Social skills such as turn-taking and eye contact are an important part of learning to communicate.
How can parents best support their kids to develop them?
Photo: Ron Lach / Unsplash
Wellington speech and language therapist Christian Wright shares some strategies on Nine to Noon.
Joint attention is a social skill that children usually develop "very, very early", Wright tells Kathryn Ryan.
“Joint attention is the gateway to learning. So, what do we mean by joint attention? Well, the absence of it would be a child who focuses on the object, but doesn't really pay much attention to the person or vice versa.”
Joint attention usually develops between 6 and 12 months old, he says.
“So, the baby's looking at the person, the person's making noises, and they wait, and then the baby's still looking, and then they have a turn.
“And then you might bring an object into it. But what you'll find in the early stages is they'll just focus on the object and they're not really paying attention to you.
“But naturally what happens is they begin to look back at you to see what you're doing in response to the object.”
Wright has a teaching process for children who haven't yet developed the capacity for joint attention.
“We would describe them as children who have a real own agenda. Their play is just about them and the object and they seem to ignore people.
“So, what I'll do often in that situation is begin by just getting down to their level and imitating what they're doing and making my imitation noisy and interesting.
“So that every now and then they might look up and reference me, just have a look at me to see what I'm doing with the toy.”
Mirroring is a rapport-building technique enjoyed by all ages.
“When we mirror other people; the words they use, the body language that they adopt, they seem to find a sense of empathy or rapport building with that person.”
Sometimes, a child’s “developmental schedule” can go awry, Wright says.
“For example, one of my own children has ADHD, and we've had to work quite hard with him on impulse control.
“So impulse control is part of what they call your executive function. There are a host of skills in your frontal lobe that enable you to organise yourself, plan, control impulses, and develop your attentional system.
“And these are things that we work on because in the absence of impulse control, you can get yourself into quite a lot of trouble, you're not a very fun play partner.”
The ability to wait is a key element of impulse control, he says.
“Waiting is a common issue in many kids, particularly with impulse control issues. And I often have to work on it.
“These are the kinds of kids who often interrupt the conversation all the time, when you're unpacking something they're grabbing because they can't wait for it to be unpacked, they tend to push in, or they tantrum when their needs are not being met instantly.”
This can be a thoroughly draining experience for parents.
“You feel like your whole life is always about meeting their need, which it is for our children, but this is on another level.
“So, part of the problem here around impulse control is we as parents say, I'll do it in 5 minutes, and then we spend 15 minutes, so we're not very consistent ourselves.”
Time is a very abstract concept for pre-schoolers, Wright says.
“The very first thing I'll always do is introduce a visual strategy to enable the child to begin to conceptualise the wait.
“And I'll start with a really small wait. So I will use a timer.”
A visual app called the Mouse Timer is free to download, he says.
“It's this tiny little mouse that munches on apples. And you can set it to 10, 20, 30 minutes.
“And he munches his way through the apples and I'll put it there sometimes, like I did for one of my own children where he would want to go outside and play on his bike.
“So, I would naturally in the course of our routines introduce wait time, we'll do that in 20 seconds. And he'd be like now and I'd say 'well, have a look at the mouse' and put the mouse in front of him.”
Visual aids like this help a child practice the idea of suppressing desires, Wright says.
“He is effectively being entertained for a second by watching the mouse, but it is a bit boring after a while, it's very repetitive.
“And it works a treat - not for every child, but for many children I've done it with, it works really, really well.”
Another useful technique is the 'first, then' strategy.
“[You might say] 'First, we'll tidy this up, then we'll play on the bike'. And then I will start engaging them in tidying up.
“Depending on the child's age, you always want to break a skill down into something that's manageable, I don't, when all the blocks are over the floor, say to them, ‘you need to tidy all of this, then we'll go on the bike'."
Break a task down into smaller increments, such as giving a child ten blocks to tidy away, for example, before they can go out on their bike.
“It's [teaching them to start] crossing over from waiting into delayed gratification, self-control.
"And from the Dunedin Study, what was one of the most important skills for people to have successful lives? Self-control. So inhibiting your desire to just rush out and grab or do. And this is one of the ways it begins.”
