Social Interaction Activities for Children with Neurodevelopment Disorders

Part 1:

Children with disorders like autism and ADHD may not know how they should interact with other and control and express their emotions. Through some of the following activities, children facing these issues can learn how to interact and communicate through fun, interactive methods.

Emotion Chart

Children can express and map their emotions through a chart, where they can move an object to shows their changes in emotions. There are four colors to represent four emotion zones: green, yellow, blue, and red.

Green - happy, proud, glad

Red - angry, frustrated, disappointed

Yellow - anxious, excited, hyper

Blue - sad, depressed, melancholic, tired

It is important to note that any zone that a child is in should not be discouraged, but have them explain why they are in that zone. This will allow them to open up to their emotions and deal with it compared to letting it just be uncontrolled and unknown.

Role Playing

In groups, children can be given different situations and be told to talk and act to see how they would deal with the situation. This helps them learn how to deal with less ideal situation and conversations that they can have with other to deal with different emotions. Some examples of situations are:

• You find your classmate stealing your lunch

• You win a prize that your best friend also wanted

• You are a cashier at a grocery store

• You are a doctor treating a patient

• You invite your friends for a tea party or lunch