jANINE asked:
Autism Social Stories – Autism social Training
….And how to help…your autistic child….
One of the biggest problems for autistic children is difficulty in social interaction.
This problem is heightened by their difficulties with speech and language. Autism also seems to create problems with the ability to mind read, or being able to tell or guess at what another person might be thinking.
Normally developing children will observe others and guess, through a combination of tone and body language, what the other person may be thinking or feeling.
However, with autism this naturally developed skill is missing and so the ability to predict what another is feeling or thinking is not there…
This lack of being able to mind read can lead to social mistakes even for those with high functioning autism….And of cause social mistakes may lead to the autistic person causing hurt feelings, asking inappropriate questions, acting oddly or generally open themselves up to hostility, teasing, bullying and social isolation.
Quite often parents and educators of children with autism feel unable to communicate and interact with their autistic child.
Sometimes the autistic child may appear not to hear what has been said to them, they will often fail to respond to their name and can sometimes be indifferent to any attempts of communication with them.
By careful observation it can often be determined which way the child communicates, in this ways the educator or parent can build on this strength.
For example, if the child is non-verbal, rather then communicating with them by using words, try using gestures. The child with autism may use some of the following to communicate: crying, taking the adults hand to the thing they want, looking at what they want, reaching, using pictures and echolalia.Â
Echolalia is the repetition of other people’s words and is a common with the autistic child. Some autistic children will constantly repeat a rhyme or something they heard on TV.
Echolalia is a good sign it means speech is developing, in time the child may repeat something that was said to them, like drink or toilet.
Developing communication with your autistic child will be a slow process, but eventually you will make progress.
Autistic children tend to be visual learners, using pictures and images is a good way to communicate what you are expecting of them or wanting from them.
For, example at dinner time a picture or image of the family sitting around the table and a plate of food will tell the child it is time to eat.
You can introduce social skills stories to help with this…A good well written social skills story will have high pictorial content as well as text.
These short pieces of text, normally one page long will have pictorial cues as to what is happening and what the child is expected to do. In time the autistic child will recognize the stories and will naturally re-act in the way the story intends them too.
For example…Dinner time a social skills story may have a picture of the family sitting around the table…a plate, cutlery, maybe a cup, some food…The adult can show the autistic child the story with the colorful images and they can then read the short descriptive pieces of text will pointing to the appropriate image.
…These social skills stories are normally printable so they can be used time and time again, in-fact they can be used for every situation you need help with.
These social skills stories can become like a best friend to the autistic child giving the clear and precise instructions of how to act in all situations, Plus they are a fantastic communication device for a parent-giving you the tools you need to help communicate with your autistic child.