INTERVIEW: Meet Terese Dana - Behavioral Specialist and Social Skills Instructor
Terese Dana of TD Social Skills has been helping children on the autism spectrum find solutions to social, behavioral, and organizational challenges for over 20 years. In conjunction with our upcoming Dr. Wu event, we spoke with Terese about her work and what advice she would give to parents.
- Tell us a little bit about your background working with children with autism and how you came to this field.
Through my work at Blythedale Children's Hospital in New York. I met Dr. Bridget Taylor, therapist and founder of the Alpine Learning Group--one of the first schools for children with autism in New Jersey and trained under her. I've specialized in teaching social skills and behavioral development since then and now work as a consultant in schools and directly with individual children. I'm also President of the Laura Foundation for Autism and Epilepsy.
- What specifically are social skills and why is it so important to spend time teaching them to children with autism?
Social skills are how people behave or interact in a group or with others. We change how we behave when we're not alone - whether we are speaking or not - and children on the autism spectrum typically have major deficits in this area. While most people "pick up" these skills, if not specifically taught, social skills and nuances may be hard for autistic kids to get. We call it the "hidden curriculum". Teaching social skills is not just about performing a skill but also interpreting situations and understanding other people's perspectives. We focus on these skill sets so kids are able to have the tools necessary to connect with others.
- What kinds of social skills do you focus on?
A big part of what we teach is emotional regulation. Children with autism may have a difficult time reading feedback and understanding people's intentions. For example, if an autistic child is bumped into, they may automatically believe they were hit on purpose and become angry. They may not see the apology present in someone's eyes. That's why we focus on eye contact first. It's the most important non-verbal skill. If we don't look at people when interacting with them we miss their nonverbal cues in the form of body language, which is a big part of communicating and understanding other people's intentions.
- And what kinds of work do you do with autistic children?
We start by teaching many skills in a discreet trial format and then work on generalizing those skills into more natural settings. Children learn many social skills through play so I typically generalize skills learned into play activities. If it's not motivating and fun for the child then it's not play. So to help my students play with others I consider their obsessions and interests create games around those themes. This keeps them motivated and engaged in appropriate activities where they can have fun with other children. Recently, I created a fun game called Lobster Pot for a child that loved lobsters. There was a hula-hoop in the middle of a field and one of the kids was a fisherman catching the lobsters and putting them in the pot. There was also an opportunity to save lobsters from the pot. I always put empathy into the games. In this case, through saving lobsters/kids, we had a chance to talk about how people are more apt to help you out when you help them out. In addition to play, we also use video modeling for lessons because many autistic children are visual learners.
- What resources would you recommend parents look to?
These three wonderful sites help sort through the overwhelming amount of autism information:
- www.autismspeaks.org - Provides amazing info and and evidence-based strategies, plus it has a great resource library
- www.autisminternetmodules.org - Shares free, video strategies and lessons with user-friendly information
- www.tdsocialskills.com - My site is helpful for kids with high-functioning autism and provides video modeling dvd's and a wall-pocket system I created to help kids regulate their emotions
- What advice do you have for parents new to dealing with a child's autism diagnosis?
Appreciate the small successes - it does take time. The earlier you can start, the better. It's a long process and always a roller coaster. It takes a lot of work and parents have to be good advocates for their children. It's tiring, but it's important to keep moving forward. Don't sell these kids short.
- What part of your work do you find most rewarding?
Well, the moms are the real heroes! I love what I do and feel very fortunate. I get to change the direction of a kid's life and what's better than that?
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