STOP and THINK Friendship DVD Package

In response to the serious concerns about the pervasive effects of poor peer friendships and also the high incidence of social problems in our community, programs specifically designed for training social skills in children have proliferated over the past decades. The most effective are cognitive-behavioural programs where children are taught how to solve social problems positively and how to act in pro-social ways. Several studies have shown that children who receive social skills training in their early years cope better with stressors in adolescence with higher self-esteem, academic success and social status, and lower incidences of delinquency, drug abuse, school drop-out, suicide and other emotional-psychological disturbance.

STOP THINK DO is an Australian cognitive-behavioural social skills training program originally devised as a treatment for children and adolescents with social-behavioural difficulties. The program may be run in clinics or schools, with individuals or groups. The approach is both didactic and experiential, teaching children specific social skills and a process of relating to others so that they can make and keep friends. In liaison with educationalists, STOP THINK DO has been adapted for teaching directly in the classroom as a social skills curriculum with a preventive focus, aiming to improve the social skills of all children from a young age to prevent emotional-social-behavioural problems from developing.