One of the more common requests I received in the early days of working with organisations, schools and families was to teach social skills to autistic children. So, I thought it might be helpful to explain why my answer is a firm NO.
Unfortunately, when many parents, organisations and institutions talk about “social skills,” or seek a “social skills” intervention, what they are really talking about is effective ways to teach an autistic child to imitate neurotypical social skills through masking.
In contrast, I believe in teaching Autistic celebration to all children. I provide therapy to teach self-advocacy, self-regulation, perspective taking, safety/boundaries, and problem-solving skills within a pro-neurodiversity approach.
Masking is the use of conscious or unconscious techniques, which may be explicitly learned (through social skills training) or implicitly developed by watching and mirroring neurotypical peers, to minimize the appearance of authentic autistic characteristics in social settings. Whilst it might seem llike a desirable solution to other, masking can actually be extremely harmful to autistic people, frequently leading to depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, autistic burnout, and even suicidal ideation.
The thing is, it’s thoroughly exhausting to mirror neurotypical social skills, mask one’s authentic autistic communication style, force eye-contact, imitate body language and facial expressions, conceal stimming, ignore and mask sensory overload, hide quirky behavior, and tone police oneself. In the majority of circumstances the onus is on the
Autistic person to socialize, communicate and behave like nonautistic people, not the other way round.
Social Skills Training Devalues Autistic Humans
The true lesson of training social skills teaches autistic children that unless they learn to successfully mask their autistic traits, they are inherently less valuable members of the human race. Social skills training communicates conditional acceptance based on the conditions that non-autistic people determine. It’s not fair or ethical.
There is a host of contemporary research demonstrating that Autistic and Allistic communicate equally well, just differently. It’s the mismatch between Autistic and Allistic communication styles that causes problems. Therefore, the “social skills training” model that most schools, clinics and private practices still mandate today for Autistic children is
ableist and prejudiced. Social skills training inhibits authenticity, leads to anxiety, self-consciousness, self-doubt and hypervigilance in social interactions.
Many autistic students and clients exist in a constant state of anxiety – all day and every day. And yet, we as clinicians continue to write therapy goals that take away their self-determination, eliminate self-advocacy, attempt to change their entire personalities, “extinguish” their harmless behaviors, force compliance for ridiculous things like eye contact, rote social scripting, mandatory response to all communication attempts from others and compliance with social expectations such as “responding appropriately to bullying or not responding in anger” that even our “typical” students are not expected to meet. It needs to stop.
That’s why I say NO to Social Skills Training.