How can you connect this new skill to the student’s priorities? How can you assure ownership by making the development of this skill the student’s goal rather than just your goal for the student?
Most students desire to be successful and accepted in all situations. They want to be part of the team and this desire may motivate them to understand the importance of using appropriate responses to comments and compliments in all interchanges as a way to build professional and personal relationships. However, some will prefer to be left alone. Negotiating with the student to practice limited responses so that he maintains a job, a good ‘team grade’ in projects, or a good rating on a job evaluation may be necessary. For some, you may need to work slowly and incrementally to build frequency of responses to comments and to compliments. Starting with receiving and responding successfully to one compliment in a class may be an early target of instruction which the student can tolerate and accept.
As you introduce this skill, how will you incorporate (visually, thematically) the student’s unique interests?
Video clips or interviews with favorite athletes or actors showing their responses to compliments and comments may appeal to certain students. If there is a specific social event or community job site where the student shows interest (and where these skills would need to be applied), a picture of the event or site for use during role play practice might pique their interest and motivate them to learn and use the strategies being taught.
Can you make it visually clear to the student who is resistant to change that his assumption is only one way of looking at things? Can your use of visual supports and self-assessments help get agreement that there is a problem, get agreement on the solution, and create the motivation for change?
Some students are very logical, linear thinkers. They may weigh their own personal feelings and information against the compliment, resulting in either denying the compliment (such as a perfectionist being told “great game”, responding “No, it wasn’t” because he missed a couple of shots), or responding in a deprecating manner (such as the student being told “that’s a cool shirt” or “nice job today” responding “Of course it is” or “I know”). Video scenarios, coping comics (showing the thoughts of the other person in response to a curt reaction), graphic organizers, and role playing can assist the student in visually understanding the impact of inappropriate responses and motivate or encourage him to learn better strategies.
Some students may be embarrassed by a compliment or disbelieve it and thus have a difficult time accepting it in the manner that it was given. Social narratives, thinking stories or coping comics can help them to learn perspective taking and strategies in handling the compliments appropriately.
Priming is a form of negotiation that can reframe and sharpen a student’s assessment of self. Below are the self-assessment tools that align with this intervention topic:
"Social Communication – Basic Skills 1"
Interspersal is a proven technique involving the presentation of familiar, higher success tasks with the new, more challenging task. When it is appropriate, are you varying the activities to maintain the student’s confidence and focus?
Because accepting compliments or shifting focus can be stressful even in scripted practice, consider interspersal with other recently learned skills. Do the interspersed skills require different skills and even different types of physical activity to provide the student with needed stimulation?
Before the student encounters a situation where he will need to respond to a comment or compliment, how do you help the student prepare? How do you orient the student to the possible situation?
Evaluate whether the student understands what a compliment is. He may need preparation in identifying the non-verbal signals related to comments and compliments before practice. He may need this preparation before entering a social situation where the compliment or comment is likely to occur.
Initial instruction may include not only the definition of a compliment, but helping the student to understand that a compliment or comment may not match their opinion but reflects the opinion of the other person. The student may need reminders to practice that he doesn’t need to disagree but just accept that somebody said something nice. The student may also need to be taught that not responding may be seen as rude and the student may need to be given some standard responses to use. These can be taught through the use of visual reminder cards, scripts, role-playing, graphic organizers, and video examples. As with many of the other skills, practice in responding to compliments and comments will need to be scheduled on an ongoing basis over a period of time before starting a new job or situation.