What Do I Teach Instead of Social Skills? A Neuro-Affirming Approach for SLPs
- Staci Neustadt
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
If you're an SLP moving toward neuro-affirming practice, you may have found yourself asking:
If I'm not teaching traditional social skills anymore…what DO I teach?
Maybe goals around eye contact, staying on a non-preferred topic, or performing the “expected” social behavior don't sit right with you anymore.
But that doesn't mean social communication therapy is ableist—or that we stop supporting social communication altogether.
We change what we're working toward.
Instead of teaching autistic clients how to appear more neurotypical, we can help them better understand themselves, understand communication differences, and advocate for what they need.
What can I teach instead of traditional social skills?
Rather than starting with “What social behavior does this person need to change?” I start by looking at some of the skills underneath social communication.
That may include:
Self-awareness: What's easy or hard for me? What supports make communication easier?
Self-advocacy: Can I communicate what I need when something isn't working?
Body awareness: What is my body doing while I communicate, and could someone interpret it differently than I intend?
Communication differences: How might my communication style differ from someone else's?
None of these are about teaching someone the “right” way to socialize.
They're about giving autistic individuals more information about themselves and their communication so they have choices.
But is this really within an SLP's scope?
This is a question I hear when we start talking about self-awareness, body awareness, and regulation.
We're not asking SLPs to become occupational therapists or mental health professionals.
We're looking at these areas through the lens of communication.
If someone doesn't recognize that they need more processing time, how can they advocate for it?
If their body language is frequently interpreted differently than they intend, could that contribute to communication breakdowns?
We're not treating the body. We're looking at how self-awareness, body awareness, and regulation can intersect with communication—and collaborating with other professionals when support crosses disciplines.
Neuro-affirming doesn't mean we ignore the impact of communication
This is another place I think SLPs can get stuck.
We become so concerned about teaching autistic people to mask that we wonder whether talking about the impact of communication is ableist.
But communication affects other people.
The difference is that we don't have to label one person's communication as right and the other's as wrong.
Instead, we can help clients become curious:
What message might someone receive from my communication?
Is that the message I intended?
If it isn't, do I want to do anything differently—or do I want to help that person better understand how I communicate?
That last question is important.
The goal is awareness and choice, not compliance.
So what does this actually look like in speech therapy?
This is where the shift gets really interesting.
What do you do when an autistic client doesn't use the body language other people expect?
What if someone assumes they're bored, angry, or uninterested when that's not what they're experiencing at all?
And how do you work on that without teaching them to perform different body language or mask?
Susan and I walk through this in the video, including practical examples of how we approach body awareness, communication differences, self-advocacy, and a foundational skill that many of us were never taught to consider when working on social communication.
Watch the conversation below to see what we teach instead.
How do I know what my individual client actually needs?
Even after we shift our approach, there's another question:
How do I know which of these areas actually matters to this person?
Because an autistic client shouldn't automatically have to work on a skill simply because someone else thinks they “should.”
What do they want to learn?
Where are they experiencing communication breakdowns?
What would make communication easier for them?
And what do they not want other people to expect from them?
That's why we created our Neuro-Affirming Social Communication Profile.
It helps SLPs look beyond observable social behaviors to identify strengths, barriers, self-advocacy, emotional awareness, communication preferences—and what the individual actually wants to learn.
Because ultimately:
I don't want my clients to leave therapy knowing how to mask.
I want them to leave knowing themselves and knowing how to advocate for themselves.
Want a different way to assess social communication?
Our Neuro-Affirming Social Communication Profile course gives you a framework for understanding what's underneath social communication and identifying meaningful areas for support without starting from deficits or neurotypical expectations.
The course is currently available at the $97 Founder's Price during presale.
The price increases when the course opens August 31.
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