Facilitating the Interpersonal Development of Young Handicapped Children

Although social development is a commonly cited educational goal, little systematic programming occurs for the development of social skills among the preschool handicapped, especially for the development of interpersonal skills. Insight into the reasons for this neglect leads to suggestions for correcting it. 1 Few teachers or child development spe-cialists would question the importance of ac-quiring interpersonal skills at an early age. A common goal of early childhood intervention is for children to gain confidence in their ability to interact with others. The ability to make and keep friends may be the single most important skills for young children to acquire (Anastasiow, 1981; Hartup, 1978). Social skill acquisition is of heightened im-portance among handicapped children. Whereas most nonhandicapped children ac-quire interpersonal strategies without direct intervention, research with exceptional pop-ulations suggests that handicapped students are less adept at acquiring social skills. Com-pared with their nonhandicapped peers, they are less accepted (Goodman, Gottlieb, & Harrison, 1972; Johnson, 1950), less popu-lar (Siperstein, Bopp, & Bak, 1978), lower in social status (Bryan, 1974), disliked and ig-nored by others (Lerner, Mardell-Czud-nowski, & Goldberg, 1981), and more prone to emotional and behavioral problems (Ches