KidsClinic Social Groups

Ongoing social groups will have Occupational Therapy (OT) and Speech Language Pathology (SLP) service providers working directly with each child in the group.  The class is designed to facilitate peer interactions for children with developmental delays impacting language, play, and social-emotional skills.  Caregivers will be active participants either in the classroom with their child, or in an observation room.

Groups are an 8 to10-week long group session for kids with their similar aged peers. Social Groups will include up to six kids and will meet weekly for an hour (day and time differ for each group and will be announced upon registration).

If you are interested in enrolling your child in a social group, or for individual therapy, please call (425) 289-7526, email us at kidsclinicreferral@kindering.org, or visit KidsClinic Pediatric Therapy Referral online at kindering.org/referrals.

What does KidsClinic Social Group provide?

Opportunity to practice structure and routine 

  • The routine is roughly the same at each session, so it becomes familiar.
  • Sessions are designed to begin with regulation support and structured activities prior to moving towards free play with peers.

Opportunity for peer interactions with adult support

  • Peer modeling is a powerful tool!
  • Therapists provide verbal support and modeling to facilitate interactions
  • Peer interactions can look like:
    • speaking to each other (questions, comments, protesting, etc.)
    • playing nearby each other, sharing space and/or toys
    • imitating each other’s movements
    • sharing ideas (thematic pretend play)

Opportunity to generalize therapy progress to a peer setting

  • Sessions are designed to facilitate:
    • Communicating ideas and opinions
    • Joining other’s play
    • Self-advocacy: Expressing needs and preferences (e.g., wanting turns, sharing ideas)
    • Protesting (e.g., not wanting to play) in expected ways
    • Directing communication toward peers as opposed to expecting adults to direct
    • Self-organization: unstructured play requires children to organize their own ideas/bodies independently

Opportunity for parents to learn 

  • Parents participate in measuring their child’s progress from 1-on-1 therapies to a peer context
  • Parents learn strategies for increasing their child’s ability to interact with peers in the community