Social Motivations, Goals, Strategies, Skills
The idea of “Social Skills Training” can be controversial among autistic people… …For clarification, before I go any further, the word “social” in the sense we are using it here means much more than what we often classify as our “social life” (activities such as meeting friends, going to parties or to comic book conventions, going to a movie or restaurant, etc). When we talk about “social” skills we mean interpersonal/relational skills, the kind of skills we need to interact fruitfully with other people, whether they are our friends, our family, our workmates, our customers, etc… …So, as I was saying, the idea of “Social Skills Training” is controversial in the autistic community. On the one hand, there’s the unwelcome reality that this kind of training/coaching usually (and wrongly) assumes that autistic people need to learn social skills, and have social goals, that closely match the neurotypical norm. On the other hand, many autistic people (along with many non-autistics)