Does your child have difficulty making friends? Or maybe they make friends easily, but have a harder time maintaining friendships. Do they have trouble starting conversations or joining groups? If so, they might need help in the area of social communication!

Social communication is an area of speech and language that can be worked on in individual and group sessions. Often, our therapists will teach specific social communication skills during individual sessions to ensure the child has a good understanding of the various concepts. Some skills that can be targeted during individual sessions include making comments, asking questions, perspective taking, understanding eye gaze, Whole Body Listening®, and the Zones of Regulation® (just to name a few!) But be careful- just because a child has mastered a social skill with their therapists does not mean it will generalize to their interactions with peers!

We hear all the time that a child can do something with adults or their therapist, but is not generalizing the skill with their peers at school. A great way to bridge the gap between individual speech therapy sessions and the classroom, home, or community is through a social group led by a licensed speech-language pathologist. During social groups, children learn to apply the skills they have learned in their individual sessions to less structured, real life activities with their peers. At TALK, we offer a wide range of social groups for kids of all ages - from working on play skills with preschoolers to helping young adults navigate the social world outside of TALK – and everything in between!

Learning social skills doesn’t happen in isolation! Contact us for more information regarding our social groups at (650) 344-9961.

Whole Body Listening® was created by Susanne Paulette Truesdale (1990) and is part of the Social Thinking Curriculum developed by Michelle Garcia Winner.

Zones of Regulation® was created by Leah Kuypers.