Mara McLoughlin is a speech language pathologist and the founder of IRL Social Skills. She spent years in schools helping non-speaking autistic students find a way to communicate, and kept noticing a different group nobody was helping: the kids doing fine academically, causing no trouble, and quietly struggling with everything social. No academic impact, so no services.

Her programme is built on the PEERS model out of UCLA, runs from age eleven through adults, and teaches parents alongside the kids.

A few things from the conversation I keep thinking about. That small talk is big talk, and that listening is the underrated skill, because listening is how you get the information to adjust. That the skills taught to younger kids are based in play, and then relationships shift to being based in conversation around middle school, and nobody teaches that part. And that so-called soft skills are hard skills.

We also get into why online interaction doesn't build the same capacity, since there's no reciprocity and nothing happens in real time, so brains get conditioned not to respond in the moment.

The part I'd point people toward is on belonging. Mara makes the case that a lonely kid who finds three hundred likes on a comment has found belonging, and will follow it wherever it goes, which is exactly how extremist communities recruit. Nobody else offered them a group. She distinguishes fitting in from belonging, and the difference matters: fitting in is squeezing yourself into a space, belonging is being somewhere you don't have to.

She also recommends the documentary Join or Die, about Robert Putnam and his book Bowling Alone.

Links referenced in this episode:

• irlsocialskills.com
• instagram.com/irlsocialskills
• youtube.com/irlsocialskills
• coachjohnbush.com

This episode touches on suicide risk among autistic people. If you're struggling, you can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 in the US.