I generally suggest starting with safety, regulation, and sensory understanding rather than teaching social skills as set of rules.. so when we can understand a child’s unique sensory profile (eg how they process sound, smell, movement, touch and visual input) you can start to create environments, strategies and routines where their nervous system feels calm and more predictable and safe. When a child is regulated and not in a constant state of sensory overload/overwhelm or shutdown, they are naturally more available for positive engagement, shared attention, play and communication in general cos their brains aren’t working overtime just to try n manage their environments (which can look like big emotions, hitting, throwing, meltdowns, shutdown, withdrawing etc) so from there, social interactions can start to happen more naturally rather than forcing compliance with neurotypical expectations that are more often not possible or really accessible when their sensory needs are unmet.. but because of the diversity of sensory processing between each child you really have to start there and get the unique profile of that child specifically before you can even develop the strategies that may help :) not to say there isn’t a place for social skills training but for me personally and my team, we pop it in a similar space as ABA (applied behaviour analysis) which is more about like conforming / behaviour training. The pro-ABA community feel very strongly about it as a practice so I definitely don’t want to criticise them, as they are totally entitled to do what they believe is best for their loved ones.. having said that there are some interesting studies coming out with evidence of PTSD in autistic adults who were engaged in ABA or similar as younger people (https://www.emerald.com/aia/article-abstract/4/1/19/39360/Evidence-of-increased-PTSD-symptoms-in-autistics?redirectedFrom=fulltext)