boy with dyslexia said, “You know, I can't understand him. He only uses sign language. But he's fun to be with. He makes me laugh.”
Three factors influenced the successes and failures of these children in social relationships: language development, communication opportunities, and specific social skills. To help Molly and Michael better adapt to their social situations, staff appreciated these three factors and made successful interventions. From Chad's successes, we learned how to help children with hearing loss improve their social interactions. But social skills cannot be taught in isolation. We must always consider the child's perspective - how does the child understand the social world? A child's perspective grows in a developmental sequence, and the level of social understanding is a limiting factor in acquiring social skills. Successful socialization at an elementary school level requires a relatively sophisticated level of~ understanding. Hearing loss can interfere with the development of social perspective.

Table 1: Behaviour Categories for Children's Social Acceptability

Behavior Category Attributes

Friendliness Friendly; positive; polite; kind; nice

Sharing/Helping Shares; helps others; takes turns; defends otheres; teaches others

Play Likes to play games; learns new games; plays ~ir; knows common games

Obedience Listens to adults; does not get self or others into trouble; does not tattle

No Aggression Does not hit, get angry, yell, or fight; tries to get along with others; does not hurt feelings or mimic; does not boss others or call names

Good Character Smart, dependable; respects others' privacy; does not lie or use bad language; does not steal

Humour Funny; fun to be with; jokes, laughs

Similarity Has similar interests as peers; knows about other children and understands them

Social Understanding
Children's social understanding develops through three important stages. Each stage describes how children understand their relationship with people. This social perspective serves as a guide and au impetus for the child's social behavior. Between 18 and 36 months, most children operate in a Good vs. Bad stage of social understanding. They view people as either acceding to their wishes (good) or interfering with them (bad). At this stage, children show little sense of time and deal with people in the present moment. These children are not able to delay gratification. They are impulsive and want things “right now.” They resort to temper tantrums when frustrated, but their intense anger tends to last for short periods. Parents find that these children can be distracted from the denied object or activity by redirecting them to something else.
About the age of 3, children typically move to the next stage of social development, in which they begin to understand that simple cause-and-effect explanations can predict basic social interactions. For example, a child may learn that “if I eat my peas, my parent will give me ice cream” or “if I tell Grandma I love her, she will give me a cookie.” This Rules stage emerges because children at this age have developed the cognitive ability to understand cause-and-effect relationships. Typical 3-year-olds ask myriad questions and rapidly catalog new information. They learn about red and green lights, and they learn where and when to unfortunate. They no longer view people as arbitrarily giving to them or denying them (Good vs. Bad), but now see more predictable patterns of social interaction. To move into this stage, children must have the cognitive capacity to understand and catalog the information, and have a communication modality for adults to explain observations and answer specific questions from the child. Children see what happens with their eyes, but they learn why things happen with their ears. This means that children need explanation and interpretation to comprehend their observations. For example, children can watch their parents driving, and they can observe red and green signals. Eventually, with many observations, a child might comprehend the red/green rule. In contrast, if the parent explains the red/green rules with simple language, the child can more quickly comprehend this rule and use it to predict new situations (e.g., who will stop and who will go when vehicles approach an intersection).
This improved social understanding of the Rules stage promotes more sophisticated social behavior. Children can now learn to respond to conditional situations offered by their parents (“if you do A, then B occurs”). Rules can be used to guide social interactions. Children at this stage do not yet show many internal controls for theii~ behaviors, but respond to external controls. For example, although they may not have the capacity to show true empathy toward a baby sibling, they can be taught to model positive behavior toward the sibling based on rules and reinforcement ‘(e.g., praise) from parents. In fact, rules are so important at this developmental stage that examples abound of how children this age insist on sameness of routines.
The Rules stage typically lasts from about 3 years of age to about 5 years. At about 6, children have greater cognitive capacity and start moving into a Who stage of social understanding. Explanations of social experience are combined with increased cognitive ability to create an enriched appreciation of social relationships. Children begin to understand differences of people, not based on external appearance but rather on internal states such as thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. At this stage, children start to show true empathy and an appreciation for others' viewpoints. They demonstrate inner control over their own behavior and develop an individual identity, such as wanting to be a “good child.” At about 7, children may demonstrate guilt, anxiety, and concern about doing the “right” thing. They appreciate that individual people can react differently to the same event.' This insight into differences of people and their motivations promotes greater nuances in the child's social interactions.
The Who stage ranges from 6 years to about 12 years. Children become more refined in adapting their interactions to different people and different situations. Their enriched social understanding depends on communication about various people and various situations. It is no accident that during this stage there is an explosion of communication capacity. The typical child has an adult-like language structure and can read. Knowledge about people is not incrementally learned in deliberate teaching interactions with parents and educators; rather, it blossoms with the cultural enrichment surrounding the child. Through movies, written tales, and family stories, children can learn about social experiences that might have occurred in a different era or an environment thousands of miles away. They can conceive what it is like to be an orphan in Dickens's London slums or an explorer discovering Mayan ruins. A child can even appreciate situations that are unlikely to occur but still teach lessons about human interactions, such as adopting a mouse as a brother or attending a school for wizards.
Children with hearing loss move into the Good vs. Bad stage at a typical time, but many of them have difficulty moving on to the Rules and Who stages at a normal rate. Delays in language development and a disrupted communication system interfere with social development through these stages. Unfortunately, delayed language development is a frequent characteristic of severe and prolonged hearing loss in young children. If children understand single words or short phrases, they can understand social interactions at a Good vs. Bad stage. They understand when someone says “no” or “yes” to them. To move to the Rules stage, however, children must have the capacity to understand simple conditionals (“if... then...”). They require language for adults to communicate cause-and-effect situations to them, and they require language to code this information in their own mind (“If I'm good in the store, then I'll get a treat.”). To move to the Who stage, children need full, enriched language to appreciate the nuances and abstractions necessary for explaining the variations of social interactions. Not only do children require well-developing language to move through these stages, but they also require a well-functioning communication system with their environment, so that they can ask questions about the world of human behavior. Children's social behaviors will only be as good as the level at which they understand their social world, and the key to moving through these levels is language and communication.

UNDERSTANDING THE CHILD'S PERSPECTIVE
Let's return to the example of Molly, the girl who stole the necklace and laughed when the child fell down the stairs. Molly had a good understanding of rules. For example, she knew that it was wrong to take her roommate's necklace, so she secretly stole it. When she was caught, she knew that she had to give the necklace back and that she would be punished. These consequences were based on rules, on established relationships of cause-and-effect. Molly, however, did not have a concept of the feelings of her roommate, the Who stage of social development. She did not understand that her roommate felt sad because of the loss of her necklace.
In a similar vein, Molly's laughing at the child who fell represented social understanding at a Rules stage. Humor is a violation of an expectation - something unexpected happens, surprising us and causing us to see humor. The slapstick humor in Molly's eyes was the boy tumbling down the steps rather than walking down them. Not having a Who stage of social understanding, Molly could not appreciate that he felt pain, and perhaps even embarrassment.
Molly seemed unusual to the staff because of her age. Typically, a child her age has the understanding of a Who stage and does not seem so callous about the feelings of others. As we analyzed the problem, we understood that Molly wasn't trying to be mean to other children. She did not have a psychological disorder. Rather, she had a delay. Her language was delayed for her age and she never learned about the feelings of others. With that insight, we developed a plan to foster Molly's social development. First, the staff understood that Molly wasn't mean-spirited but lacked information about social situations. During the next several weeks we focused on interpreting and explaining social situations to her, particularly social conflicts in which she was involved. We emphasized clear, precise communication at a level that Molly could comprehend. Second, we engaged in a long-term plan with her school staff for the subsequent school year. We recommended emphasis on language development to increase her capacity to understand information about other people. We recommended curriculum that covered experiences of different people. Molly's school psychologist adapted a peer group activity to help Molly and other peers with language delays.
Molly responded well to this two step strategy. In the dormitory, she appreciated the new insights that were explained to her. During the following school year, she was quite active in the language enhancement and peer group activities. By the following spring, we received a report that she had different social behavior. For example, Molly organized a group birthday card with her classmates so that they could surprise their teacher for her birthday. Great progress from the behavior we had seen the previous summer. The keys for Molly's progress were enhanced language functioning and enriched communication. With better language, Molly could understand more sophisticated information about social activities. With enriched communication about variations and experiences of people, Molly had the opportunity to learn more about internal states and develop empathy for others. Her difficulty was not the presence of a psychological disorder but the absence of a normal pattern of learning. Our plan was to move her from a Rules stage to a Who stage.

TEACHING SOCIAL SKILLS
In contrast to Molly, Chad had better developed language and an enriched communication environment at home. Atop this foundation of language and communication, he added specific social skills. In the research interviews that revealed Chad's popularity, we learned that the children described eight categories of behavior that made children this age socially acceptable to their peers, even though they may have communication disorders.
I was encouraged to see that when the children reported these details, they focused primarily on positive, common social behaviors. They were not interested in the specifics of a communication disorder. Rather, they viewed communication in the broader sense - how it was applied to positive social behaviors. I used this information to tailor programs for children with social interaction difficulties. First, I assessed a child, determining which of these positive features were already present and which were not well developed. Second, I recommended that parents and educators focus on enriching the deficit areas to enhance children's social acceptance. For example, one child might require emphasis on sharing and taking turns. A second child might focus on learning game rules.
In Michael's case, we analyzed his' social problem and determined that the key issues were poor communication and a limited knowledge of game rules. Because of his hearing loss, he had never fully understood the nuances of basketball rules. This was quite understandable when we considered it. Playground games are rarely taught in educational programs, during optimum communication situations. Rather, they are described piecemeal, informally, when the opportunity presents itself: while a game is on television, at the lunch table, on the playground during recess, and in the gym. None of these places provide the best opportunity for the enhanced communication required by a child with hearing loss.
Needless to say, Michael had gaps in his knowledge. He did not understand that dribbling was mandatory, but rather saw it as optional. In his mind, he responded appropriately when I passed him the ball - sprint to the basket and shoot. The other children, not appreciating that he had different knowledge and a different perspective, were frustrated with his lack of compliance with the rules of the game. We quickly solved the basketball problem - in a deliberate manner, we taught Michael the rules. He then could join the game and participate without his peers rejecting him. Our plan for Michael over the next year was to assess other gaps of knowledge in play skills and instruct him accordingly. He was an avid learner once people clearly communicated the information he required.

LESSONS LEARNED
We have learned from the experiences of Molly, Michael, and Chad that children with hearing loss develop social skills based on an understanding of how people relate with each other. Language development and communication opportunities are the keys to the progress in social understanding. Once the social understanding is enhanced, children need to learn specific social skills to enhance their acceptability to other children.
In helping children develop social skills during the elementary school years, the long-term plan is to promote language development and provide ample communication opportunities. When children have problems with social interaction, we need to analyze their level of social understanding. What is their stage of social development that creates their perspective on situations? The short-term management of social behavior requires providing interventions that match the child's level of understanding. For a child in the Good vs. Bad stage, we reward positive behaviors and ignore negative behaviors. For children in the Rules stage, we provide clear, concise rules for behavior. For children in the Who stage, we give them interpretations, explanations, and expectations. To stimulate improvement and development through these stages, we enrich language.

As the child progresses through these stages of social understanding, we must add in teaching of specific social skills from the eight categories listed above. These specific skills can be taught to children with hearing loss, provided we have an effective communication system and a clear understanding of an individual child's particular social strengths and deficits. As these skills are learned and used by children, they can show the progress demonstrated by Chad, Michael, and Molly.