We have developed a program for teaching children with autism how to play with their peers. The development of skills to interact with peers has been identified as a critical aspect of early childhood development for young children with autism. Without intervention, children with autism frequently show infrequent or no initiation of peer play, ignore the invitations of others to play, play inappropriately, and do not get along with others. Yet, with consistent and systematic treatment, children with autism can learn to initiate and sustain play with peers. Behaviour Institute offers the Home-Based Social Skills Program (HSSP) to teach the skills of social interaction with peers and then generalize those play skills with peers to other situations.

The children with autism should have the following core social skills before beginning the Home-Based Social Skills Program:

• Ability to follow 2-step instruction
• Appropriate play skills at a level that would be of interest to peers
• Demonstrate no major behaviour problems (aggression, self-injurious behaviours, non-compliance)

In the program the following skills are taught:

• Waiting a turn (can wait for someone to take their turn with no prompting)
• Taking a turn (independently takes their turn)
• Giving someone a turn (shares their toys with others independently)
• Playing fairly and reciprocally (depends on age)
• Dealing with frustration (for example: is able to tolerate other children playing with their toys, moving things around, shares.)
• Ending play appropriately (For example: able to identify when a game or activity is over, can tidy-up independently)
• Responding to a play invitation
• Making a play invitation

Each skills is introduced using modeling. Children then practice this skill and receive feedback and reinforcement. The children work cooperatively on earning tokens that are exchanged for a selected activity. Later, they learn to evaluate their own behaviours and generalize the social skills to new situations. Data is collected on children’s peer interaction to evaluate the impact of the program on the child with autism.

By definition, children with autism are characterized by having significant deficits in their ability to develop positive peer relationships. It is one of the diagnostic criteria of the disorder. Compared to their typically developing peers, children with autism in early childhood settings show:

• Less interaction with peers;
• More demand on teacher time;
• Less mature forms of play (more sensory and less imaginative play)
• Lower preference to be play partners

We also know that peer interaction in children with autism does not improve spontaneously over time. Nor does peer interaction of children with autism improve solely by being in the company of children who are typically developing. If there is to be improvement in peer interaction of children with autism, it is through a carefully planned and systematic programming.

Teaching peer interaction is not simple. To be competent in this area, a child must be able to initiate and sustain reciprocal and positive peer interaction that generalizes to other settings without adult assistance. To reach this level of social competence, a child with autism will need to learn the following skills in order from least to most difficult:

• How to engage in play that is of interest to other children
• How to engage in reciprocal (i.e. back and forth) play with other children
• How to sustain playing
• How to respond to play invitation
• How to make a play invitation
• How to end play appropriately

Behaviour Institute has the Classwide Social Skills Program that has evaluated over ten years (Hundert, 1995; Hundert and Taylor, 1993, Hundert et al., 1999). It is a program that introduced in daycares for all children as part of a curriculum to promote positive peer interaction for all children.

Because some parents have difficulty finding other children nearby to participate in the Home-Based Social Skills Program, we run Saturday Sessions at Children's College in Toronto for five consecutive weeks.  Up to five children attend the session from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in which they are taught social skills based on the HSSP.  In addition, children are taught, how to follow routines and conduct conversations.

Data is taken of each child's level of peer interaction, spontaneous language, and attention to task in group as a way of evaluating changes in children's adjustment over the five weeks.