Is your kid struggling to behave ‘properly’ in school or at home? It’s likely that a lack of self-regulation is the cause for such behaviors, not spite. Children with ADHD and Asperger’s often lack the necessary skills of self-regulation in order to properly participate in a social situation. However, these skills can be taught and can greatly improve a child’s functionality across all situations. Self-regulation is a major part of living in society; children and adults alike must do it every single day! If you haven’t already- read this blog first on regulation and dysregulation. So, what is social self-regulation and how do we work on it?
Social Self-regulation is part of our executive functioning, or in other words it’s about producing social responses that align with our goals. There are 3 parts to the self-regulatory process: Social and Self-Awareness, Self-Monitoring, and Self-Control. Social and Self-awareness is all about paying attention to the environment, how do you feel/act and how do others feel/act. Want to learn more about social and self-awareness, read this blog. Self-Monitoring is about feeling out whether or not group and individual goals are being met during an interaction. Self-control is actually about problem solving and meeting goals for necessary responses and behaviors.
“Outside-In”
Behavior Plans: Behavior plans can be very effective in the short term for teaching kids the proper behaviors in a specific situation. It works on the “outside-in” approach by providing external rewards for specific behaviors. This can be a really good method for those without high functioning language skills and its effects can be fast-acting. However, this method does not encourage the child to actually problem solve the social context, it simply teaches memorization of behavior. Research shows that memorized social behaviors does not generalize across different situations. If your child is socially aware enough, they may find ways to outsmart the behavior plans if they don’t fit their personal goals.
“Inside-Out”
The “Inside-Out” approach is more effective in actually teaching a child to self-regulate, not just memorize a set of behaviors. It is more important that a child learn to self-regulate without external rewards because socializing itself should be rewarding! Want some additional ideas? Check out here!
The proposed model for social self-regulation goes as follows:
Social Attention –> Social Interpretation –> Problem Solving –> Social Responses.
The first step involves being aware of the situation, which requires a need to be actively attentive to your surroundings. Next, comes interpreting the environment and this is where children with Aspergers and ADHD tend to struggle or become disoriented. Parents will often describe their children as being “smart but clueless” and this is because they do not see patterns in the social world. Social interpretation is about interpreting the self and others for what is occurring contextually i.e., someone wants to play with you or is trying to make a simple joke. The problem-solving piece is about how to actually use your social interpretation of the situation and deciding what a proper response is. The social response is the content and action that you put back into the environment.
Now, let’s discuss how we can help your child become a better interpreter of the world. There are 8 major areas to improve this style of critical thinking.
- World knowledge: what have prior experiences in the world taught them? Patterns!
- What is the situation?
- Who are the people?
- What are their intentions?
- Basic intentions
- Self-conscious Emotions
- Basic theory of mind: Everyone thinks different thoughts, what is it like to be the other person?
- Advanced, Applied, Spontaneous theory of mind
How can you use these 8 major areas to help your child improve their social self regulation and critical thinking?
If your child struggles with self regulation, we highly recommend the webinar listed below. We are also happy to help through individual, group and parenting support to help your child learn to increase their attention to social cues, self regulation and learning to interpret the world around them.
Want to learn more? Check out the original webinar from SocialThinking.com at https://www.socialthinking.com/eLearning/webinar-understanding-self-regulation-help-your-students