Sooo...What Are Adaptive Skills? These 10 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, and;
Health and Safety – ability to protect one’s self, responding to health problems.
Why Are Adaptive Skills Important?
Adaptive behavior refers to a person’s social responsibility and independent performance of daily activities. A lack of adaptive skills could be seen in my children. When they were five years old, they could not do many basic things for themselves like bathe, brush their hair, brush their teeth, put on their clothes and shoes without assistance, they were not aware of safety including giving out too much information to random strangers and running in front of moving vehicles. They could not eat without making a huge mess. They were behind in pretty much every skill. An individual that is experiencing intellectual delay, autism or other social, emotional, behavioral challenges may have deficits in adaptive functioning domains. Crimson Counseling focuses on helping pre-teens, teens and young adults develop adaptive functioning skills to move closer to independence.