Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anger and other upsetting emotions.
Click HERE to access these CBT worksheets.
CBT Children’s Emotion Worksheet Series: 7 Worksheets for Dealing with Anger
“Worry cards” – Free download card game activity to help kids with ASD deal with anxiety
Children with ASD’s deal with a lot of anxiety. Here is a card-based activity to use with individuals and small groups. It’s designed to help kids to talk about their anxiety, learn something about what causes it, and begin to explore ways to help themselves.
Download the cards – click here: Worry cards, Activity to explore anxiety
Polish translation available
Spanish language translation: Las Fichas Sobre Miedos
The characters in the cards:
Lisa: She makes negative predictions about what people are thinking about her.
Rick: He assumes that if bad things happened before, then they will continue to occur in the future.
Mary: She views the world as a place full of danger and peril.
Jeremy: He has “sensory issues” which make him dread unpleasant sounds, textures, smells, etc.
Tony: He craves sameness and he fears the unexpected.
Jasmine: She lacks confidence in her ability to deal with new challenges.
Ted: His body (breathing, muscle tension, sweating, etc) overreacts to stress.
Kayla: She gets panicky when she is away from her family and her home.
Introducing the Worry Cards:
You can try words like this if you like: “We are going to play with Worry Cards and learn about worries. Everybody gets nervous, anxious and scared in different ways. The eight Worry Cards characters each have their own way of getting upset.”
[Now, show them the panel that briefly describes each character. Embellish on each one. It works really well, actually, to enact each character briefly in the first person so the kids really get it]
“The Worry Cards are shuffled up. When you draw a random card, you have to try to figure out how to help the Worry Card character. If you can think of some good ideas, that’s great. It’s even better if you can answer the other question on the card, the one that asks about you.”
Tips on using the Worry Cards:
I suggest you avoid using the word “anxious” unless you are positive that the children understand it.
You can place cards in the deck strategically so the kids draw the particular cards that seem to pertain to them.
You can try a score system to encourage self disclosure. Say it’s one point to help the kid in the card, and two points if you can talk about yourself and work on your own worries.
I hope you find the Worry Cards useful. I enjoyed creating them.
Joel Shaul, LCSW
Other Free Cognitive Behavioral Resources on my website:
click HERE.
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Seven social skills worksheets for kids with ASD who are socially isolated
In an earlier post, I provide an isolation card activity for you to download and use in your social skills teaching activities with children on the autism spectrum. Here are some additional materials for you to use, simple worksheets.There are many reasons that children with Asperger’s and other autism spectrum disorders often struggle with social isolation. They may be motivated to socialize, but their efforts may not be fruitful. They might be enthralled with solitary activities based on their preferred interests. Kids with ASD can find their days at school exhausting, and they sometimes over-compensate with down time to recover. Typical children can reject or bully children with ASD.The worksheets are to support your social skills teaching efforts on this topic. The most important worksheets are the daily schedule records, which you can use separately if you like if you don’t wish to use the other four worksheets.If you do not download the card activity from the earlier blog post, I do suggest you check out the content of the cards anyhow. I believe it will help you cover more dimensions of this social skills activity.
My best wishes to you, and the children you are helping, as you work on this issue.
To download the worksheets:
Follow the directions below to download the PDF files for the worksheets.
CLICK HERE: Seven Worksheets to explore social isolation
CLICK HERE for telehealth version of this resource
Hebrew translation: 7 worksheets for children who are socially isolated
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Teasing and bullying social skills kit for kids with ASD – Free download cards and illustrated panels
Children with autism spectrum disorders often suffer quite a lot from being teased and bullied. I have designed some materials to help them to learn some coping skills in this area. This is not intended to serve as an entire curriculum or to function as a classroom’s primary response to the problem of teasing and bullying. Obviously, preventing cruel children from victimizing vulnerable peers on the autism spectrum is the main problem to solve.
The materials I provide here are to help with:
*Increasing repertoire of functional responses to teasing and bullying
*Increasing ability to distinguish “friendly” from “mean” teasing and to distinguish intentional from unintentional harm
*Increasing ability to cope with anger, anxiety, sadness and other emotions associated with being teased and bullied
How to use the six illustrated panels:
The panels are designed to be used in several different ways. First, they are to be displayed while using the cards to help children know how to respond to the questions and challenges on the cards. Second, you might consider posting them on your wall as a bulletin board if you decide to not use the cards. Finally, you can use them in small groups to hold up one at a time as instructional aids when you are dealing with this topic.
How to use the cards:
There are three kinds of cards:
1. ” What to do?” cards: These cards describe hypothetical kids in a variety of problem scenarios, and the person drawing the card has to figure out possible solutions. There is often more than one answer.
2. “What about you?” cards: These cards require the person drawing them to carry out a variety of brief learning tasks or to reflect on their own experience with teasing and bullying.
3. “What to think?” cards: Each card contains a thought bubble featuring a particular thought or belief that can increase the harm caused by the unkindness of peers. The task is to try to counter the harmful thought with one or more “antidote thoughts.” (These cognitive behavioral therapy concepts in reference to children with autism are explained in a series of other blog posts with useful downloads.) A good way to use these cards is for you, the adult, to play the role of a child who endorses the thought in the thought bubble. The child(ren) then have to talk you out of this way of thinking.
Options on using the cards:
*You can shuffle up the cards and have kids draw them at random.
*You can keep the cards in three separate piles and have kids draw from one pile or the other based on how they roll a dice.
*You can select and discard cards and distribute the cards within the deck strategically so that the participants will draw cards that help them with their most difficult issues.
*If you don’t wish to use the cards, I invite you nevertheless to borrow the content of the cards in your own therapy/teaching. I tried to cover a lot of issues that affect children with ASD in reference to teasing and bullying.
This social skills topic is going to be really hard work both for your clients with ASD and for you as well. I hope these free social skills materials help. Good luck with it.
Joel Shaul, LCSW
This kit is also available in Polish
If you don’t want to print and cut out all these materials, download the Teasing and Bullying Kit, PowerPoint Version
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Social skills card teaching activity for children with ASD who are isolated
To download the pdf of this kit, click on the red link here:
Social Cards PDF Download
This resource is available in Polish
This activity is also available in a PowerPoint version in case you want to “show it” rather than cut it out:
Social Cards PowerPoint Version
Social isolation is common in children with autism spectrum disorders. The reasons are obvious. They can become enthralled with preferred activities that they carry out in solitude. The social world can be tiring and frustrating and children with autism can over-compensate with down time to recover. Modern technology provides engaging self- stimulation without face-to-face social contact. Children with ASD can become bewildered and discouraged when they go about trying to socialize. The peers of children with ASD can be unaccommodating and rejecting.
I have provided for you here a social skills teaching activity to help children with ASD’s to explore social isolation. It can be played in a small group or one-on-one between an adult and a child. To play it, you need a single die. When you roll it, it directs the participant to draw a card out of one of three piles of 12 cards.
Roll 1 or 2: “Help the Kid” card. Each card describes a different child experiencing a unique isolation problem. You have to figure out some way to “Help the Kid” with their problem. There is more than one possible solution to each.
Roll 3 or 4: “Fix the Thought” card. Each card shows a different thought or belief which can either contribute to social isolation or make loneliness hurt more. You have to think of one or more thoughts or beliefs to counter the negative thought.
Roll 5 or 6: “All about You.” These questions explore the child’s own social isolation.
Hot to make the cards and card holders: Click on the PDF download link at the top of this post.
I hope you find this social skills game activity useful.
Joel Shaul
Here is a free download of worksheets on the topic of social isolation for children on the autism spectrum.
Worksheets for Exploring Social Isolation
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Flexibility in kids with ASD – Card activity to teach this social skill to children on the autism spectrum
Children with autism spectrum disorders often experience challenges relate to rigidity. They can find if difficult dealing with changes and trying things new ways. Children on the autism spectrum can find it hard to imagine the points of view of other people and they often don’t make accurate predictions about how others will react to their own strong opinions.
The free resource featured here is one of many I offer to help raise awareness regarding rigidity and flexibility in social situations.
To print out the 36 cards and the two panels, click here:
Flexibility Cards, Activity to explore rigidity
Also available in POLISH language version
*But in case you prefer to “show” this activity rather than print it and cut it out, click below instead:
Flexibility Cards PowerPoint Version
When you print out the cards, I suggest you use cardstock or else paper which you will then laminate.
The two panels describing Rigidity and Flexibility can be used separately as a wall display or teaching aid, if you don’t intend to use the cards.
Suggestions on how to introduce the topic of Rigidity:
1. I suggest that you select your terminology carefully. Many kids with ASD learning the social skill of flexibility might not have the capacity to learn and use words such as “rigidity,” flexibility,” “cooperate,” “compromise,” etc. Far more children will be able to grasp the meaning of simpler words like “stubborn,” “bossy,” “get along with,” “let others have their way,” etc.
2. Try using language like this when starting on this topic:
“Some things around us are hard. What are some objects in this room that are hard? Other things are soft. Name some soft objects in this room. Now let’s talk about how things that we cannot see can also be hard or soft. Like our thoughts. Here are some words for thoughts that are HARD: Bossy, stubborn, [rigid], unchanging. Here are some words for thoughts that are SOFT: Flexible, agree, willing to change, willing to try, [cooperate]. Sometimes it is okay or good to to be stubborn and bossy. Like if someone is trying to get you to do something really bad, it’s great to be really stubborn and say no. Sometimes it feels really good to do something the same way over and over to make you feel safe and calm. But very often, it is not good to be rigid. Being rigid can keep you from doing good, new things. Being rigid can annoy other people. Being rigid can keep you from having friends.”
3. I have a children’s YouTube video on Rigidity – This might be a good introduction to this topic.
How to use the cards:
The cards are designed to help kids with autism to learn more about the social skills of flexibility associated with accepting other people’s thoughts and ideas and dealing with unexpected and unwanted changes. You can shuffle the cards randomly or else “stack the deck” so that cards most fitting for the child(ren) present will be drawn. Remove from the deck any cards you don’t consider relevant.
My first suggestion is that you do lots of role plays when you are doing this social skills game activity. For example, you, the adult, can pretend to be the rigid person depicted in the card. You can do the role play with another adult or with the children who are present. My second suggestion is that you strongly reinforce children when they show awareness of their own rigid traits. You can try passing out tokens or keeping score in some way to acknowledge learning about flexibility and admitting to rigid habits.
Below the downloads, you will find some links to other downloadable social skills activities on the website that particularly focus autism social skills having to do with rigidity.
I hope you enjoy this social skills activity.
Joel Shaul, LCSW
There are dozens of other free social skills games, worksheets and card activities you can download for children on the autism spectrum. Don’t miss them!
Free social skills games & activities, communication / conversation skills for kids with ASD
Free social skills games & activities, social interaction skills for kids with ASD
Free social skills games & activities, emotional regulation skills for kids with ASD
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
TALK less and SHOW more: Many kids with autism need fewer words in social skills teaching
Many children with autism spectrum disorders can get bogged down with our spoken teaching. In this blog post, I offer some guidance on how to establish a visual oriented social skills training style for those children on the autism spectrum who appear to favor this modality.If you work a lot with children who have autism spectrum disorders, you have seen the following: A child listens to your words for a short time, and then their brain hits a kind of inner mute button, and your session or lesson is effectively finished.
There can be a number of reasons for this. We might be using boring words, speaking too fast, using language that is too complex, or neglecting to reference the child’s preferred interests. But a common reason for “losing your audience” in social skills training with kids on the autism spectrum is that many kids with ASD seem to learn better in a visual modality. Temple Grandin is a well-known example of a person with autism who learns visually. She articulates this beautifully in this quote: “When I think about abstract concepts such as relationships with people, I use visual images such as a sliding glass door. Relationships should be approached gently because barging forward too quickly might shatter the door.” (From Teaching Children with Autism, by Kathleen Ann Quail )
There are certainly many children with autism who do not learn in a visual manner like Temple Grandin. But for the ones who do, I believe is important to keep on hand a variety of engaging and meaningful props for your social skills learning activities. Here are a few examples.
For many kids with ASD, our frequent verbal prompts regarding nonverbal factors just become part of the unwanted noise they tune out. But when you keep on hand pictures of eyes, hands, a face and a ruler, and use these as visual prompts during social skills activities, you can get much better attention and retention.
Children with ASD can tune out our words after years and years of verbally prompting to talk less, talk more, stop talking about that, and so forth. For individuals who might be withering under all this scrutiny and badgering, try a social skills teaching approach. This toy balance, available for about 15 dollars online, is terrific for social skills activities to teach reciprocity in conversation and relationships. Learn more about this here.
I invite you to explore dozens of other visual-based, engaging autism social skills training methods on this website.
Here is a one minute video that explains much of this.
Joel Shaul
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Cognitive Distortion Thought Bubbles–Simple Cognitive Behavioral Method for kids with High Functioning Autism
This resource is also available in Polish.
CBT Thought Bubbles Teletherapy / On-Screen Version; no printing needed
Here are some other free Cognitive Behavior Therapy resources for children with autism:
8 Simple CBT YouTube Videos for Kids
Simplified CBT Worksheets for Kids
Mint New Thoughts CBT Activity
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Empathy autism social skills training, Part 2: Teaching concern using photos (22 downloads for you here)
In this download, there are 22 photographs of people in distress, accompanied by very simple word descriptions. These are to help set up role plays for practicing empathy / showing concern skills with children on the autism spectrum. It is very useful to use the Showing Concern Picture Cards in combination with the Showing Concern Wall Display.
To download the Showing Concern Wall Display, please click on the link below:
Showing Concern Wall Display Download
To download 22 picture cards to practice showing concern, click on this next link below:
Showing Concern Picture Cards
Suggestions on using these empathy social skills materials:
Use the panels in the Wall Display, especially the one showing specific things to say, as word prompts.
Role play where you, the adult, play the person in distress
Role play where pairs of children play roles of distressed person and helper
Role play where you play the role of the person showing concern, but you make mistakes when you do it–with eye contact, tone of voice, what you say, etc. The kids watch and point out your mistakes. Have the kids point out your mistakes.
Joel Shaul, LCSW
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Filter the Anger: A hands-on social skills activity to help kids with autism to manage angry verbal outbursts
In social skills training in schools and psychotherapy settings, young people on the autism spectrum often struggle with controlling angry verbal outbursts. This is a cut-out paper kit that creates a hands-on activity to teach and practice filtering upsetting thoughts and avoiding blurting out things that are frightening or confusing to others.The Filter the Anger Activity is designed to:
* Raise awareness of okay vs. not-okay things to say when you are mad
*Introduce and reinforce the idea that thoughts can be “filtered” before they are turned into words.
To create the materials for this free activity, click on these free download links:
Filter the upsetting thoughts kit
Übung-zum-Filtern-verbaler-Ausbrüche
This kit is also available in Polish.
Filter the upsetting thoughts kit, on-screen version for teletherapy
Sample introduction to this activity:
“When we are upset, we can have many, many upsetting thoughts going through their mind, very quickly. The thoughts can be so many, and so powerful, that they can “escape” out of your mouth if you are not careful. Your mind has a filter in it, to help us to say the right things, instead of every one of our thoughts to rush out of our mouths.”
(Now describe a filter; depends on knowledge level of participants. Show them the filter visual)
“There are different kinds of filters.” (have them name some: coffee filter, water filter, oil filter, etc. If you have a prop to demonstrate a filter now, that is good—try a colander, a coffee filter, etc)
“You can’t see the filter in your brain, but the way it works is kind of the same. It is especially important to use your brain’s filter when you are upset or angry, so that you say things that are good, and get you help, and so you avoid saying things that frighten, confuse or anger other people.”
How to use the upset thought strips: On a big table or on the floor, have the participant(s) sort the statements into things that are okay to say, sometimes okay to say, and almost never okay to say. Use the “Filter These Out” and “You can say these” visuals to help them with the sorting.
Usually, the child will spontaneously start talking about times they made unfiltered angry statements. This provides opportunities for learning and adds a visual dimension that is very helpful.
Variations: You, the adult, can try acting out the role of an upset person who is not succeeding in filtering his words. Ask the young participants to help you to filter what you say. Ask them to offer you alternative ways to express your upset feelings.
This is a good teaching/therapy activity for social skills training and anger management for kids autism spectrum disorders. I hope you find it helpful.
Joel Shaul, LCSW
Here are some related free activities for increasing awareness of social filters, anger management and cause and effect in relationships:
What I should Have Done Different Worksheet
Customizable Meters for Awareness of Negative Behaviors
Words Hurt/Words Help Worksheets
Pencil / Pen Memories Worksheets
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.