Social Skills for Kids with ADHD: Friendship Strategies that Elude Kids with ADHD
written by Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW, posted on Attitude Magazine
Dominating conversations. Not showing interest in others. Telling cringey jokes. Struggling in unstructured social situations. Children and teens with ADHD know these social struggles and misunderstandings too well. For many kids, friendship foibles like these become a source of shame over time; they question why they can’t grasp what comes intuitively to their peers and may retreat socially, often into the world of “virtual friendships.”
Why do kids with ADHD struggle with friendships? Navigating social interactions requires various mental processes, or executive function skills. Deficits and delays in these skills – which I refer to as social executive function skills – are common in ADHD, and they explain many of our kids’ problems in the social realm.
Lagging social executive function skills represent a learning challenge; they prevent children from intuitively picking up on social information from a young age to the same extent as their peers. This should not be confused with struggles stemming from social anxiety or other conditions.
Better social skills begin to take root when we understand the foundational skills that cause the most trouble – from internal dialogue and cognitive flexibility to perspective-taking and understanding context – and the strategies that effectively build and support these skills in ADHD brains.
Social Skills for Kids: Understanding Underlying Deficits
Children and teens with ADHD, even if they are socially motivated, tend to have a hard time with the following skills that underlie social interactions:
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- Perspective-taking: Understanding others’ thoughts and feelings, and how you are coming across in social settings
- Situational awareness; reading the room and understanding what you should be doing, based on context
- Responding appropriately to others’ emotions; you may come off as rude or disinterested if you do not respond as expected after someone has shared their feelings or emotions
- Initiation; difficulty with starting conversations, with asking for help, and with self-advocacy skills
- Cognitive flexibility for the sake of being part of a peer group, accepting others’ ideas, and being able to take direction from others
- Using humor appropriately