Autism and social skills

This 2 hour course on autism and social skills will be an introduction to the Autistic perspective of autism. It will introduce parents, school staff other practitioners to the emerging idea that Autistic children do not actually have deficits in social skills.

Together we will explore what this means for traditional “social skills” training and the impact this sort of training has on Autistic people.

Content:

In this social skills course Evaleen will share her findings and ideas. She will show you that we need to appreciate and preserve the way Autistic children and adults communicate, whether that is verbally or non-verbally. When we think of autism and social skills we may think of deficits. We may not know that those ideas are now very outdated. No one needs these outdated ideas where Autistic people need to be taught and trained how to behave in social situations. These sort of antiquated ideas only harm the Autistic sense of self. They also harm otherwise beautiful relationships between Autistic and non-autistic people.

When professionals assessed the Autistic ability to interact socially they assessed this ability somewhat in isolation. They seem to have forgotten that communication is in fact a two way street. We must also assess how others interact with Autistic people. How do other people interact with us? Well, if we ask Autistic people then we learn that actually non-autistic people have a lot of work to do when it comes to interacting effectively and respectfully with us.

Because there is duality of communication then we need to learn how to meet each other half way. The first step in doing this is respecting Autistic Language and Culture. This webinar will give you an insight into Autistic communication, tips and practical ways to meet us half way and real life examples.