Social Skills Groups
Our social skills groups are two–hour sessions held daily on weekdays and Saturday where your child is carefully matched to a small group of other children based on his or her developmental level, and receives instruction from a multi-disciplinary team of speech–language pathologists, child development specialists, and behavior therapists in pragmatics, play, language, appropriate behaviors, social cognition, and social skills. Some children elect to participate in more than one group per week. Instruction is tailored to the children in the group, but is based on Social Thinking®, a teaching methodology created by Michelle Garcia Winner (www.socialthinking.com), and typical examples of covered topics include:
Sarah feels very strongly that social skills groups work best when the children in the group are developmentally matched, so it may take some time to get enough matched children to have an effective group. So we place all interested children on a waiting list, and then notify parents when Sarah thinks she has a good group to confirm schedules so we can start the group.
- conversational skills (e.g., how to initiate a topic with a peer and stay on topic)
- appropriate behaviors
- impulse control
- problem solving
- navigating the playground
- joining in play with peers
- successful play dates
- body boundaries
- recognizing emotion in self and others and empathy
- perspective taking
- dealing with bullying
- friendship
- manners
- cooperative play
- sharing and taking turns
- safety
- teamwork
- dealing with frustration
- increasing mental flexibility
- reducing rigidity
- expanding social language skills
- body language and non-verbal communication
- asking for help, when needed
Sarah feels very strongly that social skills groups work best when the children in the group are developmentally matched, so it may take some time to get enough matched children to have an effective group. So we place all interested children on a waiting list, and then notify parents when Sarah thinks she has a good group to confirm schedules so we can start the group.
Speech and Language Therapy
Sarah and her team of pediatric speech-language pathologists work exclusively with children, primarily between the ages of 18 months to 10 years. She and her team specialize in evaluating and treating children with, but also has extensive experience in evaluating and treating children with:
Sarah is one of the handful of therapists certified (as opposed to merely trained) by the PROMPT Institute in the PROMPT® technique, which is a well-regarded instruction modality that is often particularly effective for children with apraxia. She is the only PROMPT certified therapist on the Westside of Los Angeles. In addition, she has extensive training and experience with a variety of other instruction modalities, including social cognition therapy, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)®, Pivotal Response Training (PRT)®, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), floor time, TEACCH®, and various programs of The Hanen Centre®.
Sarah has continuously been the holder of a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech–Language Pathology from the American Speech–Language Hearing Association (ASHA Number 12086278) since 2003, and has been licensed as a Speech–Language Pathologist by the California Speech–Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispenser Board since 2003 (License Number SP 13706).
- an apraxia of speech (Sarah is PROMPT Certified and all members of her team has PROMPT training)
- auditory processing disorders
- autism and other developmental disorders
- receptive and expressive language delays and disorders
- articulation and phonological disorders
- pragmatic language deficits and delays
Sarah is one of the handful of therapists certified (as opposed to merely trained) by the PROMPT Institute in the PROMPT® technique, which is a well-regarded instruction modality that is often particularly effective for children with apraxia. She is the only PROMPT certified therapist on the Westside of Los Angeles. In addition, she has extensive training and experience with a variety of other instruction modalities, including social cognition therapy, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)®, Pivotal Response Training (PRT)®, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), floor time, TEACCH®, and various programs of The Hanen Centre®.
Sarah has continuously been the holder of a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech–Language Pathology from the American Speech–Language Hearing Association (ASHA Number 12086278) since 2003, and has been licensed as a Speech–Language Pathologist by the California Speech–Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispenser Board since 2003 (License Number SP 13706).
Play Skills Therapy
At SSLP, we provide play skills therapy to children with the goal of advancing their play skills through a hierarchal “play ladder” incorporating increasingly abstract and more symbolic and imaginative play skills, while increasing their general repertoire of play skills, which we believe will help improve the quality of their social interactions, as well as maximize their learning potential in group settings. Sessions are typically one or two hours in length and are taught by a clinician who has extensive experience in teaching play to children on the autism spectrum.