Parent- and Self-Reported Social Skills Importance in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The team asked parents and youth with autism to rate the importance of different social skills.

They used a survey to see where the two groups agreed and where they split.

No one tried to teach new skills; they just wanted to know what each side valued.

Parents and kids both care about social skills, but they pick different ones as “most important.”

The gap shows up in every domain—conversation, play, emotion reading, and problem solving.

Severity of autism shaped ratings, yet the parent-youth mismatch stayed.

Perez et al. (2015) saw the same mismatch one year earlier. Their high-school teens said social skills matter less and claimed they already use them—echoing the 2016 split.

Bottema-Beutel et al. (2016) asked teens what kind of help they want. Kids asked for peer-led, low-pressure clubs. Pair the two studies: teens shrug at adult-chosen targets but engage when peers run the show.

Žic Ralić et al. (2025) extended the idea to kids who have both autism and intellectual disability. Parents in that study rated social-emotional skills even lower, hinting that importance ratings dip further when ID joins ASD.

Together the four papers form a timeline: first note the disagreement, then ask kids how they want to learn, then check if ID changes the picture.

If you write goals that only parents care about, the student may tune out. Start sessions by showing both lists—parent picks and student picks—and let the student rank the top three. Use peer partners and shared activities, not adult lectures, to hit the targets everyone agrees on.