Skip to main content

Book Review: Social Engagement and the Steps to Being Social by Kathleen Taylor and Marci Laurel

Social Engagement & the Steps to Being Social: A Practical Guide for Teaching Social Skills to Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Kathleen Mo Taylor, OTR/L and Marci Laurel, MA CCC

I was quite looking forward to reading this book, assuming from the title that it would be a handbook. As it turns out, it's a textbook which means that it targets a very different audience.

As a textbook, the material is not aimed at parents and aides but rather, at academia. It's a well written book which covers a lot of ground in terms of establishing and improving social contact between people on the autism spectrum and others.

The early chapters cover topics including the getting and retention of attention. There are also some exercises which are designed to increase attention span.

The four sections of social learning are;

  • Self Regulation
  • Shared Space
  • Shared Focus
  • Shared Pleasure

These categories contain many sub-categories which move your child from noticing that they're someone else playing beside them, through to parallel play, joint attention and exchanges though to group co-operation and friendship.

There's a section explaining the details of each of these in groups of four... the lower, middle and upper four.


Throughout the book, there are various case studies highlighting particular techniques which have worked and in the later parts of the book, there are numerous checkboxes and surveys to help you to determine the stage that a given child is at in their social engagement.

I found the book a little too academic for family use but it is certainly useful in academic circles and I expect, also with professionals,particularly in speech and occupational therapy.

Social Engagement and the Steps to being Social by Kathleen Taylor and Marci Laurel is published and available from Future Horizons and is also available from Amazon and Booktopia. It appears to be only available in paperback at the moment, though there are hints that an eBook is on its way.

I'd recommend it for professionals and academics.


Honesty Clause: I was provided with a PDF copy of this book free of charge for review purposes.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Great review. Thanks for posting it. I will purshase it.

Popular posts from this blog

Why do Aspies Suddenly Back Off in Relationships (Part 2)

In part one, we looked at the role that Change Resistance plays in causing aspies to suddenly go "cold" in otherwise good relationships. This time, I want to look at self esteem and depression; Self Esteem The aspie relationship with themselves is tedious at best. People with Asperger's commonly suffer from low self esteem. As discussed in earlier posts, this low self esteem often results from years of emotional turmoil resulting from their poor social skills. Aspies are often their own worst enemy. They can over analyze situations and responses in an effort to capture lost nonverbal communication. This often causes them to invent problems and to imagine replies. Everything made up by aspies will tend to be tainted with their own self image. This is one of reasons that people with Asperger's will sometimes decide that they are not good enough for their partner and that they must let them go. Sometimes, the aspie will develop a notion of chivalry or self-sacrific...

Aspie Myths - "He Won't Miss Me"

I apologise for the excessive "male-orientated" viewpoint in this post. I tried to keep it neutral but somehow, it just works better when explained from a male viewpoint. Here's a phrase that I've seen repeated throughout the comments on this blog on several occasions; "I know that he won't miss me when I'm gone because he's aspie" Today, we're going to (try to) bust that myth; Individuals I'll start off with a reminder that everyone is an individual. If all aspies were completely alike and predictible, they'd be a stereotype but they're not. Each is shaped by their background, their upbringing, their beliefs and their local customs. An aspie who grew up with loud abusive parents has a reasonable chance of becoming loud and abusive themselves because in some cases, that's all they know. That's how they think adults are supposed to behave. In other cases, aspies who grew up in those circumstances do a complete about-fa...

What is Stimming and what does it feel like?

According to wikipedia , stimming is; "a jargon term for a particular form of stereotypy, a repetitive body movement (often done unconsciously) that self-stimulates one or more senses in a regulated manner. It is shorthand for self-stimulation, and a stereotypy is referred to as stimming under the hypothesis that it has a function related to sensory input." The wikipedia article then goes on to propose some theories about the function of stimming and how it is designed to provide nervous system arousal. The theory being that it helps autistic people "normalize". I'm not sure how much I believe that theory - I helps us relax and it feels good... but normalize?? Not sure. The most commonly cited form of stimming is body rocking. Such is the prevalence of this form of stimming in Hollywood films concerning autism that you could be forgiven for thinking that autistic people stim by rocking most of the time. How far does stimming go? Stimming is much more than just...