SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
The best time to make friends is before you need them.
--Ethel Barrymore
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Having social skills is very important for student achievement. Deficits in social skills have been found to exist at significantly high rates among children with learning disabilities. Social skill deficits include difficulties interacting with people in an appropriate manner. For example, lack of knowledge of how to greet people, how to make friends, and how to engage in playground games or a failure to use knowledge of such skills in these situations.
While not all children with learning disabilities have deficits in social skills, there are certain common characteristics among those who do. Bruck reported that children with more severe manifestations of learning disabilities are likely to manifest both an increased number of and increased severity of social skills deficits. Therefore, the gender of the child appears to be a factor, with evidence suggesting that girls with learning disabilities are more likely to have social adjustment problems.
STEPS TO TAKE TO INCREASE YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS:
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Greet people with a smile and a warm hello
- Spend more time listening than talking.
- Observe people's body language - especially eye contact, gestures, and posture.
- Work gradually into friendships.
- Do not force friendships.
- Have reliable friends by being a reliable friend.
- Know when to enter and exit a conversation with ease.
- Let others ask for your involvement; don't become pushy.
- Show interest in similar activities or hobbies so others will know include you.
- Adopt polite expressions of language: "thank you", "no thank you", "Have a good day", "See you tomorrow" .
- Know that you can have better social skills by applying these steps.
WEBSITES OF INTEREST:
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/social_skills/language_relationships.html
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/social_skills/lavoie_quest.html