Adaptive Skills

Adaptive skills come from adaptive behaviors or functional skills that individuals have learned and use in their daily lives. These skills are practiced and integrated in the home and community. A core component of this program is parent training in which parents can demonstrate their ability to use strategies to help develop their child’s skills.

Skills that can be generalized in the home and community with others include: functional Independence, self-reliance, problem solving, decision making, self monitoring and coping skills, social pragmatics, social skills, social communication and pursuit of leisure activities.

Adaptive skill areas include:

• Self-Care – bathing, dressing, grooming, and feeding one’s self
• Communication Skills – understanding and using verbal and nonverbal language
• Self-Direction – problem solving, exercising choice, initiating and planning activities
• Social Skills – maintaining interpersonal relationships, understanding emotions and social cues, understanding fairness and honesty, obeying rules and laws
• Leisure Skills – taking responsibility for one’s own activities, having the ability to participate in the community
• Home or School Living – housekeeping, cooking, doing laundry, maintaining living space
• Functional Academics – using reading, writing, and math skills in everyday life
• Community Use – shopping, using public transportation, using community services
• Work – ability to maintain part-time or full-time employment, either competitive or sheltered, ability to work under supervision, cooperate with coworkers, be reliable and punctual, and meet work standards
• Health and Safety – ability to protect one’s self, responding to health problems

Specific procedures used to teach skill acquisitions include, but are not limited to: task analysis, chaining, visual tools (schedules, checklists and charts), TEACCH strategies, Miller Method strategies, Visualization and Verbalization, self-monitoring strategies, use of augmentative communication (PECS, voice output systems, sign language).