Product Description

ADHD • Anxiety • Nonverbal • Communication • Disorders • Visual/Spatial • Disorders • Executive Functioning Difficulties

As any parent, teacher, coach, or caregiver of a learning disabled child knows, every learning disability has a social component. The ADD child constantly interrupts and doesn't follow directions. The child with visual-spatial issues loses his belongings. The child with a nonverbal communication disorder fails to gesture when she talks. These children are socially out of step with their peers, and often they are ridiculed or ostracized for their differences. A successful social life is immeasurably important to a child's happiness, health, and development, but until now, no book has provided practical, expert advice on helping learning disabled children achieve social success.

For more than thirty years, Richard Lavoie has lived with and taught learning disabled children. His bestselling videos and sellout lectures and workshops have made him one of the most respected experts in the field. Rick's pioneering techniques and practical strategies can help children ages six to seventeen

• Overcome shyness and low self-esteem
• Use appropriate body language to convey emotion
• Focus attention and avoid disruptive behavior
• Enjoy playdates and making friends
• Employ strategies for counteracting bullying and harassment
• Master the Hidden Curriculum and polish the apple with teachers

It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend answers the most intense need of parents, teachers, and caregivers of learning disabled children -- or anyone who knows a child who needs a friend.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75860 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Life without friends is a lonely and barren existence," but that's a common fate for children who fail to develop proper social skills, writes veteran special education teacher Lavoie in his insightful guidebook to helping children with learning disabilities overcome social skill deficits. Eschewing sink-or-swim and carrot-and-stick approaches, Lavoie stresses communication and patience for parents looking to guide their children through the maze of social interactions encountered daily, from arranging successful play dates and navigating the hidden curriculum of school, to language difficulties, social anxieties and family issues. Lavoie, who has taught and worked in the special education field for over 30 years, shows how to detect learning disabilities, discusses their impact on a child's social development and provides strategies (most notably his "Social Skill Autopsy") for implementing behavior change. Organized by the different types of social skills-those commonly used at home, at school and in the community-Lavoie's text is refreshingly free of jargon and is suitable for both spot- and cover-to-cover reading. Though aimed at parents of learning disabled children, this comprehensive guide will be handy for any parent whose child has trouble socializing at school or home.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"The best guide of its kind ever written. . . a major achievement."-- Edward Hallowell, M.D.,Coauthor of Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

"The Other Sixteen Hours"

I have been involved in the field of learning disabilities for more than thirty years. The majority of that time was spent as a teacher and administrator at residential schools for children with learning problems. During the early years of my career, I was very involved in the admissions process at these schools and, as a result, conducted hundreds of interviews with parents whose children were struggling in school.

I recall one interview vividly. A mother from Maryland was recounting her daughter's academic history and her struggles with reading. As she spoke, she was somewhat detached and spoke in a clipped, matter-of-fact fashion. She told me that her daughter was scheduled to enter fourth grade in the fall and that her family felt that she would not be able to succeed in that placement.

I asked whether her daughter agreed that an alternative placement was appropriate. With that, the mother's facial expression softened and tears began to well up in her eyes. She told me that the idea to change schools had actually originated with her daughter. She came home from school on the last day of classes and reported that her classmates, who had ignored or rejected her all year, had waited until the teacher left the room during the end-of-year party, picked her up, and placed her in the wastebasket. Sarah, the most popular girl in the class, announced, "You're garbage...and that's where garbage belongs."

The mother had been wringing her hands and looking down while she related this story. She then looked up and our eyes met. "Just one friend, Mr. Lavoie. Just one friend. That's all I want for my daughter."

In the 1970s, those who worked with learning disabled children believed that social rejection was a cruel consequence of a child's learning disorder. Conventional wisdom held that (a) the child had academic deficiencies, therefore (b) he failed in school, (c) this failure caused great embarrassment and humiliation that lowered his self-esteem, and therefore (d) he was reluctant to "join in" with his peers and was teased because of his inability to compete academically with his classmates.

If this theory were true, it would seem logical that once the academic failure was eliminated, the child would enjoy social success. Again, the conventional wisdom held that the learning disorder caused the academic failure, and the failure caused the social isolation and rejection.

However, my experiences with these children demonstrated that this cause-and-effect theory was greatly flawed. I watched as these children entered our school's highly individualized and noncompetitive classroom environment. Lessons were tailored to meet each child's unique needs. Success was an integral part of each child's program. Specialized teaching techniques were used to ensure mastery of the target concepts. For the first time in their academic careers, these children were experiencing genuine success in the classroom. As this success expanded, it seemed logical that their social skills and status would improve. But they did not.

This demonstrated to me a direct link between learning disorders and social incompetence. I have devoted my career to highlighting that link for parents and teachers and showing them how we can help children master the abilities they need to develop effective social skills.

I have served as an administrator in residential programs for kids with learning problems for more than twenty-five years. During that time, about two dozen parents have sat across my desk and sobbed, distraught over the difficulties that their children were experiencing. Not once -- not once -- were these parents crying because their children were unable to spell, read, or do the times tables. When a parent experiences that kind of pain, it is because of the social isolation, rejection, and humiliation that the child suffers every day -- sitting alone on the school bus, hiding in the restroom during recess, eating lunch at an empty cafeteria table, waiting for the telephone to ring and the birthday invitations that never arrive.

Professionals have come to realize the critical fact that a child's social life -- often referred to as "the other sixteen hours" -- is immeasurably important to his happiness, health, and development. Most school systems now recognize that it is in the child's best interest -- and, ultimately, in the community's best interest -- to provide social skill instruction and remediation for school-age children who are not adjusting appropriately. Numerous formal studies have confirmed the wisdom of this. Children with learning disorders often have particular difficulty developing social competence. This creates a double whammy for them. They confront daily failure and frustration in both domains of school: academic and social.

The Keys to Understanding Your Child's Behavior

The social competence of children with special needs has been the subject of extensive research and study in recent years. This research indicates several truths about the link between learning disabilities and social competence that will, doubtless, mirror your own experience with children who struggle in social environments.

Children with significant learning problems

• are more likely to choose socially unacceptable behaviors in social situations

• are less able to solve social problems

• are less able to predict consequences for their social behavior

• are less able to adjust to the reactions of their listeners in discussions or conversations

• are more likely to be rejected or isolated by their peers

• are more often the object of negative and nonsupportive statements, criticisms, and warnings from teachers

• are less adaptable to new social situations

• are more likely to be judged negatively by adults after informal observation

• receive less affection from parents and siblings

• have less tolerance for frustration and failure

• use oral language that is less mature, meaningful, and concise

• have difficulty interpreting or inferring the language of others

• are far more likely to be depressed

• are more likely to be ignored by peers when initiating verbal interactions

• tend to be involved in fewer extracurricular activities and have minimal social interactions with peers outside of school

• tend to have limited, repetitive, and immature vocabulary, use shorter sentences, and be less concise

• tend to have difficulty inferring the meanings of others in conversation, taking conversational turns, and seeing others' perspective

• have difficulty understanding humor, sarcasm, and ambiguities in oral language

When these facts are considered, it is little wonder that many children with learning disorders have significant difficulty functioning successfully in social situations.

It is a widely accepted fact that the primary need of the human being is to be liked and accepted by other human beings. Therefore, if a child is behaving in a way that causes others to dislike him, can we not assume that his behaviors are beyond his control? Why would a child intentionally behave in a manner that causes others to isolate and reject him? As parents and caregivers, we must remember that the social faux pas that these children make are, generally, beyond their control and are unintentional.

This is the key to understanding and remediating your child's social skill deficits. Once you accept the unintentional nature of these troubling behaviors, you will be able to cease "blaming the victim" and -- most important -- you will come to the realization that punishing the child for social errors is ineffective, unfair, and inappropriate. Punishing a child for having social skill deficits is akin to punishing him for being nearsighted or having the flu. The situation is beyond the child's control, so punishment simply won't work.

This book will provide analysis of and solutions to the most common social skill problems faced by school-age children. It is difficult to overstate the importance of a child's mastery of these basic social skills or the short-term and long-term consequences for the child who is unable to master them. Childhood provides a laboratory wherein the child uses trial-and-error to develop his repertoire of interactional social skills. The young person who enters adulthood without an effective repertoire of social skills will very likely experience significant difficulty in his home, workplace, and community environments.

Why Teach Social Skills?

Because inadequate social skills often result in peer rejection and unpopularity, they place a child at extraordinarily significant risk for aggression and other behavioral problems. Learning disabled (LD) children tend to have poorly developed problem-solving skills and, as a result, they tend to resolve conflicts by using aggression rather than negotiation.

Dorothy Crawford's classic study of the link between juvenile delinquency and learning disabilities has demonstrated that the LD adolescent confronts three significant risk factors in regard to delinquent behavior:

1. He is more likely to become involved in juvenile crime, due to his inability to secure meaningful employment.
2. He is more likely to be apprehended for his crimes, because of a failure to carefully plan and execute his actions. (Basically, he is bad at being bad.)
3. He is more likely to receive harsher court-ordered penalties than his nondisabled peers, because of this inability to successfully deal with the social demands of the judicial process (e.g., meeting with attorneys, showing appropriate respect during proceedings).

Numerous studies clearly document the weak and inconsistent social competencies of adolescents with histories of delinquent behaviors. These behaviors are both the cause and consequence of a lack of social skills.

Mental health disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety) appea...

Customer Reviews

Richard Lavoie brings seasoned knowledge and advice
As a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, I have spent a great deal of time working with children like Rick Lavoie talks about in his book. These children want to have friends and want to be good friends to others. They struggle to understand the social underpinnings, however, which leads to misunderstandings and sorrow from losing friends, or not even beginning to make a friend. This book looks at the neurodevelopmental issues that these children face, provding the adults who live and work with them more insight into their struggles. He basically is challenging us to step back and decipher what the child's intent was in a situation, rather than just jump to conclusions that frequently are very negative toward the child.

Whether the child has ADHD, learning disabilities, Asperger Syndrome, or some other disability/disorder, taking time to understand why the child's attempts at social interaction is not working, and developing a plan of intervention and accommodation based on that understanding is what will make a positive difference. I think that all parents, teachers, and other professionals who work or live with these children should read this book.

Every Teacher Should Read
As I read the book I came away with loads of useful strategies to use when dealing with students that have social issues. I highly recommend this book to parents and teachers!

Another hit from Rick LaVoie!
I bought this book at the recommendation of my child's pediatric psychologist- it is a great help for parents of kids with learning disabilities and other challenges. I am familiar with Rick LaVoie from his other works and his incredible video series called "Fat City", in which he shows parents and teachers just what it is like to walk a mile in the shoes of the kids who deal with these challenges daily. I would highly recoomend both this book and the video series to anyone whose child is having trouble with social skills and/or facing a learning disability.