Friendship Skills as Behavior Support: Creating Access, Inclusion, and Peer Success for Children with IEPs
Originally presented by Racehl Varela Bernardin on September 3, 2026.
PLEASE NOTE: STAR NET Region II and VI is unable to award continuing education credit for viewing this recording.
A child cannot build friendships using skills they have never been taught. When children struggle to join play, ask for materials, wait for a turn, or solve conflicts with peers, challenging behavior often becomes the method they use to get their needs met. For children with IEPs, these missing social skills can become significant barriers to participation, inclusion, and peer relationships.
This session explores how Pyramid Model Friendship Skills can be used as developmentally appropriate replacement behaviors that increase access to friendships, social-emotional learning, and meaningful participation in inclusive early childhood environments. Participants will learn how to explicitly teach friendship skills, embed them throughout daily routines, and incorporate them into problem-solving supports that provide children with clear, actionable steps during social conflicts.
The session will also examine how friendship skills can be integrated into individualized supports, including IEP goals, behavior intervention plans, MTSS interventions, and visual support systems, to promote independence, reduce challenging behavior, and support successful interactions with peers across classroom settings.
Participants will:
1. Explain how Pyramid Model Friendship Skills serve as replacement behaviors that increase access to peer interactions, social-emotional learning, and inclusive classroom experiences for children with IEPs and other support needs.
2. Identify opportunities to intentionally embed friendship skills across classroom routines, centers, transitions, jobs, and peer interactions to promote meaningful participation and social competence.
3. Use friendship skills within problem-solving supports to provide children with clear, accessible, and actionable strategies for navigating social conflicts and peer challenges.
4. Connect friendship skills to individualized supports, including MTSS interventions, behavior intervention plans, IEP goals, and progress-monitoring systems.
5. Implement explicit instruction, modeling, positive descriptive feedback, and reinforcement strategies that increase children’s independent use of friendship skills across settings and activities.
