Clinical Reference Systems: Pediatric Advisor 10.0
Peer Interaction Skills
Many children don't have anyone to play with because they
tend to drive other children away. They need a lot of
supervised practice in playing nicely with other children.
This can be done using the following steps.
- You must have time-in and time-out practices well
established before you begin trying to teach interaction
skills. To begin without a good time-in/time-out base
is almost foolhardy.
- Call another child's parents and invite their child over
to your house to play with your child, giving the
parents assurance that you will be supervising the play
activity.
- The children will be playing inside. Decide ahead of
time how long the play will last, and convey this to the
other child's parents. Don't schedule or plan any other
competing activities for yourself. Most of your time
will be taken up with the children's playing.
- Supervise the play very closely. Use as much brief,
gentle contact (time-in) as you can with your son or
daughter whenever he or she is playing nicely.
- Be prepared to use time-out as quickly as possible for
any objectionable behavior, such as obnoxious talk,
refusing to share, or withdrawing from the activity.
- During your child's time-outs, be prepared to continue
the play with the other child so that she isn't sitting
doing nothing while your child is in time-out.
- Don't give your child any benefit of the doubt. If in
doubt, put him in time-out.
- If your child is thoroughly used to time-in and time-
out, the first supervised play session should go much
better than past play sessions. Continue having such
play sessions several times each week.
- The more experience your child gets playing nicely with
other children, the easier this will get for you to
handle. After your child is consistently doing well
with one child at a time, you can begin inviting more
than one child over. However, don't press your luck.
Invite one child at a time until your child is really
good at playing cooperatively.
- Expect to have to continue supervising your child very
closely during play for a long time to come.
For more information, see
Time-In
Time-Out Technique
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