Children with ADHD, ASD, and social thinking deficits often have little sense of how they are perceived by their peers. In the Lunch Buddies groups our mantra is “thinking about you, thinking about me, and thinking about you thinking about me”. We always want to keep others thinking good thoughts and feeling good feelings about us.
According to Karen Stephens, Director of Illinois State University Child Care Center, to make and keep friends, children must be able to:
- Recognize shared interests
- Gracefully join into play
- Pay attention to non-verbal communication cues
- Identify common goals
- Listen to and respect feelings
- Empathize with another person’s perspective
- Practice compassion
- Cooperate
- Accept others
- Include others
- Extend a trust-worthy, helping hand
Here is one of the Ten Tips to Help Your Child Make and Keep Friends adapted from: It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend by Richard Lavoie. Published by Simon and Schuster, NY,NY.
- Play games with your child to practice some of these important social skills:
negotiate: model how to make deals, cooperate, discuss, and bargain
take turns
follow rules: everyone has to do it this way, or it doesn’t work!
accept defeat
be gracious in victory
share
be patient: give others time to make their move
strategize: think “out loud,” of ways to solve a puzzle
We read
I am a huge fan of Julia Cook. Her books are so helpful in our social skills groups. The recurring theme of this book is that “to have good friends, you need to be a good friend”. Brown feels like he doesn’t fit in. Each of the other crayons displays a positive friendship trait. Brown learns from the others that he has everything inside him that he needs to be a good friend.
We also used Space Hero Social Skills created by CC at http://ifonlyihadsuperpowers.blogspot.com and available to purchase at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com
The boys love these space heroes! There is a social story, power card and a game.
BTW, the story yoga adventure continued and we tried some group poses.
Thanks, Mrs. Rairden. Yoga rocks!
My Best,
Robin
lunchbuddiesplus 
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