Social skills classes

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Parents of school aged kids, I have some questions about what you'd be looking for in a social skills class.

Do you care what level of training the instructor has? For example, whether they have a degree or are just a university student?

If you heard the instructor was on the autism spectrum, would that be a good sign or a bad sign?

What times would work best? Would you prefer after school, weekend, etc.

Would it be feasible for you to help your kid with homework for social skills, or are you likely to be too swamped with the rest of life to complete that stuff? (Things like taking the kid to a place with other kids and coaching them on asking someone else to play with them.)

How would you feel about a requirement that your child needs to know their diagnosis to get full benefit from the program?

* surry i'm over-aged to answer, but i think socialising actually gets far too overrated,
are those peers going to help you out one day? no matter how wellbehaved you've socialised?

skills are needed in all aspects of living, overfocussing on one will seriously damage the person as a whole,

molding young humans into photocopies of imaginairy skillsets,
warping a generation into a cloud of superficial connections, filled with mirrors of narcistic reflexions, a contest of ostentatory shallowness,
what could go wrong?

Social skills class is not an avenue we plan to be taking, but I would definitely care about that person's credentials, if we were.

As far as neurology goes, I think it would depend. On the one hand, I think an autistic social skills therapist would have more intrinsic understanding of the issues, but on the other hand if the person is as autistic as I am or more than I am, I am not sure that they understand how to do the job effectively. Honestly, I don't think what NT therapists suggest is very realistic either because it is usually about overcoming "shyness" which is not what the issue is.

I don't think the main issue is teaching them to ask other kids to play. Even if my kid were to do that in a "normal" *cough* way, that would be least of the issue. It is about accepting "no" as an answer and not getting bummed out by the rejection. And honestly the main impediment is about NT kids not wanting to play with kids who come off as odd.

If you don't want to fix the oddness, (which personally, I am not interested in doing) I am not sure any real progress could be made, and it would only work, maybe, when peers are very young children who are somewhat less concerned with conformity. I (personally) don't think any of it would have staying power for when the kid grows up.

Never would have worked for me. Best way to get me to learn social skills was to let me learn them on my own terms.