High school is a time of learning, making friends, and becoming more independent. Teenagers will, ideally and ultimately, become productive adults living lives of fulfillment, independence, and prosperity. At least, this is generally our hope as overseers and parents. Future happiness, to a significant extent, will depend on the social networks that we forge earlier in life. That is a lot of pressure! Is your teen ready for this?

I know that my grandson is not quite ready for complete independence yet. He still needs quite a few reminders just to put on deodorant, dress appropriately for the weather, and navigate successfully through his day. But these shortcomings, left unaddressed, might leave him socially impoverished. So, can be done to improve our kids’ odds of social success?

In brief, what we need to do is demonstrate and explain social cues, encourage good listening, support their efforts at social engagement in their particular areas of interest, and teach valuable skills through role playing. A lot of this can be done by simply making time to spend time and talk with them.

But there are a few other pieces necessary to put this puzzle together most effectively. Let’s take a closer look. A first question might be: Do we really need to help our teens? Won’t they eventually figure it out on their own?

Why Is It Necessary to Address Social Issues?

ADHD-affected children and teens often have additional trouble with things like impulsivity, hyperactivity, and a failure to cope with frustration. They also tend to have poor social skills. All of these can affect friendships. Their inattention, forgetfulness, disorganization, and – sometimes – explosive tempers, can wreak havoc on friends and family causing hurt or fearful feelings. So, unfortunately, teens with ADHD tend to have fewer friends than do their non-afflicted counterparts.

To further complicate matters, ADHD also has a high level of comorbidity with other mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. These combinations can lead to behavioral problems and land the individual in trouble with caretakers and educators for his or her conduct. In turn, feelings of low self-esteem are triggered – and all this in kids who already struggle with social-emotional issues every day.

Having a solid system of friendship and social support can make a world of difference in a person’s life. But, this doesn’t “just happen” for anyone. We’re all dependent for our social skills – to one degree or other; for good or bad – on the example and instruction of others.

So, the question isn’t really: Should social skills be taught? It’s rather: Who is teaching them? And: How well are they being taught?

To Help With Social Skills

 

• Provide opportunities to engage in different activities.[1] This may seem like an extra burden on parents, who are already taxed with the normal household and workplace duties, but this can really be helpful – and essential – for your child in many ways. And there are numerous creative ways to do it. For example, think of something – like exercise – that you have or want to do anyway, and then make it more social. We all hear that regular daily exercise helps everyone’s mental and physical health.[2] So, instead of telling them just to do some pushups (which is good), sign them up to be part of a sports team. Or, get them involved in a club – like chess, computers, or drama. This can help them to see the benefits of learning new things and following the rules. And it will take place in a context where they are rubbing elbows with their peers. As a bonus, such activities can also activate better self-esteem. This is because an ADHD-afflicted teenager who struggles in a traditional classroom setting might find that he or she really shines in non-traditional environments doing extracurricular activities that are closer to their genuine areas of interest.
• Use a strength-based approach. By this I mean: Focus on strengths and passions, not just on fixing what’s wrong. It’s partially a way that you present or “frame” the activities. Don’t say, “You need to be part of after-school activities because we need to remedy your social awkwardness.” Instead, say (something like): “I have noticed that you really enjoy reciting lines from your favorite television shows and movies. And you’re good at it! Did you know you’re your school offers a drama program? Why don’t we try getting you involved in that?”
• Boost confidence by supporting their interests. This just piggybacks off of the previous suggestions. Again, it is crucial to find those activities that really activate and showcase your child’s gifts and talents – and these activities will give them more opportunities to be with others. But “support” means a bit more than just signing a permission form or writing a check for the club dues. It also comes in the form of listening when your child talks. Remember, your teenager may not yet be self-aware enough to identify activities that could be beneficial or fulfilling for them. You may have to make suggestions based upon your – hopefully deeper – understanding of your child’s mindset. But support may also entail buying a book or two about their subject, discussing ongoing projects over the dinner table, or going on a field trip to a place of interest (or to interview a successful person in the relevant field).

To Help with Communication Skills

Problems with communication skills are liabilities for anyone. But they can cause major road blocks to success for teens and children with ADHD.[3]

• Make time to talk to each other. Use the time you have together to chat. This can happen while dining, driving, taking walks, or shopping. Schedule a weekly walk-and-talk, or a or family supper – No TV!
• Tackle the news. Sometimes current events become a discussion topic in class or just at the lunch table. Talking about them at home gives your teens time to sort out their thoughts about the issues so they can join in the conversation more confidently. Along this same line current movies or best sellers are always good to talk about.
• Encourage – even enforce – good listening. Teens are expected to pay attention when someone is talking. You can’t control what’s going on their heads. (Have you noticed that, too?) But you can impose certain conversational expectations – even if they only address externalities. For example, teach your child to sit up and to make good eye contact. Demonstrate how nodding occasionally and repeating or rephrasing what was said can help to keep your mind from wandering. Ask questions for clarification. You may eventually find that these external trappings of attentive have actually penetrated beneath the surface and taken root.
• Model how to find common ground. This assists in keeping them on topic because making small talk can be hard (see below). After your teen tells you something, repeat part of it then ask a question related to what they said. Then you say something and have them repeat and ask a question.
• Drive conversations with FORD. No, I am not talking about cars. I am speaking of an acronym that can help you – or your teen – if you find yourself at a loss for words. Each of the letters stands for one possible topic to explore. Each of the topics are usually “safe” choices – in the sense that most people: (1.) don’t mind talking about them; and (2.) have something to say about each one. I would encourage people not just to consider these hints for how to avoid silence, but also as a valuable tools for actually getting to know someone.
  • F – Family. You can ask questions about parents (“What do your parents do for a living?”), siblings (“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”), or extended family (“Are you close with your cousins?”).
  • O – Occupation. This one may be geared towards adults – in the sense that teenaged discussants may not have jobs, per se, and “occupation” is often used a synonym for things like career, employment, and, in general, ways that people make a living. But “occupation” can have a broader meaning that simply designates what you spend time doing. So, you can ask about apprenticeships, extracurricular activities, hobbies, part-time jobs, work studies, and so on.
  • R – Recreation. Here, the basic question is: “Why do you do for fun?” For teens, this might be the most fruitful line of inquiry! Secondary questions abound: “What is your favorite movie?”; “What was the last movie you saw?”; “What video games are you into?”; and so on. I’ll stop with this brief list since any random teenager could probably write more questions that I can think of.
  • D – Dreams. Oh, boy. This can also be a big one. “What would you like to do as a career?”; “Do you want to go to college?”; “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?” Not only does this question really spark some interesting conversations, it also helps people peel back the onion layers of personality.
• Use social media. Get the so-called social networks to do some work for you. For example, Facebook’s “news feed” can help you to find topics to talk about with others. (See, again, the tip about current events, discussed above.)
• Explain and demonstrate body language and other social cues. “Social cues” are signals people send through verbal and non-verbal – or “body” – language. These include facial expressions, tone and voice pitch, and personal space. Have your teenagers look at the people around them. Ask teens to make guesses about how these people might be feeling, based upon what they notice about these non-verbals. Give them fairly obvious case studies as frames of reference. For instance, a person yawning and leaning against a wall or counter could indicate being tired. You can also watch movies and pick out physical cues (like eye rolling and eyebrow raising) that belie what is communicated through spoken dialog alone.
• Play word games. Primarily, I’m talking about actual games – like board games – with rules and piece and the like. Games like this encourage language skills. Charades puts the focus on body language while Scrabble boosts vocabulary. But you could also play “word games” with your children the sense of verbal jousting. Playfully trading barbs can sharpen the wit. And it lets teens give full reign to their sarcasm!
• Question your kids. Ask your children for their opinions. Probe for the reasons why they think the ways they do.
• Roleplay. There are many different scenarios that could be useful depending on your child’s age. For high-school age, the roleplays could be asking a guy or girl out on a date, how to say “no” to drugs or alcohol, or how to start a conversation at a party. (See, again, the FORD-based suggestions, above.) While a younger child might need to role play how to behave at another kid’s birthday party or what to say when meeting out-of-town relatives. Middle schoolers could have any of the aforementioned needs as well, but also may be in need of dealing with clique behavior or bullying.
• Have a fidget toy. This can assist ADHD-addled brains in keeping mentally engaged – especially during long conversations.

To Assist With Conflict/Problem Resolution[4]

Anytime we talk about communication, we should also include a segment on conflict resolution. Adults well know that conflicts do arise occasionally – and even especially if a person fails to appreciate (or even recognize) another’s point of view. As prementioned earlier, ADHD-afflicted youngsters are prone to this sort of obliviousness.

But conflicts can also surface because a child is upset and unable to work through his or her emotions constructively. For example, they can develop because of hurt feelings or forgotten promises.

• Teach your teen to use “I feel…” statements. This sort of phraseology avoids blaming someone else and focuses instead on how someone perceives the issue. So, rather than say: “When you said [x], you made me angry”; you might try: “On hearing [x], I felt hurt.” Arguably, the two versions have the same propositional content. But the first has more accusatory undertones that the second doesn’t necessarily have.
• Work on self-awareness. I mean, this is an easy one, right? (Sarcasm alert!) I don’t know about you, but I am still working on my own self-awareness. So, obviously, this is a life-long process. But there are some things you can do right now to start your children down positive roads of self-reflection. For instance, guide your child/teen to be cognizant of the signs of when they might be getting upset or off track. Have them pay attention to their appetitive natures – are they hungry or thirsty? Do they have to use the bathroom? Another facet of this sort of mindfulness is being able to recognize shifts in affect or feeling. Taking their own “emotional temperatures” can help them to display some measure of control over reactions, hopefully avoiding overreactions.
• Build relationship-supporting qualities. It’s easier to forge and maintain friendships when you have personality traits that are conducive to building and keeping friend! So, help your kids to foster virtues like cheerfulness and reliability. Again, this is all easier said than done. I get that. But let’s not use the difficulty of completing the task as an excuse not to start it. Explain to teens that people need to be able to count on them, just as they count on others. Encourage them to ask questions if they don’t understand something or if they didn’t “get” the details. Write down (or, for millennials, text yourselves) with any important takeaways from conversations. This is especially important if you teenagers have been asked to do or help with something.
• Teach the art of paraphrasing and repetition. Your teen is going to have to know how to repeat or rephrase information. Not only does this help to keep your mind focused, but it also conveys apprehension (or comprehension), as noted above.
• Put a premium on direct, personal communication. This is getting rarer in our technology age. But, impress on teens the utility and value of face-to-face communication. And try to encourage them to avail themselves of this form of communication as often as possible – for one thing, because nonverbal cues are important. (See, again, the relevant discussion of this, above.) Positively, being right in front of someone lets you add little flourishes and nuances to the exchange. Negatively, relying exclusively on electronic forms of communication – whether emails, phone calls, or texts – can cause a person’s interpersonal skills to atrophy. Additionally, the flat, two-dimensionality of such communications can sometimes create space for readers or hearers to make erroneous assumptions or draw unflattering surmises about attitudes and emotional states. Perhaps the bottom line is that being face to face gives communicators more control over what is communicated. And it’s increasingly and unfortunately becoming a lost art.

Some Things to Think About Concerning Dating and Sex

If your teen is dating, then he or she may need a little more guidance from you in order to help him or her avoid awkward or unsafe situations.[5]

• Try to gauge your teen’s maturity level. Keep in mind that an ADHD-afflicted teenager might be anywhere from three to four years behind their peers, in terms of psycho-social development.
• Structure the social environment according to maturity. In plain terms, this probably means that it might be better to start dating “later” rather than earlier. (Similar things can be said about driving.) Of course, what “later” and “earlier” actually come down to will vary. You will need to construct your own working timeline.[6] Be flexible about it, however; it will likely need occasional modification.
• Start with group dating. This takes off some of the personal – and sexual (see below) – pressure and helps keep them safer. Another benefit is that group dating can assist your teenagers to learn to make better decisions.
• Maintain open and honest communication. Talk freely and frankly about dating and be very clear about your parental expectations. In addition, let them know the ground rules like curfew and meeting their date beforehand as well as where they are going.
• Help teens identify situations that would make them feel uncomfortable. This flows back to the discussion about promoting your children’s self-awareness. (See an above section.) Make sure that they know that they may call you at any time to get them.
• Keep current and aware of who your child talks to online. Even some video games now enable children and teens to talk with others. Parents need to have some idea about who their children interact with, and what they interact about.
• Have ‘The Talk.’ I realize that it can be uncomfortable. But don’t rely on school-related “sex-ed” courses to tell your kinds what you want them to know. In the first place, it is your responsibility to communicate to them about the “birds and the bees” and the “facts of life.” I won’t get into the details, here. But suffice it to say that teens may require a working knowledge or both the physical and emotional aspects of sexual intercourse. It’s useful – and practically necessary – to talk to them about what goes where, and when. But it’s also going to be of major help to speak about the emotions that get stirred up – and the complications that can arise – through sexual acts. If you are part of a religious tradition, you’ll have to decide what elements of that tradition’s teachings you want to include into your discussions. If you think that what you will tell your kids is likely to conflict with information they’ll received elsewhere (whether it be from friends, religious figures, teachers, or television), then you ought to make this explicit and talk frankly about these possible conflicts.

How to Help Develop Social Skills in the Classroom

 

• Focus on teamwork. If you are working with a team, for all practical purposes, you have to talk and help each other. But being “forced” to work with others – maybe with others differing from you in terms of background and opinion – can be a good thing.
• Divide tasks based on individual strengths. Some students are good at research and writing while others are creative and artistic. Teachers can give some assignments with the aim of underscoring what students do well – playing to their strengths. But other assignments can be focused on remedying weaknesses.
• Depend on routines. Calendars and schedules keep everyone on track.
• Set goals. Students can set goals for being more reliable or a better listener. Other material elsewhere online helpfully notes that goals differ from dreams. For instance, “dreams” can simply mark out a person’s generic desires, hopes, or wishes. “Goals,” on the other hand, are often unpacked by the acronym SMART.
  • S – Specific. You might have a “dream” of being “well off,” financially. But a financial goal would be more like saying that you want to make $100,000/year. Similarly, for your teenagers, a dream could be “doing well in school.” But a goal might be to achieve a 3.0 grade-point average. (Of course, goals will have to be tailored to the student’s current abilities and aptitudes.)
  • M – Measurable. I think you got a taste for this in the previous example. Doing “well” in school isn’t measurable, per se. Taking capabilities into account, what counts as “good” for one student may not count as good for another. But getting an 80% or higher on a test is measurable. Carrying a particular class average is measurable.
  • A – Attainable. Here is where we stress that the goal must be properly indexed to the student. This is to say that goals are relative to things like ability. To require that my older grandson get “As” in math and science is probably setting the bar too high for him. Instead, as an immediate goal, I would require a passing grade. As an ultimate – end-of-semester – goal, I might tell him to shoot for “Cs.” On the other hand, in art and drama, he should get “As.” But, for his younger brother, the goals would be flipped. Expectations for math and science would certainly be “As.” The two kids just have different capabilities.
  • R – Relevant. The idea of relevance, here, is meant to stress that goals should be things that the student is motivated to achieve. They could be fairly low-level or base motivations. For instance, my older grandson may only be motivated to pass his math class just so he doesn’t have to repeat the class, or go to summer school, or flunk out of high school. But this is good enough. On the other hand, the motivations could be on a higher level. Maybe he’s motivated to do well in art class because he aspires to become a film director (as indeed he does) and would like to enhance his set-design skills.
  • T – Time-Limited. Again, this hearkens back to our first desideratum, specificity. (But we need the “T” to make a memorable word!) Whereas a dream can be vague and timeless – “I want to be rich, someday”; a goal needs a kind of temporal concreteness. “I will bring my history grade up to a ‘B’ by the semester break.”
• Make actual plans to achieve the goals. Once the goals are in place, you need real action steps to fall back on to try to realize them. You can organize yourself with the acronym TAKE.
  • T – Think. Think about the steps that, realistically, you’ll need to go through in order to achieve your goal. Write the steps down!
  • A – Actualize. Once you’ve got your steps written, start working toward the goal by actually doing the work indicated by the plan.
  • K – Keep Track. Keep yourself on task and on schedule. Have benchmarks in place to achieve on your way to the final goal. Ask others to help keep you accountable.
  • E – Evaluate. Are you hitting your intermediate goals? Are you performing the steps that you laid out? Does the plan have to change? Does the goal have to change? Don’t be too quick to abandon your goal. But don’t drive yourself crazy with frustration, either. You’ll need outside opinions to help you discern the proper modifications to make. Have someone that you can discuss these matters with.
• Work on communication and discussion skills. Practice rephrasing and repeating what someone said as well as looking at the speaker and nodding. Also ask the speaker questions to clarify and make sure everyone backs up their statements with evidence. (See the similar discussion of these matters in a previous section.)

Final Words

Social skills are valuable skills to have – both in school, particularly, and in life, generally. In addition to this, forming friendships and socializing are integral parts of what it means to be human and to be fulfilled and satisfied during your time on this earth. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once called people “political animals.” By this he seems to have meant that we are reasoning creatures who, by nature, flourish in social situations. He didn’t rule out that, occasionally, people could “go it alone.” But he did caution that these sorts were often outcasts and faced with hard lives of isolation. To really thrive, he thought, we needed other people.

Children and teenagers look to us to show them how to interact with others, build friendships, and socialize. ADHD sufferers, especially, may have any number of difficulties in addition to the usual awkwardness of growing pains and puberty. But there are many things that we can do to help them along the way – or to get them off to good starts.

Happy communicating!

Additional Resources

“How to Help an ADHD Student Stay on Track over the Holidays”

“How Can I Help My ADHD Teenager Take Notes?”

“6 Study Mistakes & 8 Study Tips for ADHD Children and Teens”

“How to Relieve Stress as the Parent of a Child With ADHD”

Notes

[1]Kathleen Smith, “ADHD: Sports and Extracurricular Activities,” PSYCOM.

[2] Added benefits abound. Exercise can promote better sleep, for instance. And a well-rested, more able-bodied ADHD teen may be susceptible to fewer emotional outbursts than a sedentary teenager with the same condition.

[3]See, e.g., Lexi Walters Wright, “10 Ways to Improve Your High-Schoolers’s Communication Skills,” <https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/communication-disorders/10-ways-to-improve-your-high-schoolers-communication-skills>.

[4]Katie Hurley, “ADHD and Relationships PSYCOM,” <https://www.psycom.net/adhd-and-relationships/>.

[5]For more, see Understood Team, “8 Ways to Help Teens with ADHD Avoid Dating Trouble Spots Understood for learning and attention issues,” <https://www.understood.org/en/friends-feelings/teens-tweens/relationships-dating/8-ways-to-help-teens-with-adhd-avoid-dating-trouble-spots>.

[6] This timeline may need to be created in conjunction with doctor or psychologist consultations, discussions with teachers or other parents, and so on.