Impaired Perspective Taking: as seen on Born Naughty? Channel 4 28th May 2015

If you saw Thomas on Channel 's Born Naughty on Thursday, you will have seen that he has impaired perspective taking, he cannot put himself in others' shoes (Theory of Mind). I tried the first session of Social Thinking on him where I lay on the floor of the classroom while still talking. This usually promotes gasps, stares and makes the average 10 year old feel very uncomfortable ......and think I'm slightly weird. I then get up and we discuss my behaviour and their reaction. Thomas, however, didn't notice I had laid on the floor and when I got up and asked what he thought of my behaviour he said 'Nothing', I asked if he thought it was odd, he replied, 'No!' Normally, we go onto discuss expected vs unexpected behaviour and how these make people feel. It's a great way of introducing children with social communication difficulties to the idea that there is a point to conforming to expected behaviour.

The best person to tell you more about this is Michelle Garcia Winner, the founder of Social Thinking:

 https://www.socialthinking.com/images/stories/ST%20SCP%20%20Ver%20%206.12.pdf

Small Talk Speech & Language Therapy use Social Thinking as part of their daily work

www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

Toddler not talking?

When we're called in to see  toddler who isn't talking, many parents are surprised that we don't start to work on getting them to say words . We have talked before about there being a pyramid of priority, as below

However, for some children, about whom we may be concerned about social interaction, we will suggest a different approach. As Hanen licensed therapists we might have these 5 top goals:

1. For the child to enjoy social interaction
2. To understand and use non-verbal communication (especially gestures)
3. To pay attention to people’s faces and words
4. To help the child imitate
5. To respond to bids for Joint Attention (RJA)

These can all be done through play.