Table 5.

Summary of parents’ target interpersonal skills

Social skill	Description	Example
Nonverbal cues	Understanding nonverbal cues from others, such as facial expressions, gestures, posture, and being able to infer how to approach or interact with someone based on those cues	“I’m facing you. If I start turning this way, you immediately realize oh she is tuning me out. She is not interested. Just scenarios, games that help them to do that.” (PID 7) “The facial social cues that people give sometimes, you know, like…You say something and they’re like, “Oh, maybe she doesn’t want me to talk about that.” Sometimes he doesn’t read that. And he doesn’t realize, like, “I’m talking too much about the same topic.” (PID 3)
Social interaction	Understanding the social rules for interaction, personal space and understanding boundaries	“When she gets really excited or happy or really involved in something, it triggers it. And she gets like, “Yeah, I want to do this and we’re going to do it like this and it’s going to be like this.” And I’m like, “Okay. I don’t think you mean it that way. Let’s … “, and it’s just because she’s so excited and it’s harder for her. She puts more, it’s not an explanation, but excitement behind the things, but it can come out meaning, come out, across a little bit angry.” (PID 2) “…he likes to give the girls hugs and stuff, but what’s deemed socially appropriate now for that you know is kind of … because we’re in that … He has crossed that line from being cute and adorable to where everybody just wants to hug on him and you know, and he’s … I think he has a hard time realizing that now that he’s 17 years old it’s not always appropriate to go up and hug every girl that he sees, even though they’re friends with him and everything. We’ve had to like … not only the administrators at the school, but you know we’ve had to talk to him about … you know, it’s more appropriate to … high fives, you know.” (PID 1)
Social communication	Knowing how to say the right things at the right time; engaging in a reciprocal conversation, such that there is a back and forth between two people; using appropriate intonation for social situations; practicing listening skills	“He doesn’t often engage someone, a peer with a normal type of greeting or anything like that. Sometimes he’ll come up and say something to somebody, but it won’t necessarily be something that they’ll want to hear…And he does the same thing to adults with mixed results. A lot of adults will find that kind of endearing and others will look at him very strangely and wonder why he’s talking to them.” (PID 9) “As far as social skills for him, to him to learn. That’s one of them, and self-awareness of that. I think the back-and-forth conversation of … he knows how to introduce, and he doesn’t have that quick response to a back-and-forth. And he might be able to answer a question that was asked of him, but he wouldn’t then be able to quickly or even not-so-quickly know a follow-up conversation point to get back to.” (PID 21)
Understanding context	Not taking things literally; understanding common catch phrases/idioms and how to use them; understanding that actions may not represent reality; understanding humor	“I can generally tell when someone is being fake or lying to me. My radar’s on for that. She doesn’t have a radar for that. I don’t know how to teach her that skill. Conversely, she doesn’t know how to lie to me. She tries it. I’m always on to her. I don’t want her to… She’s learned well enough- But there’s been a few instances where I really wish she could tell when somebody’s pulling one over on her.” (PID 4) “He’s very literal so he doesn’t understand, and we struggled with this when he was taking English in high school. He doesn’t understand the gray areas of meaning, the context and stuff, about how something can mean something … or you know, he never got that. And poetry, you know.” (PID 1)
Building relationships	Skills for making friends and building relationships	“So when they [friends] come to the house they are always really nice… To him and talk to with him and all that. But he doesn’t really have a friend.” (PID 3) “At school, he had friends that he thought were his friends and this again having that therapist there to kind of be the eyes and saying, "You know, he thinks this child is his friend. But this child is pretty much over being [child’s name] friend.” (PID 8)

Participant IDs have been re-randomized for this article to protect privacy