By Brieann Yimoyines Papp, M.S., CCC-SLP, President and Co-Founder
Our teens who are participating in our All About Speech & Language (AASL) 14-week PEERS® program are featured practicing the essential skills of how to join and exit group conversations. Here our talented Miss Jenna and Miss Steph facilitate group conversations for our teens to practice these skills together!
After participating in the PEERS® certification out at UCLA with the founder, Dr. Liz Laugeson, this evidence based program has resonated in very practical ways. All of the skills that are taught and addressed result from research that has studied what people typically do in social interactions/scenarios and how they innately use these skills for social success. With this being said, our team at AASL experiences the benefit of how these rules, week after week, directly occur in our day-to-day interactions with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.
Have you thought about how you join into group conversations at work, at a party, or a meeting at the office? Think back to a time where you attempted to join a group and weren’t accepted into the conversation, what did you do to exit the group accordingly? Thought provoking questions, right?!?! Well there are specific behaviors that we all exhibit as a part of entering and exiting conversations! After participating in PEERS®, you become very aware of these behaviors amongst people and social scenarios; and it is cool to realize how these skills manifest in our daily interactions with other people. To give an example, it’s like observing animals at the zoo; you amusingly witness their behaviors and interactions with one another and quickly realize how they act in their respective environments. Same thing with “us humans” and the social behaviors we exhibit with one another across the variety of social groups we are a part of!
