How do you know if an intervention is neurodiversity affirming and evidence-based?
Are child-led interventions actually in a child’s best interest?
What’s the right way to build social skills, “pragmatic language” and social communication skills?
I’ve done a lot of soul-searching surrounding this topic. The typical pragmatic language interventions that focused on preaching the “right” way to act in social situations never felt right to me. Yet I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
So in this episode, I wanted to share the framework I currently recommend for teaching social problem-solving. The truth is, there are a lot of truly ableist practices going on; but there’s also a lot of misinformation (I know…such a buzzword these days!).
That’s why I’m going to break down a couple key points to help therapists, teachers, and parents navigate through it all so they know how to raise well-adjusted kids.
I share what I know from 4 different angles: Research/evidence-based practice, clinical experience, being a parent, and being neurodivergent myself.
Specifically, I’ll talk about:
✅The difference between academic language interventions and social-problem solving interventions (and why what works for one doesn’t work for the other).
✅Why many social skills groups and therapy sessions are ineffective in teaching kids social-problem solving skills.
✅How to help kids be more resilient, flexible, and effective at developing social relationships (without gaslighting them or being ableist).
✅What it really means to be “neurodiversity affirming” and “child-led”, and how to do it in a way that helps kids feel safe and secure.
You can listen to the entire episode here:
In this episode, I explain why I approach academic language that build comprehension and processing in a much different way than I do social problem-solving.
In light of that, I mention two different programs I offer for speech pathologists.
First, I mentioned the Social Language Roadmap, which teaches a set of strategies designed to teach kids the social problem-solving skills they need to thrive in school, community, and vocational settings. It’s designed for SLPs, but may also be helpful to other people working with school-age kids.
>>> You can learn more about how to join the Social Language Roadmap here.
Second, I mention Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that teaches speech-pathologists a framework for supporting the language process skills needed for strong reading comprehension, writing, and other academic tasks.