Play and Social Skills
Play and Social interactions require skills such as attention and concentration, appropriate behaviour, effective language use and the ability to plan and sequence physically (e.g. during games) as well as to learn to anticipate what might happen next. Without these, play skills are few and repetitive and social skills are underdeveloped which can result in social isolation. Both can also contribute to learning delays.
The child in your care may be struggling with play and social skills if they have difficulties with:
- Attention and concentration
- Staying engaged in one activity or with one person
- Expressing and/or adjusting their emotions to match the activity or environment
- Understanding the consequences of their actions
- Working independently often resulting in asking others for ‘help’
- Playing with a range of toys/play
- Independent play, often preferring/requiring an adult to help them begin and sustain play
- Following the lead of others in play and may appear bossy, telling others how to play (because they don’t know how to vary the play themselves).
- Playing with toys as they are intended and may have a tendency to up-end toys on the floor to look like they’re playing but not necessarily use them, or appear destructive with toys
- Taking turns/sharing
- Entering a group or play with others as they don’t know how to politely join in and can appear ‘rude’
- Engaging in a two way conversation and instead speaking ‘at you’ in a conversation rather than ‘with you’
- Reading other people’s feelings based on their verbal and non-verbal cues
- Maintaining a topic of conversation and instead providing irrelevant comments during a conversation
- Making and maintaining/keeping friendships
- Coping with winning and losing in a game
How RISE can help:
Our Occupational and Speech Therapists are skilled in supporting children to develop play and social interaction skills, including turn taking, anticipating what’s coming next and reading facial and body gestures to help read ‘social cues’. We aim to guide the children to understand better how to be comfortable in different situations so that they can establish closer connections with their peers and caregivers.
