Group Therapy is a form psychotherapy in which a therapist works with multiple patients simultaneously to eliminate targeted problem behavior.
Since we are talking about the group therapy in context with Autism, ADHD, SPD, we will see how group therapy can benefit children who have Autism, ADHD, SPD.
Group therapy helps in learning and improving the social communication skills. Social communication skills are those which are needed to survive and function in any kind of social situation where a child will have to deal with people other than his regular family members without support from therapist or sometimes even without support of parents. For example, marriage function, social gathering functions, School, garden, shopping mall etc.
Social communication skills can be grossly categorized as Verbal and Nonverbal.
Example of verbal social communication skills are being able to express ideas in words, replying to the questions asked, giving suggestions etc. Example of non-verbal communication skills maintaining eye contact during conversation, waiting for turn, understanding facial gestures etc.
Now coming to the most common mistakes happen during group therapy and how we eliminate those and make most out of the group therapy.
Set clear and age appropriate expectations:
It is important to know the age appropriate benchmarks to set clear and realistic expectations out of the sessions. This way it becomes easier to track a progress of child taking group therapy. For example, listening, paying attention and maintaining eye contact with the teacher, and able to answer quickly to what has been asked during class is one of the important social communication skills required to function well in school but can’t be expected from the 3-year-old child who has recently joined preschool. Instead what we can expect from him is listening a story explained with pictures in five mins, being able to identify the lead characters in the story.
Being Active Participant:
Though group therapy is targeted to alter the unwanted behavior of child, when therapist asks you to participate along with your child it has some behind it. When a child sees his parent participating equally with him child feel happier as if you are entering his own world. The bond between child and parent strengthens more and child becomes more comfortable and actively makes effort to communicate with his parents.
Do not be Target Oriented Parent:
Personally, have learned about this after committing multiple mistakes… whenever we are kept in group by default our focus shifts on defeating others and securing the first position in finishing the task even if its meaningless to us. Get a break from competition mentality. Keep encouraging your child to actively participate. Let your child take his own time to learn. Let him make some mistakes. Let him learn the importance of mistakes and let him learn through the experiences that its ok not being able to finish the task in given time or in less time taken by others. The consistent efforts to finish task and not giving up in between the process is what makes him winner of that particular situation. Even this is the correct way a child can get maximum benefit of the session.
Use the session as opportunity:
A session can be the best opportunity to observe, explore and learn about therapy related things, how therapist handles a child. Try to be keen observer. Since you are not the only one in the group who is dealing with child with and you might actually learn new tips and trick from therapist as well as other parents about managing child at home.
Take it as process than as event:
Being parent of child have and you must have had idea by now that therapies work but its takes time to show results and requires consistency. So the obvious rule applies here too with group therapy, that do not expect 100% of performance in first session itself. Just like any other therapies it starts from zero level of perfections gradually moving towards the levels of improved performance.
Discuss and remind Child about session:
No matter how much a child responds to your conversation it is important for you to keep reminding your child that how they behaved during session. You can always give reference of particular behavior as hint about how to deal with particular situation outside. For example, when you are in que at billing counter you can explain that we have to wait for our turn and stand still in que just like we have waited for our turn at therapy.
At the end of the day we have to keep in mind that it is common to face social communication problems in certain situations. However, if a child consistently making those mistakes and seem to be inappropriate for his age then it might be a better to take opinion of therapist near you.
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