Coaching social skills: Parents and teachers with a game plan

Feeling connected, interpreting social signals, and communicating social and emotional needs are challenging for many children. In stressful times, including social distancing and online learning, how do we support the increasing number of students who need to develop critical social, emotional, and communication skills?  Fortunately, Caroline Maguire is our master coach who will provide us with insights, strategies, and scripts to facilitate our approach to these complex needs. In this presentation, Caroline will discuss the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on a younger children's social, emotional, and cognitive development. She will introduce the tools and demonstrate the coaching process parents need to become their child’s social skills coach based on her groundbreaking book and training curriculum, Why Will No One Play with Me?

Adjusting to change is always difficult, and there is a real worry that young people with learning differences, whose education and social development have been disrupted, might be some of the worst affected by the pandemic. With her renowned expertise, you will explore the practical and emotional challenges facing children, discover learning through play and stress management strategies, the importance of SEL in a crisis, managing remote learning fatigue, adult wellbeing, and age-sensitive SEL knowledge and activities all being included. 

About Caroline Maguire 
A CHADD certified coach, Caroline founded and facilitates a comprehensive SEL training methodology (#ConnectionMatters) for adults, parents, clinicians, and academic professionals on how to develop critical social, emotional and communication skills, in themselves and in others. Caroline’s book Why Will No One Play With Me?  is a playbook that includes foolproof scripts on how to communicate – with anyone, in any situation – and how to ensure the message registers with the recipient – no small task! Through her private practice, publications, lectures and workshops, her mission is to vanquish the devastating effects of feeling different and misunderstood or adolescents to read the room and interpret social cues as well as how to recognize other people’s point of view. These are skills that impact every interaction and that are clearly needed by everyone in today’s world.  Her hands-on teaching and practical techniques empower parents and teachers to employ skills that result in positive and noticeable progress. 
While her “Play Better Plan” is designed to help children of all ages make friends and thrive, we live at a time when it is crucial for all of us to walk in another person’s shoes and be able to “read the room” and communicate effectively with others.