Social Communication Training

The Wait Your Turn approach to improving social communication  was developed to focus training on everyday conversational routines between parents (or caregivers) and their children.  Since it is the child’s parent(s) and caregivers who spend the most time with the child it makes the most sense to train the adult to be the child’s language facilitator.  As speech-language pathologists we are trained how to optimize language learning through strategies and techniques. However, those strategies are rarely shared with the general public.  King’s Speech and Learning Center will train you how to be the best language and communication model you can be.

For older children and adults, the Wait Your Turn model addresses the responsibility of the speaker to maintain a reciprocal and balanced conversational exchange. To make this task easy we train small talk strategies and offer practical methods for social practice outside the treatment session. As Speech pathologists specializing in pragmatic language intervention, we serve as a social coach to erase past associations of failure, and facilitate new opportunities for  success.

Benefits to Parents & Teachers

Through coaching both parents and teachers can learn how to be optimal language models and build strong communicators for life.  KSLC  offers teacher training programs throughout CT public schools and private day-cares, pre-schools and day-schools. To schedule a training at your school please contact us

Benefits to Children

Communication skills have a profound effect of a child’s well-being. Issues ranging from Shyness to stuttering to ADD / ADHD can significantly impact a child’s self esteem and quality of life. Working with Children and teaching parents and caregivers how to promote healthy communication skills provides children with a valuable head start in life.

More serious issues such as Autism Spectrum Disorders and Asperger’s Syndrome are important to identify early and can often be assessed and helped though our services.

For school age children, we supplement students’ Individualized Education Plans (IEP) to address the real life issues that result from social challenges such as making and keeping friends, problem solving during a play date, and managing daily transitions. We can also provide second opinions, or offer a full battery of speech and language tests for initial evaluations. Our approaches for social communication training (pragmatic language therapy) listed below reflect the most recent findings in evidence- based treatment, and have been proven to be established methods of intervention.

  • Naturalistic Treatment  
  • Story Based Intervention  
  • Peer Training Package
  • Joint Attention Interaction  
  • Modeling

Click here for a report on research.    Read more on social pragmatic language issues with internationally adopted children

Whether your child is normally developing, or shows possible differences, your child can benefit by:

  • Our careful social language analysis during an everyday activity at  home, or at school
  • A baseline measure of how you are using strategies that will enhance the child social development, and how the child is responding to your interactive style.
  • A personal review of our findings on  the response to  adult strategies during play,  peer reaction  to the child, the child’s current level of social communication development, and recommended course of treatment
  • Targeting strategies that will optimize the child’s social language development, and goals for what your child should be doing next.
  • Follow up coaching to assess your progress, and the consequent progress in your child’s interaction skills
  • Any additional resources

Playdates/Peer Matching/Social Groups- Carry Over of Social Skills

Either while we train you to be an optimal language and communication model, or after you complete the adult-child training, we may recommend that your child receive child-child social communication training in the form of a play date, or peer matching for older children.  The purpose of a play date or peer matching  is for the child to start generalizing his social language skills that he has acquired with you onto a new context with his peers.  Children often behave entirely different across situations and it is important to address social skills across the various life settings.

The end goal will be to master age appropriate social communication skills in his or her most challenging environment (e.g. a  party or a large classroom).

If you are a local customer, we will either conduct a treatment session with a play date you have arranged at your house, or we will offer “peer matching” for your child with one of our clients as a semi-private treatment session in our office, or regular social language group therapy. In an effort to match your child with other children who will best meet his social needs, we will take careful consideration of your child’s developmental and chronological age as well as his overall nature.

This service is covered by insurance at our Simsbury and New Britain  offices and by some insurances in the home. You will need to get prior authorization for home services.

Benefits to Teens and Adults

For many teens and adults, social communication  continues to be a problem whether or not they have received pragmatic language intervention in the past. Individual therapy can greatly benefit anyone who:

  • Experiences social anxiety
  • Avoids personal interactions at school or work
  • Shuts down in certain situations
  • Drives people away
  • Talks too much or too little
  • Has trouble making or keeping friends

The therapy Process will guide you to:

  • Set realistic social goals
  • improve your small talk skills
  • Create a systematic approach to generalize skills to more challenging contexts
  • Become a more effective communicator at work
  • Improve  your interviewing and/or public speaking skills (if desired)
  • Learn the art of perspective taking to become more socially savvy
  • Address many parameters of both verbal and nonverbal communication

 

Skype/Webcam Social Communication Assessment Visit

For our “geographically challenged” customers, or our local customers who wish to not have anyone come to their house, all of the above home services can also be provided through the use of Skype.  By live recording over the internet, you can capture a typical play session with your child while a licensed speech-language pathologist observes on her office computer. A written analysis will be emailed or sent to you, and a follow up visit will be scheduled to review the results and set the adult-child goals. Subsequent coaching sessions can then be arranged as well.

Visit includes adult-child play observation from your home computer, a full evaluation report to be sent at a later date, and a 30 minute follow up coaching session to be schedule at the time of the initial vist, and usually will take place within 2 weeks from the first session. The follow up session will review the evaluation findings, and offer critical language and communication strategies for you to use with your child. Further coaching sessions are offered as needed, or desired. Skype account required (It’s free!).

Initial Assessment $350.00

Additional Follow-up Coaching: $100.00