The Clubhouse Art Therapy Social Skills Groups
Social skills instruction is combined with developmentally appropriate opportunities to practice socializing with peers. Parents receive feedback and information to help transfer the social skills concepts and techniques home. Groups are ongoing throughout the year, and the program has “rolling admission”, which means that new children may enroll whenever space becomes available. Children’s needs and level of functioning are carefully assessed prior to their being admitted to the group. To maximize success, children are matched with groups of children with similar social challenges and levels of functioning.Our Curriculum
Our program focuses on learning within the context of being part of a group-relational skills. Kids are engaged with each other from the moment they arrive, with the group therapist acting as facilitator and coach rather than teacher. Though we teach kids specific social skills, our main goal is to empower them to become better social thinkers. In other words, to begin to make better guesses about the thoughts and feelings of others in order to adapt their own behavior more effectively to interact. We want kids to develop critical thinking skills about human interactions, not just remember exactly what to do. This helps them to become more flexible and adaptive wherever they go. We do this by being hands-on within the small group environment, talking about what they are doing well and what things they could do to create a more positive relationships. Importance is placed on developing trust, safety and reducing the anxiety that so often gets in the way of these kids initiating and sustaining interactions with others.We are Visually-Focused Social Learning Specialists-our therapists hold Master’s degrees in Creative Arts Therapies which informs the work that we do involving non-verbal communication, self-expression and the importance of visual cues in working with children with social learning deficits.
We follow the I-LAUGH model of Michelle Garcia Winner* to understand the core cognitive challenges that these children face and develop appropriate learning strategies to address these areas.
The I-LAUGH model focuses on:
- Initiation of Communication-using language and gestures appropriately to get ones’ message across
- Listening with Eyes and Brain-taking in and comprehending complex social information
- Abstract and Inferential Thinking-idioms, metaphors, sarcasm and inferences all need to be de-coded as well as all nuanced language and the actions and intentions of others’ behavior
- Understanding Perspective-making sure to think about the fact that the other person has very different ideas, feelings, and intentions than you.
- Gestalt Processing-helping kids to get the big picture, the conceptual framework of what is happening or being said.
- Humor and Human Relatedness-we want to minimize anxiety and related to these kids with genuineness which means allowing their humor to emerge and using our own to break any tension and make the learning fun. Additionally, we teach kids how to be in relationship with other people, not just be near them. We emphasize the importance of learning relational skills.
*adapted from Michelle Garcia Winner and socialthinking.com
What we offer:
- Small group learning
- Fun & developmentally appropriate activities to spark learning
- Safety & camaraderie
- Parent support
- Connections to school or other professionals
- Individual therapy or social coaching
- Handling emotions/self-regulation
- Joining play & conversations
- Conversation techniques
- Conflict resolution/problem solving
- Flexibility
- Cooperation/team building