Social Skills Taught through Conversations with the Child

It would be easy to think that social skills taught through conversations with the child is a natural occurrence. Unfortunately, this is not so with children with ADHD. First, in terms of children with ADHD of diverse populations, parents of lower socioeconomic status speak in fewer and less complex words to their children in response to a question posed by their children than those of a higher socioeconomic status. “Children from different social strata use different-sized vocabularies” (Hoff, 2003, p. 1375). In my field research, I observed this to be true in the families whom I observed. Therefore, it may be arguably difficult for some parents to teach their children social skills through conversations than others.


Second, children with ADHD typically are not adept at listening acutely, which is essential in any conversation between two people. In addition to listening well to another person, what other skill would be optimal in order to learn social skills
through conversations? Children have to learn to attend to what other people are saying if they are going to be able to listen to them. What method can teachers use to ensure that children with ADHD are attending and listening? It is vital, as I said earlier, to make sure that the child with ADHD knows how to maintain eye contact. Just because a child is looking at someone does not mean that he is attending to or listening to that person, however. After the child maintains eye contact, he must pay attention to every word that another person says as well as listening to every word.

How can teachers or parents help children with ADHD to attend and to listen better? A good method to try is to play a memory game.






✱ Say a sentence to the child.


✱ Take some words out of the sentence (verbally) and ask the child to tell you what is missing. For example: Tigers have stripes on their bodies.


✱ Say out loud: “Tigers stripes bodies.”


✱ Ask him, “What words are missing?”


If the child is able to write out the answers, have him do so. By achieving closure in terms of the sentence, children will be more likely to remember the sentence.


You can also write the words on pieces of paper and paste them to small pieces of cardboard. The teacher places the words from the phrases above in an incorrect order. She then has the child with ADHD move the words around until they are in the correct order to make a meaningful sentence. Children with ADHD are often good listeners when they pay attention to things that interest them. For example, when a child with ADHD watches a television show or a movie that he likes, he can tell you what has happened as well as the names of the characters. It is possible, therefore, that children with ADHD exhibit selective attention and selective listening. They may pay attention just to topics that interest them. Subsequently, they may only listen to conversations that they think may interest them.

 Teachers have to work with children with ADHD to attend to and to listen to what they are not as interested in, as well as what they are interested in. A “deal” or two may have to be made to encourage these children to listen to something with which they are not interested as practice for another time that that topic may come up in an actual conversation. Sometimes, these children may be so distractible that they may not realize that most conversations can be interesting.


Here is an example:


Charlie is interested in baseball so he listens intently to any conversation about baseball. His friends are discussing topics not related to baseball, as follows:


“I really like fast cars.”


“How do you know? Have you ever ridden in a fast car?”


“No, but I watch a television show about fast cars. Sometimes, I close my eyes and pretend that I am driving a fast car, like a race car.”


“Then, you must really feel like you know what it is like!”


“I do!”


The teacher can explain to the child that talking about fast cars may be similar to talking about baseball players who are very fast running the bases, such as those players who steal many bases. The next time someone has a conversation about a topic with which he is not interested, he may more readily remain in the conversation. Speaking of topics, are you wondering what happened to the conversation about social skills?

Conversations about what are positive social skills are important so that the child with ADHD can learn to attend and therefore learn to listen better. Let us assume that the teacher or the parent has taught the child with ADHD to attend and to listen more effectively. After the teacher feels that the child has learned to attend and can listen more effectively, she can then begin to teach social skills with intent.

She can teach these social skills intentionally by embedding the social skills training into everyday circumstances. If these children attend and listen better, they can be taught other social skills intentionally and incidentally through conversations. Most of the social skills discussed here can be taught in conversations throughout the day.