What if my child can't talk with people?

What if you didn’t know how to talk to people? 

It’s estimated that 7.5% of kindergarteners have social communication impairments!  

In this post you’re going to learn about social communication disorder— what it is and one idea for helping.  

What is social communication disorder?

It’s where there are problems with social interaction— that is, difficulties in using social language verbally and nonverbally. Its cause is unknown, but it may happen with with learning disabilities, traumatic brain injury, ADHD, and dementia.

It’s different from autism since an autism diagnosis includes restricted and repetitive behaviors, like getting upset about transitions or lining up toys instead of playing with them.  These are in addition to social communication problems.

Some things that are affected by social communication disorder include:

Using greetings, adjusting to a communicative partner, repairing breakdowns that happen in conversation, making inferences, using figurative language, and making and keeping close friendships. 

What’s one way to help with social communication disorders? Social stories, developed in 1991 by Carol Gray — that’s where you use stories to explain social situations to children.  Read a story about a social situation to a child just before the child enters that situation. Try writing your own short social story and post it!

For more on communication disorders, check facebook.com/speechwithlisa. 

#socialcommunicationdisorder​ #pragmaticlanguagedisorder #speechlanguagepathology