Imagine a boy playing with another boy for the first time. He turns to him after twenty minutes and says, “You are my best friend.”
Later that day, the same boy is sitting in school and bangs his toe against a table. He starts sobbing, “I want my Mommy. I want my Mommy.”
In the evening, during bedtime, the boy refuses to brush his teeth. Instead, he insists his father do it for him. After a few minutes of arguing, the father gives in and brushes the boy’s teeth.
How old do you think this boy is? As a preschooler, all of these behaviors would seem quite normal. If, however, you imagined a middle school child, these behaviors would be quite abnormal. That’s what normal or abnormal social behavior is all about – understanding the situation you are in and adapting to it with an appropriate response. Children who fail to understand the social situation they are in cannot do this. This is why you cannot simply teach children “social skills,” you need to teach them how to read the social world around them so they can adapt their responses to each unique situation.
For many children, this social learning (or social IQ, as some of us in the field like to call it) develops naturally. Even an infant can track his or her parents’ or caregivers’ eyes and pay attention to what the other person is focusing on. As babies grow, they gain skills through play, learning to share and cooperate. Later, they learn to be part of a group and to raise their hands and contribute in a classroom.
Unfortunately, for some children, social learning does not happen naturally, especially those with Asperger’s or other disorders on the autism spectrum. Children who struggle with social skills need to be explicitly taught. However, as we saw in the example above, you can’t teach what social skills are appropriate for every situation. Instead, we need to teach children how to read the situation and then adapt to it. Michelle Garcia Winner, a social worker and early pioneer of promoting social skills, labels this type of education “social thinking.”
In her many books and workshops, Garcia Winner discusses the concept. According to her:
Our social behavior is the end result of a complicated and very fast thought process called social thinking. Our behavioral response in every social context is informed by our consideration of the thoughts and feelings of the people around us as well as how we intend to influence them. This means that in the context of going to the doctor’s office…our behavior may be slightly different each time depending on who is around us and what we perceive they are thinking and feeling in that moment.
There is no one correct way to act in a doctor’s waiting room because the social context is always a little bit different! Sometimes the receptionist may be happy to answer personal questions about herself, especially if you notice a new engagement ring on her finger. Sometimes you can converse with other patients, if they are showing certain signs that they are interested in talking to you. With this in mind, it suddenly becomes clear that for students to “behave well” requires that they be sensitive to the situation and the people in the situation in order for them to socially problem solve how to produce the “expected behavior.”
The following are core philosophies of social thinking:
- People “think with their eyes” to figure out other people’s thoughts and emotions.
- Our thoughts and emotions are connected. Thinking affects feeling and feeling affects thinking.
- Our actions are constantly governed by thinking about other people, even if we are not with them.
- We always try to act in a way that other people will not think we are “weird.”
- All people engage in these thoughts and behaviors.
- Social thinking continues to be necessary for adult life. To keep a job, we must understand what the people around us think and expect.