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Help For Social & Emotional Difficulties
For children with language processing issues, social and emotional issues are common. Emotional outbursts from learning frustration and social awkwardness from difficulty keeping up with conversations.
Our cognitive training addresses these difficulties to improve self-regulation, social skills, and social anxiety.
How We Help Social-Emotional Skills
Struggling learners often struggle in social situations for two reasons:
- Underdeveloped mechanics – listening in particular
- Lacking confidence
Social Mechanics
This means accurately following the conversation even in noisy places, processing and responding in real-time, recognizing social cues, and understanding the language and the world well enough to recognize context, nuance, and humor.
If your child has an auditory processing delay, some or all of this can be challenging. Group situations with language coming from all directions are particularly exhausting. Still, awareness of the world that builds from efficient and accurate listening and observation is often not yet there.
Confidence
A child’s primary job is learning—learning to read, learning to learn, and doing homework and tests. If you struggle with this all day long, you know you are struggling, and you know your parents, teachers, and peers know you are struggling. It’s hard to feel confident.
Failure, humiliation, and disappointment around learning affect everything – your willingness to take on new things, take risks, shake off misses, etc., and it impacts your willingness to put yourself out there in social situations
Target the Source of Difficulty – Gemm Learning
While the typical parental response is to put children in more social situations until they “get it” (e.g., sports, Cub Scouts), a faster and more lasting solution is to address and remove the underlying learning delay so that social skills have a chance to mature.
Gemm Learning provides learning interventions that do just that. While our programs do not directly target social and emotional skills, improvements in social skills are almost always mentioned by parents when they share outcomes – more confidence, more friends, happier.
If reading is easier, grades are better, etc. – why wouldn’t you be more confident?!
“Gemm Learning is the first to succeed, and it is making a world of difference. My son’s confidence has grown so much, he’s making more friends and having a better social life. He’s willing to tackle things that are challenging and is better behaved at home and at school, so much so that my husband asks if this is the same kid or if someone switched him with a look alike! His teacher asked what extra stuff he is doing because she as she said, there are some huge changes taking place.”
It’s Not Just Social Skills
Social and emotional development is more than social skills. It describes how children start to understand who they are, their feelings, and what to expect when interacting with others. Being able to:
- Form and sustain positive relationships.
- Experience, manage, and express emotions.
- Explore and engage with the environment.
Navigating social interactions is an important life skill. However, difficulty with human interaction for children who struggle with language processing has other impacts. Emotional well-being and relationships impact:
- confidence
- resilience
- self-awareness
- self-control
- interpersonal skills
Positive social and emotional development also impacts empathy, the ability to develop meaningful and lasting friendships and partnerships, and a sense of importance and value to those around him/her.
How Processing Delays Impact Social Skills
Much of social and emotional development is related to language and language processing. Social awkwardness, such as an auditory processing disorder, can indicate a learning delay. A mind consumed with understanding the literal conversation has no room for observing others, “reading the room.”
If your child’s brain is working hard just to hear and understand (process) what their friends are saying:
- Social cues are missed
- Instructions in a team or group setting are missed
- Deeper meanings are not explored
- Body language is not read
- Humor is not appreciated
- Thinking of a response is delayed
Hence, many children with learning delays struggle socially and emotionally as well.
How Fast ForWord Helps Social-Emotional Learning
Fast ForWord works directly on processing efficiency, effectively clearing the mind to focus on social signals, self-awareness, etc. Fast ForWord exercises are the equivalent of hundreds of conversational turns and much-needed language listening practice.
The first result is that faster processing slows conversations down, making the world more manageable for the struggling learner.
From there, once listening is more automatic, the brain starts to observe and learn from social situations. Social and emotional growth can accelerate.
Improved Conversational Skills
Improvements in processing efficiency make it easier for your child to participate in conversations meaningfully. This can help a child do better in social situations and develop friendships in an impossible way when listening skills are impaired.
Improved Learning Confidence
Imagine the impact that more efficient listening can have. It can be life-changing, profoundly boosting confidence because your child can now comfortably navigate day-to-day life. Your child’s day job, learning, is easier.
Fast ForWord helps confidence in two other ways:
- Improved reading skills help children feel better about themselves. They are meeting adult expectations and keeping up with peers.
- The Fast ForWord exercises are adaptive, meaning that children don’t get stuck. Students tell their parents they are “good at Gemm Learning,” a success in the academic world that also bolsters confidence.
Improved confidence leads to a more proactive and lean-in attitude to learning, a willingness to try new things, and more resilience if something is not understood right away. This leads to better educational outcomes and more confidence.
Accelerated Social and Emotional Development
Our families often tell us about their children’s improved emotional well-being after using Fast ForWord. Efficient processing allows for all kinds of growth, including executive function (planning and organizing) and emotional well-being.
“I couldn’t be more excited to see the how my son is learning and improving, not only in school but also at home as well. I’m glad to have you guys on his life. He is getting more responsible and yet having fun. Thank you for making our lives much easier with your teaching program.”