Dear socialskilled Families,
As 2022 comes to an end, we have been reflecting on all of the growth and success throughout the past year. socialskilled has begun to build a community of parents and children who are now becoming friends.
Our parents have seen the value in programs that were specifically developed so that children with a variety of neurodiversities could attend activities and participate in their own unique way, and the children have built friendships and gained confidence. This has strengthened our belief that there is purpose and beauty in diversity. Mixed groupings offer a substantial amount to the personal development of each individual child.
All of our socialskilled programs are designed to be inclusive. When we began to dream of and design Fun with Friends, we envisioned a diverse range of children in our programs. We believed that this would only benefit and support all of the participants who walked through our doors. Mixed groupings are what make the interactions between the children such beautiful examples of the fundamentals of socialskilled, which are; learning and working with others, making friends, and keeping friends.
socialskilled is not a therapy based resource. We differ greatly from traditional “social skills training” in that our programs create opportunities for supported fun through which social skills and self regulation can be practised in a real-life context. We do not label any of the children who participate in our programs as higher or lower functioning, as it is their commonalities and individual strengths that we believe should be the main focus.
We believe that diverse, or mixed, groupings encourage a variety of skills to emerge in each individual child.
According to psychologist Peter Gray, age and ability mixing has the potential to help children so that they can play in more advanced ways than they could with their same-aged or same-abled peers. Children flourish socially when they are given the chance to play with more experienced children, and playing with less experienced children gives them the chance to act as leaders, to develop creativity, empathy, and kindness.
At socialskilled all of these skills are put into use and practised naturally as problems and conflicts arise through play.
We are more than happy and extremely proud of the progress that socialskilled has made, and will continue to make, as we head into our Winter Programming. Our socialskilled family has grown, we have heard wonderful stories of real transformations from our parents, and our little friends are making friends and being friends. That may be one of the most valuable gifts we can give them.
From all of us at socialskilled, we wish you a happy and healthy New Year to come.
Being a parent is hard. Our goal at socialskilled is to make it a little easier and we hope this blog has helped in some small way. We are so happy that you stopped by and would love to hear from you. Send us your questions or suggestions through our website or socials. We are in this together.
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