"He is definitely not the same child anymore": the impact of social distancing on neurodivergent children.
Salima Slimane’s fifth-grade son, Anis, is on the autism spectrum and struggling in his at-home learning environment.
“Anis was a very happy child going to school,” Slimane told reporter Mike Beaudet. “He loved going to school. We’ve seen really a regression happening socially and academically. I think he is definitely not the same child anymore.”
Salima is not alone. As more schools commit to “Zoom school” for this remainder of this academic year (and possibly next year, too), special education students no longer have access to all of their supports and services, and parents are worried.
“I have a lot of concerns, you know, especially at this critical age in his development, that he isn’t going to be able to get the skills that he needs,” said Diana Santiago about her four-year-old son, Daniel, who has an Individualized Education Program for his social skills development. “Social skills has been an area that I think is especially challenging to address remotely.”
We do not know when things will go back to “normal,” but that does not mean that you — or your child — have to be left in the dark. For the next few weeks, I will be outlining practical ways you can help foster your child’s communication and social skills development in this age of physical distancing through my simple “Six I’s” model.
Effective communicators must:
Be interesting. Extend the conversation by asking open-ended questions.
Be impactful. Ensure your message resonates with those who listen.
Be interchangeable. Be both the speaker and receiver (listener).
Be inclusive. Incorporate others in conversation.
Be improving. Better your skills with every conversation.
Be interpretive. Understand your and other’s body language.
Be interesting: how to extend the conversation by asking open-ended questions.
Being able to use effective communication skills is essential for interpersonal communication to occur, and the use of questioning skills is an important area within verbal communication. During the communication process, questions are asked and answered in order to help clarify, extract more information, draw someone into a conversation, and sustain a conversation.
There are two types of questions that can be asked and answered: open-ended and closed.
Open-ended questions: questions that allow for the continuation of the conversation and are used to solicit additional information. The use of open-ended questions has an inviting quality that encourages the speaker to provide a more authentic, in-depth, and lengthier response. When used in conversation, open-ended questions allow you to find out more about the person with whom you are talking.
Closed questions: questions that can be answered with a “yes,” “no,” or short response. Closed questions stop the conversation and provide only the answer to your question without any further detail. Asking closed questions will limit the listener’s answer because they will provide no more information than is needed or required — the response you will receive to a closed question will be just what you asked.
Use open-ended questions — questions that begin with: who, what, when, where, or how — to extend a conversation. For example:
Who did you see the movie with?
What was your favorite part of the movie?
When did you see the movie?
Where did you go to see the movie?
How was the movie?
Note: when asking open-ended questions, avoid “why” questions, as a “why” causes people to make up a rational reason, even if they do not have one, to provide a response. It may also cause a person to feel defensive, as though they are expected to defend their response.
Opportunity Section
It is time to put this concept into practice! After explaining the importance of questioning skills in a conversation and the differences between open and closed questions, have your child:
List five open-ended questions they might ask someone. Answers to open-ended questions require a lengthier response and have more depth. To test if their question is open-ended, try to provide a response using just a “yes,” “no,” or short answer. If “yes,” “no,” or a short response answers the question, then it is not an open-ended question.
Watch a news program and list five questions that were asked by a reporter. News reporters are very good at asking open-ended questions because their job is to get the other person to talk about what they saw, think, feel, etc. The TV viewer is not interested in what the news reporter feels about what is happening; instead, they want the TV audience to hear from the people who were there.
We all started the process of improving our communication skills somewhere (for some, maybe even numerous times). Just like the old adage goes, “Rome was not build in a day,” and, similarly, communication skills need to be improved a little at a time.
Past unsuccessful attempts do not matter — it is only important that you start and help your child maintain (and improve!) their communication skills today.