Maureen Mihailescu has done it again with “Social Skills Practice for the Playground for Children on the Autism Spectrum.” She now offers a new book that is easy to use with children with autism to help prepare them for playground socialization and activities. Rather than a how to do it book where a parent or therapist has to create materials, Maureen Mihailescu's book is ready to use with children who need this kind of social intervention. Maureen uses photographs of social scenes at the playground and provides targeted questions that stimulate social perceptions, social language, social problem solving, and social awareness of one's own feelings and of others. Many of the questions are rephrased and target similar behaviors or responses. However, the book is to be used with children with autism to become more competent in answering social questions, role-playing social situations, and understanding social opportunities and activities at the playground better. The book is designed to be adapted to the social awareness and social language complexity skills of these children. A parent or therapist can prompt for simple language or more complex language and problem solving skills, such as feelings being hurt, or even possibly feeling rejected. This is where the adult adapts the book to the individual child's needs based on the child's current abilities and how you want the child to progress. One of the main goals here is to get children with autism, whether they are minimally verbal, or highly verbal, or socially awkward, to start thinking socially about other children at the playground and how they can approach, communicate, and play with other children in socially appropriate ways. Children who are non-verbal could benefit from the photographs and questions while a parent or therapist creatively integrates their own communication system
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