Strategies to Help Children Overcome Social Challenges

Many children struggle socially. This is especially true for children with attention, learning, and behavioral difficulties. Certain behaviors common to ADHD can often negatively impact children socially. These behaviors often include: acting impulsively, being insensitive to subtle interpersonal cues, having difficulty controlling what affects attention span, struggles learning from both positive and negative experiences, and trouble predicting audience response.[1] Unfortunately, even when children with ADHD have friends, the friendships tend to be less supportive and more conflict-filled than those of children who do not struggle with attention difficulties.[2]

Parents play a vital role in assisting children with building their social competencies. Several strategies that can be helpful include:

1. talking to your child about the importance of social skills
2. setting specific and realistic social goals
3. set up supervised, time-limited play dates for your child
4. review social goals prior to outings
5. choose simple and enticing play activities, involve teachers and other professionals in teaching your child social skills
6. prompt your child to think about the feelings and reactions of others.[3]

A great way to practice understanding the feelings and reactions of others is to stop movies or television shows and have your child guess what characters might be feeling, what social cues or body language they may be displaying, and to guess what might happen next.

Adding exciting bonuses for children practicing specific social skills can also be helpful. For example: a child may receive a bonus at home for asking a peer a question during lunchtime at school. Some children know exactly what to say to others and just need some prompting while other children desperately want friends but do not know what to say. For children who struggle to know what to say to others an adult can practice conversations together. Ping Pong Conversations is one of my favorite social skills games we play at camp in which children try to see how many times they can volley a conversation back and forth by asking questions and responding appropriately. At Quest, we use this game as a way to have children practice skills including eye contact, turn taking, focusing on the other person’s perspective, practicing switching topics, etc.

Some tips for when you provide your child with friendship feedback are to keep it brief, be specific, stay focused on the present, and stay positive.[4] I often think about the Charlie Brown cartoons in which any adult talking always sounds like “wha wha wha.” Children with attention difficulties are typically more prone to hearing adults this way. A large challenge for a parent or teacher can be to try and be concise and to the point by trying to give a child information in 10 words or less. It can also be helpful to teach your child what to say in situations such as “If you lose you can say ‘good game’ to the winner”.[5] It can also be helpful to praise and reinforce a child for what he or she did well versus focusing on what he or she did incorrectly in a social interchange.

Deep down social skill development takes time and children often benefit from getting to practice skills across a variety of settings and situations. The good news is that positive adults can utilize a variety of strategies to assist children in building important skills in this area.

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[1] Cohen, C. Raise your child’s social IQ. Attention, April 2010.

[2] Mikami, A. Y. How you can be a friendship coach for your child with ADHD. Attention, April 2010.

[3] Cohen, C. Raise your child’s social IQ. Attention, April 2010.

[4] Mikami, A. Y. How you can be a friendship coach for your child with ADHD. Attention, April 2010.

[5] Mikami, A. Y. How you can be a friendship coach for your child with ADHD. Attention, April 2010.