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Tips for Teachers: Improving Social Skills in Students with ADHD

Thank you to all of our professional educators who are dedicated to our children! We know how difficult it can be to work with children with ADHD, so here are their teacher’s tips for the week, presented by the ADHD Information Library and ADDinSchool.com. This is a sample of over 500 classroom interventions for use at http://www.ADDinSchool.com. Here are some tips to improve social skills: Provide a safe environment for the child. Make sure the child knows that you are his friend and that you are there to help him. Treat it with respect. Never put him down in front of his peers. Both he and the other children know that he stands out, and if the teacher belittles the child, the rest of the children will see it as permission from the teacher to belittle the child as well.

Students with attention problems experience many difficulties in the social area, especially in relationships with peers. They tend to experience great difficulty picking up on the social cues of others, act impulsively, have limited awareness of their effect on others, show a delayed ability to assume roles, and overly personalize the actions of others as critical, and tend to do not acknowledge the positive comments. . They tend to play better with young or older children when their roles are clearly defined. These students tend to repeat self-defeating patterns of social behavior and do not learn from experience. When conversing, they may ramble and say embarrassing things to their peers. Areas and periods of time with less structure and less supervision, such as the playground and class parties, can be especially problematic. Enlisting the support of peers in the classroom can greatly improve your student’s self-esteem. Students with a good social conscience and who like to help can be paired with him. This couple can take the form of being a “study buddy”, doing activities / projects, or playing on the playground. Tutoring of different ages with older or younger students can also have social benefits. The most successful pairing is done with proper preparation of the paired student, planning meetings with the peer to set expectations, and with parental permission. Matching expectations and time commitments should be fairly limited in scope to increase the chances of success and decrease the limitations of the matched students. Students with attention problems tend to do well in the cooperative group instructional format. Small student groups of three to five members, in which students “sink or swim” together to complete assignments / projects, encourage students to share organizational ideas and responsibilities, and provide an ideal environment for processing the interpersonal skills of regularly. Small “playgroups” of two to four students can help your student develop more effective social skills. These groups are most effective if socially competent peers are voluntarily included in the group. The group should focus on activities that emphasize interaction and cooperation. Board games, construction projects, and sessions that promote frequent verbal interactions provide the greatest opportunity to learn proper social skills and control impulsivity. Your student would benefit the most when the target social skills are identified and practiced with them before the activity and processed after the activity.

Many students lack friends to be with outside of the school environment. It can be beneficial to develop a strategy with your student and their parents to develop a “friendship plan” for home. Sometimes the goal of establishing a special friendship is ambitious and sufficient. This could include steps to identify friendship possibilities that might be available / accepted, practice making arrangements using the phone, planning an activity or evening that is structured / predictable, and tips on how to maintain friendships over time. A subtle way for your student to learn social skills is by using guided observation of their peers on the playground. Join them on the playground and point out how other students initiate activities, cooperate in a game, respond to rejection, deal with being alone, and so on. For many students, thirty minutes on the playground is beyond their ability to maintain successful relationships with their peers. If needed, break up recess into ten minutes of activity, a ten minute check-in with the teacher / playground supervisor, and then another ten minute activity period.

Restricting the area available to your student during recess can increase contact with adult supervision and decrease the complexity of making social decisions. This can be done privately with your student before recess. Many students appreciate this way of simplifying their social interactions during this period of low structure. It is helpful to meet with your student before their lunch / playground period to review their plan for their recess activity and who they will be sitting with for lunch. Have him ask his classmates before recess block to do a certain activity with him. Process the activity with your student after recess and make suggestions for the next day. Hopefully this will help ADHD students in your classroom to be more successful. You can learn more about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the ADHD Information Library.

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