Social Thinking in the News

September 2023 ABC North and West SA / By Isabella Carbone

Read how artist Mali Isabel, known for the 2022 Adelaide Fringe Festival poster, helped Aboriginal children develop emotional literacy using The Zones of Regulation.

The article discusses how schools have integrated social and emotional learning programs, such as the Zones of Regulation, to equip students with tools for navigating challenging situations. The author shares their experience implementing the Zones of Regulation system at home, creating designated zones with helpful tools. The article emphasizes the benefits for children with chronic illnesses and highlights the positive impact of occupational therapy (OT) in supporting daily living activities and building skills for independence.

The Social Thinking Methodology originated in schools over 25 years ago in response to a lack of practical ways to explain different aspects of the social-emotional world to both neurotypical and neurodivergent students. Michelle Garcia winner, the founder of the Social Thinking Methodology, continues to update core strategies and tools in response to ongoing and valuable input from individuals with a range of social-emotional learning differences, disabilities and/or difficulties, as well as form mainstream teachers and learning specialists. Dr. Pamela Crooke joined forces with Michelle almost 17 years ago to further evolve components of the methodology. Tools from the Social Thinking Methodology have found their way into inclusion-based or mainstream classrooms since ALL students can benefit from a common vocabulary and understanding of the social and emotional world together.

Heading into a new school year, it is essential for parents to prioritize helping their children make and maintain friends. Ryan Hendrix, a speech and language pathologist specializing in social cognition and communication, underscores the complexity of forming friendships, referring to it as a "social executive function task."

Discover what’s possible when we relate through emotions. In this podcast, Michelle Garcia Winner, Founder and CEO of Social Thinking discusses: grouping students based on social needs rather than diagnostic labels; how to increase social competence; why small talk is embedded in most social situations; navigating the dating world; maintaining friendships; and tips for autistic people going into a job interview.

Some researchers and intervention developers are seeking to update historical practice, to reflect the neurodiversity paradigm, respect neurodiversity, and acceptability of approaches to supporting social understanding to the neurodivergent community.

With six kids at home, it's no wonder James Van Der Beek has some savvy tricks in his parenting arsenal. The trick definitely calls to mind the Zones of Regulation, a framework and curriculum that educators use to help kids identify and regulate their feelings by attaching colors to different emotions.

In this audio webinar “Social Success Strategies: Helping Your ADHD Child Make Good Friends." Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP discusses Social Thinking and why it’s important, how to improve social skills, awareness, and problem-solving, ADHD-friendly techniques for paying attention.

Learn how a school counselor uses Social Thinking's Size of My Problem framework in her school's Wellness Wednesday initiative, which establishes weekly goals for taking a breath, finding moments of mindfulness, slowing down, resetting, and recharging.

In this episode, Michelle talks about her Social Thinking work, and discussed her career working in an autism spectrum clinic, working with adults with brain injury, working in a high school, and later starting her own clinic.

This article highlights how social and emotional learning is embedded in many academic standards and how speech-language pathologists can use the Social Thinking–Social Competency Model to better understand the unique strengths and needs of individual social learners and describe the relationship to academics.