Talking to an autistic—part 2

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When we were in Bangalore recently, our visits to NIMHANS and COMMDEALL taught us a great deal on the communication aspect. The guidelines given to us were based on our son’s age and ability.

·         TALK, Talk, Talk…………Talk as much as you can. For instance go beyond telling this is cricket and there are two teams. Go a step ahead tell him this is IPL, it is a 20-20 game, the match is telecast live….Otherwise his learning process would get very badly affected. The bottom line is to treat him as an older boy.

·         It is very important to teach our kids verbs and not just nouns. Flash card learning (pointing to the correct action words on the flash card) alone does not help. Generalize a lot.

·         Make him request, label things.

·         Play small games such as I name a fruit, you name one. Lets us label and point to all the objects, people in a given room or house.

·         Be very firm with a NO. Draw clear boundaries and communicate to him what is not permissible.

·         Teach rhymes with actions.

·         Let the child be thorough with the Yes/no concept. For instance you put a question to him. Is this a pen? He says no. End the question with that. Do not elaborate further as to this is an eraser.

·         Use reasoning with your child to explain situations and avoid a meltdown.

·         Move on from first, second to three step commands.

·         Introduce the concept of  delayed reinforcement. He finishes 3/5 activities and he gets his reward.

·         Remember to associate gestures and exclamations with remarks such as wah-wah for crying, oh –oh, ouch……

·         Sequencing of activities involving an event such as making a salad, sandwich, tea…..

·         Work on following a melody pattern.

·         Working on oromotor movements, COMMDEALL has an  oromotor kit. Start with simple CV (consonant-vowel) combinations.

·         Try and make opportunities where the siblings can be involved.

Comments

sudha said…
i came to know of ur site thru the link sent by a parent in one of orkut communities. am quite impressed by the way emotions are expressed by way of your wonderful writing...one thing for sure... think we learn so much from them... am proud to be a mom of one.
August 3, 2009 at 10:40 AM
viji said…
Thank you and what you said is very true
August 9, 2009 at 12:21 PM
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