“Miss Donna, can I take my Lego project that I made home with me?”

“No. Those are my Legos and have to stay here.”

Commence argument or meltdown at the end of group. Most kids who come here are not skilled at accepting “no” for an answer. And, I am not helping a child access, learn, or generalize the social skills needed in this situation.

Social coaching involves asking questions. If we want kids to generalize skills, we need to stop telling them or prompting them about what to do (see exception below), and start getting them to think it through for themselves. So, here, it goes like this:

“Miss Donna, can I take my Lego project that I made home with me?”

“That’s a great creation you made. What do you think I’m going to say, though?”

“You’re going to say no.”

“Probably, but do you know why I’m going to say that?”

“Yeah, because the Legos are yours and other kids play with them.”

“Right. Would you like to take a picture of your creation and I’ll text it to your mom or dad?”

Not only does this strategy get kids processing what they need to do on their own, it will also help you as the adult understand if they already have the knowledge and were not applying it or if a more in-depth dive into the skill needs to happen. So, as an exception, if a child really doesn’t know what they think you might say to this question about taking Legos home (or other similar situation), then prompting the steps before practicing again is needed.