PEERS® Online Social Skills Training & Groups

Online Social Skills Groups for Autism – PEERS-Informed Training for All Ages

Here’s something a lot of parents and families already know but don’t always say out loud: wanting friends and knowing how to make them are two completely different things. For a lot of kids and young adults on the autism spectrum, the desire for connection is absolutely there — but the social rules that seem to come naturally to everyone else? Those don’t always click on their own.

That’s not a character flaw. It’s just how the brain works for a lot of people. And the good news is that social skills — real ones, not scripts — can be explicitly taught, practiced, and actually used in everyday life.

At ASAP ABA, our online social skills groups for autism are built around exactly that. Live sessions. Small groups. Led by BCBA clinicians who understand behavior deeply and know how to make skill-building feel manageable rather than overwhelming.

What Are Online Social Skills Groups for Autism — and What Makes PEERS Different

PEERS (Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills) is an evidence-based social skills curriculum originally developed at UCLA. It’s one of the most rigorously researched social skills programs specifically designed for people with autism, ADHD, and related social communication differences — with outcomes documented across hundreds of independent studies.

Our groups are PEERS-informed. That means our BCBA clinicians use the PEERS framework as the foundation for every session — not as a rigid script, but as a proven structure for teaching friendship skills in a way that actually sticks. Every session includes direct instruction, role-play with real-time coaching, and a weekly “socialization assignment” — something concrete to try out in real life before the next group meets.

That homework piece matters more than it might sound. The group is where the skill gets introduced and practiced safely. The assignment is where it gets applied — in a real conversation at school, at work, or online. That’s the gap most social skills programs miss, and PEERS was specifically designed to close it.

Who These Groups Are Right For

A formal diagnosis isn’t required to join. What we’re looking for is whether a participant is motivated to build better social connections and ready to engage in a structured group setting. That gets clarified during the enrollment process.

Our groups tend to work well for people who:

• Want friends but freeze up when it comes to starting a conversation
• Run out of things to say quickly — conversations die and they don’t know how to restart them
• Get excluded, misread, or left out in ways that are hard to make sense of
• Find social situations exhausting enough that they avoid them afterward
• Struggle with teasing, conflict, or rejection and don’t know how to handle it without it escalating
• Do better when the rules are clear and there’s a real person coaching them through it

Age-Specific Groups We Run

Preschool Group — Ages 3 to 6

The youngest group runs differently from the others: it’s in person, at community parks in your area. That’s a deliberate choice. Little kids learn social skills through play, movement, and actual contact with other kids — not through a screen. A park setting means they can practice turn-taking, joining play, and handling conflict in the same kind of unstructured environment where those skills actually need to work.

This group draws from both PEERS and the JASPER model (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation) — two of the most well-supported frameworks for early social-communication development. Skills targeted: sharing, joining in, greeting peers, emotional regulation, following group routines without shutting down.

Locations to be announced. Contact us to be notified when registration opens near you.

Adolescent Group — Ages 11 to 17

Middle and high school social dynamics are hard — even for kids without any social communication differences. For teenagers with autism, navigating lunch tables, group chats, peer drama, and unspoken social hierarchies can feel like reading a language nobody ever actually taught them.

This group meets online weekly and focuses on what matters most at this age: starting and maintaining conversations without things getting awkward, getting into friend groups, making real plans with peers, handling rejection and conflict without it blowing up, texting and social media etiquette, and knowing how to advocate for yourself socially.

Young Adults Group — Ages 18 and Up

After high school, the built-in social structure disappears. College, work, and adult life all require building a social network from scratch — and the rules are different, less explicit, and often never directly explained to anyone, let alone someone who’s already navigating social differences.

This group focuses on making and keeping friends as an adult, workplace and college social expectations, communicating in romantic relationships (where appropriate and desired by participants), and handling conflict and rejection in a way that keeps relationships intact rather than ending them.

Why Families Pick ASAP ABA for Online Social Skills Groups

There’s no shortage of social skills programs. Here’s what makes ours different in practice — not just on paper:

• Every session is led by a BCBA — not a volunteer, not an aide, not a graduate student working toward hours. A credentialed behavior analyst who knows how to break skills into steps, prompt systematically, and fade support over time.
• Groups are small by design. Every participant gets real coaching time, not just a seat in the room.
• It’s entirely online (except the preschool group) — no commuting, no geographic barriers, no scheduling chaos. If you’re in a rural area or simply have a packed week, this still works.
• The ABA approach to social learning means skills are taught systematically, practiced in context, and reinforced — not just modeled once and hoped for.
• Parent coaching is included where applicable, because generalization doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the adults in a kid’s life know what to reinforce and how.