The theme for July in our Social Skills Training Program is Flexible Thinker: Learning to Cope with Change.
Underlying Principle:
We all experience changes throughout our day. Some changes might be small, and others might be big. Sometimes, others have a hard time adapting to changes and may have big reactions. They like to follow rules and do not like it when rules are changed. Cognitive rigidity causes others to find it difficult to accept more than one way of solving a problem or accepting others opinions. Teaching our clients how to cope with change will help them transition when changes arise.
Targeted Skills:
Coping skills, Perspective-taking
Examples of Activities:
- Explore different types of being «stuck» – Useful Stuck and Get in the Way Stuck. Using a t-chart to distinguish both options, we will help the client come up with situations where it is beneficial to be caught up in details (organizing things, for example) and situations where it gets in the way (playing a game with others, for example).
- Coping Skills Checklist. Assist the client in deciding what strategies are useful and appropriate for them to use. Encourage them to come up with their own coping tools and discuss the best times to use them.
- Flexibility Jar. We will have our client write down activities they would like to try, but have not tried before. Once a week the client can pick something to do from the flexibility jar and give it a try. This helps create opportunities to be flexible by accepting the activity picked at random.
These are just a few of the activities we will be featuring this month.