Help with 6 year old's social skills

Shelly Hansen at Think Social East Bay is great. Get your child in one of her social skills groups as soon as you can! 

Hey there! my daughter worked with speech and language with supreet - she is great with kids (special needs or typical developing). she used to do social yoga groups for kids, my 7 year old son went this summer and did great. she also works 1-1 with social skills, etc. https://www.speechandlanguagewithsupreet.com/ 

Seven Bridges Therapy has several locations in the Bay Area. My son has been going to their social skills group since he was 4 years old and he’s 9 now. He goes to the Oakland location and 3 out of 5 therapists have been great at facilitating the group. The 2 that weren’t so great were during the pandemic when online sessions were the only option. My son took a break during this time because online classes are difficult for him. My son has hf asd and spd and has had OT, ABA, individual speech, and of all those therapies with various companies/therapists, Seven Bridges social skills has been the best therapy for him. He’s learned so much and has been able to generalize what he’s learned into everyday life. More recently in his current group, he’s made friends with the boys and we’re in the process of setting up play dates outside of session. This is the first time he has really connected with other kids locally and we’re so happy and excited for him to hopefully further develop these friendships. There was a time that we thought he would never make friends other than with our friend’s kid’s. My son has had a great experience with Seven Bridges and I highly recommend their social skills groups.

I would recommend against Shelly Hansen. While many parents use her services because she is one of the few who has a consistent program running, she behaved very unethically with our family. She blind carbon copied a response to us about her (previously uncommunicated) decision to restructure our child's social group to another family in the group. We were only aware because the family kindly informed us. When we explained to her we thought this was a violation of our privacy and a blatant disregard of social norms, which we were extra unsettled by as she is responsible for teaching social dynamics to young and impressionable people, she did not apologize or acknowledge any wrong doing. There were other concerns, but thought these are quite concrete and may suffice for understanding the seriousness of her behavior. We ceased participating in her group, as did the other family. Had she acknowledged it as a mistake or really any other form of accountability, perhaps we would not have been so concerned.

I also have friends who continue to use her, as they have found it valuable for their child, but I do think other parents should be aware that she does not follow ethical standards of privacy, and you might explore her policy on that, prior to entrusting communications about your family or child's needs. 

We did not use her group, but Dr. Kate Ekman also offers social groups. We were eager to join her group, but at the time there wasn't a group yet formed. Liz Isono is an OT who does social groups, but she is usually very full (we use her social group now, and our child is very happy).