Focused social supports provide additional strategies to help children with challenging behavior learn and interact appropriately with adults and peers. Like environmental, materials, task, and routine adaptations, focused social supports can be embedded in daily routines and education activities and include:

• Peer and sibling support
   
• Social stories
   
• Positive behavior supports
   

Peer and sibling support

Peers and young family members provide many opportunities for children with disabilities to watch and then model age appropriate behavior and skills:

• Buddy systems can be organized for routines e.g., going to the bathroom, lining up to go outside, or completing a task e.g., building a tower or making a pizza from play doh.
   
• Peers can also provide help and guidance and sometimes can “transform” unfamiliar or unconventional behavior into their ongoing play and classroom activities e.g., a child who is very active ferries messages from one block “ship” to another during pretend play.

Planned peer assistance: Ms. Catherine, a Head Start teacher, talks with her children about class jobs for the day. She assigns Benny to be the flag holder, Jessica to pass our napkins at snack, and Sarah to be “Benny’s helper.” When it’s time to pledge allegiance, Sarah jumps up and moves Benny in his wheelchair to the front of the room so he can proudly wave the flag as everyone recites the pledge together (Horn et al, 2002).
 

Examples of focused social interventions with peers that can be embedded within an early childhood group setting:

• arranging for interesting activities to take place near a child with mobility issues to encourage interaction with other children;
   
• setting up situations and learning activities that require taking turns or coordinating action (e.g., fixing snack together, doing class jobs in pairs, acting out part of a story with a peer, limiting crayons so children must share colors);
   
• joining childrens’ play to initiate an activity or interaction, then stepping aside when the interaction starts so children can maintain the momentum without adult involvement;
   
• encouraging play dates after school by sharing suggestions for play mates with parents;
   
• prompting associative and cooperative behavior e.g., guide a talkative child to play in the dress up corner next to a solitary child, then encourage the children to talk about their pretend characters (Buysse et al, 2008; McWilliam & Casey,2008).