From Rule Based to Discrimination Based

“How to Teach Social Skills For Children with High Functioning Autism and Aspergers.”

As a parent or professional, you may see a title like this in numerous places. It may be on a 40 dollar book or a seminar in a 200 dollar weekend conference. I have bought many books with titles such as this by a variety of respected professionals working in the field of autism. The complicated matter of social skills is, however, lacking in ABA manuals on programming for children with autism. Many of the current books out there seem to have some common threads: they are either not autism specific but social skill specific and could be used for all children (autistic or not) and just happen to have autism in the title or they have an underlying assumption that people with autism will always be dependant on visual social stories and the direct teaching of hundreds upon hundreds on contradictory social rules that our little human world has invented. It seems as though all I had to do was say that my child was diagnosed with autism and I had some speech therapist trying to hand me Carol Gray’s Social Stories (no offense to Carol Gray. I am sure her methods work for some children. Unfortunately, for the longest of times, hers was the only thing out there and now so many people are blindly applying her methods onto children because of their label and not based on their need).

While some aspects of social stories were helpful in the short term, they actually caused us more problems in the long run. I know many parents and professionals who have praised social stories and have credited them for helping their child or client. Unfortunately, this would not be the case for our son.

We could not use a Carol Gray style social story because our child had an interesting stim (self-stimulatory behavior). He would tell stories or narrate our lives in a story fashion. It wasn’t until his language improved that this stim or behavior would decrease. Unfortunately, this was something we had to deal with for almost two years (and then it just suddenly died out.) The Carol Gray style of social storying would only have reinforced this method of communication. We also tried a more direct style which I term the “Sumlin Style”. The Sumlins are a family from the Me-list who have a fully recovered son. They used social stories and found it helpful. They used a bullet point system. These were helpful to a point but it was not the magic bullet.

We all teach a certain amount of social rules to ALL children. Say please and Thank you. Say “excuse me” when you burp. Raise your hand to get the teacher’s attention. Do not pee in public fountains. Do not pick your nose and eat it. There are some direct rules in life that are clear cut.

The concern I had was that the rule based teaching method I saw in teaching social skills to children with autism did not directly address whatever deficit they had in learning to naturally discriminate social rules. Teaching a child to tact (label) “Mommy” is definite and concrete. This is mommy. Period. Teaching a child to tell when a person does and doesn’t want you to play is not concrete. Not all children say “I want to play with you”. Some silently join in. Some stand and stare , hoping you will ask them. Some just suddenly come up to you and pretend to be an animal. Some roll their eyes when they want you to go away. Some hit you to get you to leave. Some just sigh and play. Some completely ignore you. Some tolerate you but say mean things every now again. Some call your name to get you to play while others turn their back on you to get you to go away. It is ineffective to sit down with a child with autism and write:

I like to play with others. Sometimes others like to play with me too.

When my friend rolls her eyes, she does not want to play with me.

When my friend calls my name, she wants to play with me.

When…..

You could probably state a hundred different rules for telling when a child does and doesn’t want to play with you and inevitably, you will find a situation on the playground that you forgot to teach your child. I have found that there is a lot of what Duke Marshall and Steve Nowicki term “Cognitive Conflict” in social behavior. Cognitive Conflict is where the body language doesn’t match the verbal language. A child might be standing, leaning towards you and smiling as he says “you are a poopy head and I don’t like you.” Does this mean that he really thinks you are a poppy head and he wants you to go away or is he just joking? What is the social rule for that?

A nice example of such a mystifying experience on the playground was described by one friend:

It's interesting to watch Timothy play because he is so socially
motivated, but clueless. For example, he wanted to push the girls on the
swings at school (not in a mean way, push them so they could
swing)....Well...the girls (having learned to flirt at 7) were sorta
simultaneously screaming at him to stop, yet somewhat egging him on so they
could enjoy screaming at him to stop...whew...quite confusing. Of course, we
hauled Timothy over and said..."You can't push the girls on the swing
unless you ask them first..." Meanwhile, the girls are yelling at him to
come back and play...

The mom tried to issue a rule to the child (Don’t push people on swings unless you ask first) and the very children who were complaining earlier, were yelling at him to come back.

Another example of how the social world is not rule based comes from Dr. Stephen Gutstein’s book, Solving the Relationship Puzzle (you can also purchase this book on Amazon.com) . In this book he gave a wonderful example of teaching a rule to social interaction and how this didn’t pan out for the child:

I recall one poignant example that became a turning point in my
determination to find another approach. At the request of Neil, a
highly intelligent child with Aspergers Syndrome, I spent a good deal
of time teaching him to master the timing of common "knock knock"
jokes. He became quite proficient at a familiar variant:

"knock knock"      "whose there?"
"Banana"              "Banana who?"
"knock knock"     "whose there?"
"Banana"            "Banana who?"
"knock knock"     "whose there?"
"Orange"             "orange who?"
"orange you glad I didn't say banana?"

After he practiced with cooperative adults, it was time for a trial
with children. The first child he tried the joke on was a preschool
aged boy, unfamiliar with the format. Neil began his scripted
joke in the usual way, but was met by an unexpected response:

"knock knock"

"whose there?"

Banana

"Ha ha ha.. That's funny."

Neil responded to his partners laughter and enjoyment - the real
point of telling a joke- with anger and frustration. He spent several
minutes, until I intervened, attempting to coerce the now frightened
child into following the correct social scripts and saying "banana
who?" Rather than acting as a vehicle for mutual joy, the

joke, a social "skill" I had so painstakingly taught Neil,

had turned into a cruel obstacle.

Neil, in this book, had been taught the idea that you say knock knock, the other person follows the knock knock format, you tell the joke part, and everyone laughs. This young preschooler didn’t follow the rule. I spent some time watching NT peers on the playground. It was quite an enlightening experience. So many experts and parents had given me sample social stories saying things like:

I should not walk away from my friends.

I should not pretend without saying “hey lets pretend”

I should not.

I should.

I should not.

I should.

The real world of NT's is not entirely rule based. This alone was not going to do it for my child. The mythical NT child says 'please' and 'thank you' and "good morning' and 'takes turns' and 'plays by the rules.' They always respond to comments and always ask a questions and nod their head during conversation. They always look at you.

The kids in my child's class act silly in the middle of role play, they
suddenly stop pretending to be pirates and run to climb a monkey bar,
they play football and then suddenly it evolves into a game of "don't let the cootie infected girls near us." a game might develop out of thin air and in a flash, the game ends
and a new one with new rules develop.

NT kids break the rules and they often do it in a socially acceptable manner because they are sharing in an experience and receiving some sort of mutual enjoyment. What happens when I teach a rule to my child and the rule gets broken by a peer in a light hearted manner? My child is bewildered and crashes.

In some ways, rule based teaching set my child up for failure. One example is the social storying of responding to statements . We once wrote a social story that said, “I respond to my friends when they talk. If I don’t respond, they will think I am not interested. They will think I do not like them.”

Did he start looking more at peers? I think so. But what happened when his friend didn’t always respond to him? It was simple. He concluded that his friend was not interested and did not like him. In reality, this wasn’t true. His friend was just spacing out and being a typical five year old boy. What was I to do then? Write another story about how if a friend doesn’t seem interested, it doesn’t mean that he does not like you? When do the social stories stop?

Another thing that happened was that it created a certain amount of social anxiety. Our child began to recite rules. He was scared to forget a rule. A poignant moment for us was when he was in trouble with me. I sent him to his room because I needed him to get away from me before I lost my cool. I was hoping that as soon as both of our tempers cooled down, he would realize that he needed to apologise to me.

I heard his door open and I saw a note flung out in the hallway. I slowly stepped up to the door with a smile. I was certain that this moment would lead to the apology that I was waiting for. I bent down and picked up the note:

Nah nah nah. I am smarter than you.

I felt foolish. It was not the apology that I expected. I turned and walked away. I wanted to go into his room and scream at him but I knew that he needed to figure out the right thing to do.

Time passed and he did not come out of his room. I walked by and there was nothing. I walked in the room and saw him sitting on his bed with huge tears rolling down his cheek. He was scared. I looked around and saw many of his “Joy Berry books on how to behave” scattered on the ground and on the bed. I asked him what was up.

He burst into sobs. He told me that he was trying to look up what to do in his books. He was looking for the rule. The only problem is that there was not a specific rule for what had occurred.

I realized that we had failed our child. Short cuts some times lead our
program to a spot that was no better than where we were. Social Stories and Rule Based Social teaching were just short cuts. It did not map out a road for our child. It did not teach him how to travel that road. It was time to try another road less travelled on. Our child had social desire. We were lucky. All the rule based teaching was actually driving social desire from him.

We mapped out a new direction for Lukas.

Our ultimate destination was to make and maintain friendships.

The road would be bumpy but he needed to learn that the experience of being with a friend was more important than the activity and way you behaved with your friend.

If we had to do it all over again, we would have not had a “downtime play” in our ABA program. While we required our tutors to go and play with our child at least every other “go play” time, it was still time that could have been better used. Dr. Gutstein lays out a variety of very specific activities that are ABA based (ie the activity should be reinforcing) in his books.[1] The goal of our ABA program should not have been “respond when your peer makes a statement” but “being with people is fun!”.

Additionally, we also needed to teach our child how to discriminate social situations. That is where other resources came into play. Teaching Your Child the Language of Social Success [AC1] is one such book. This book teaches how to read body language versus how to read sign language. Lastly, our Discrimination program [AC2] was also used to help Lukas read a situation. It was not rule based but situation based. He had to watch and participate. He had to show us the wrong way and the right way. He had to show us a variety of wrong ways to handle the same situation and he had to show us a variety of RIGHT ways to handle a situation. He needed to be fluent in social situations much like he needed to be fluent in Language.

When you have a child with autism, you do not just teach one way to say “hello”. Most ABA programs teach a variety of responses:

Wave

Hello

Whats up?

Good morning

Good Evening

Good afternoon

Hey

Nod head

How are you doing?

How ya doin’?

Whats going on?

Whats shaking?

Howdy

Why hello there

Nice to meet you

Etc.

Yet, it seems, we do not teach a variety of social responses and behaviors. It is important to not teach the rule (say hello) but to teach the discrimination behind the rule. That is where the core deficit is.

I could not find a single book to teach this but had to pool a variety of resources. The best resources I found fit well with ABA principles and Discrete Trial Teaching. When we backed away from Rule Based Teaching, Lukas began to watch people more. His anxiety reduced.

He is still a little awkward. He is still a little different. However, he is not dependant on the rules of social behavior. He can match his behavior to the situation (although he is still a few seconds slower than most typical peers). More importantly, he wants to be a part of everyone. He wants to be social. He is actually extroverted. He is much happier.

Dr. Gutstein made an analogy in one of his books that fit what went wrong in our second year of our program. I taught my child the steps to the tango but failed to teach him what it means to dance with a partner on a crowded dance floor. It felt good to leave behind all the rules and regulations. Lukas knew the rules. He just needed to learn how the rules came about and how social interactions weren’t about rules but enjoying each other.

[1] Steven Gutstein’s webpage with information on his manuals:

http://www.connectionscenter.com/resources/default.asp