Individuals who enter outpatient treatment for methamphetamine abuse find themselves dealing with a great deal of chaos due to the consequences of their drug use on the social, work, and/or legal spheres of their lives. The antidote for this chaos is to emphasize the role of structure in building order and predictability into participants’ lives. Beginning with this session and at the start of each subsequent session, it is crucial for the counselor to underscore the importance of building structure into participants’ lives.
This manual is for teachers to provide social skills training for children in grades 3 – 6 through an assertive communications training game. Children are confronted with numerous challenging interpersonal situations such as making demands on other people, refusing the requests of others, coping with their own feelings and those of others, giving and receiving compliments, making friends, coping with criticism, and managing stress.
Underlying the concept of social competence are two basic skills: social problem-solving and assertiveness. There are frequent opportunities to practice and receive feedback on these two skills. This first module sets the stage by explaining how the ACT Game works and tries to increase the likelihood that children will use assertive approaches in dealing with others.
Having mastered the mechanics of the ACT Game and initial discrimination of the assertion continuum, attention is focused on developing an awareness of uncomfortable states and methods of emotional self-control. Emotions are considered vital to the development of social competence because of their relationship to self-esteem and their capacity to undercut assertive behavior. The frightened child is not likely to appear socially skilled. Often, children with high anxiety or discomfort are not aware of degrees of discomfort, and cannot tell that an anxiety-producing situation is about to enfold. The techniques employed for managing emotions are standard ones used in cognitive-behavioral treatment and education. They consist of labeling emotions, becoming aware of signs of tension, interrupting discomfort with relaxation, and substituting positive for negative cognitions.
For generalization of social skills, self-reinforcement must occur. Self-reinforcement can sustain newly acquired behaviors when the world extinguishes or punishes the response, and can help the child initiate new social skills in new or unpracticed situations. A higher rate of self-reinforcement is also a first step in raising the child’s self esteem, eliminating “crazy” thoughts or catastrophic thinking and increasing the probability of the child being attractive to others.
Being able to initiate, establish, and maintain friendships is a critical component of social competence. A child’s program for initiating friendships is much more direct than the typical step-by-step curriculum for adults. A child’s approach is direct and straightforward: “Hi. Would you like to play with me?” Friendships are built around shared activities. The child’s non-verbal behavior is the area most likely to need attention. Therefore, this module features initiating contacts in the classroom and with friends, and, as usual, provides practice opportunities.
Anger and high anxiety are emotions that children experience in stressful situations. Children need to cope with these emotions to develop social competence. These skills are internal and must be self-initiated to be effective. To control anger, children are taught to initiate a Time-Out or break for themselves when they feel high anxiety or a desire to act aggressively. The purpose of this Time-Out is to create time and space for cooling down. Another skill that helps control anger is cognitive self-coping talk. This skill’s purpose is to increase competence for handling difficult situations through talking to oneself through the experience.
ACT 6: A Social Skills Training Program for Children Grades 3 – 6 – Criticism and Maintenance Skills
In this module, children are taught specific ways to self-reinforce when receiving negative feedback. This facilitates maintenance of high-esteem and assertive behavioral responses. The integration of overt rehearsal of covert self-talk and behavioral role-play is an important step in the development of social competence.