Summary= Full guidance-Partial guidance- Verbal prompts
Teaching new skills and how to fade out physical assistance with autism and children with developmental disabilities.
Parents and caregivers often want to teach an autistic or developmentally delayed children. After identifying a targeted behavior and assessing what level of assistance is needed. The person teaching should start at the level the child is currently functioning at. If the child needs complete or full guidance to perform the task that is the level of assistance to start at. Next after reinforcing the child at this level then move to less assistance or partial guidance. This can be done by moving gradually up the arm for example or using less physical contact to perform the task such as just one finger or sporadic touching of the arm. After reinforcing the child with partial guidance one touch and fading away from the child. Perhaps just giving one or two instructions and one touch and then reinforcing when he performs the task. Finally the trainer moves away physically from the child and just gives the one or two specific instructions and then reinforcers the child. This guidance training procedure can be used with almost any skill you want to teach your child.
Summary= Full guidance-Partial guidance- Verbal prompts
Autistic children frequently have accompanying sensory medically involved issues that should be addressed by parents either before or during the treatment to assure more success with training. The following is a list of areas to look at and refer the child to specialist if it appears there are problems.
1. Hearing referral should be suggested to the parent or caretaker if any deficit is noted or suspected during the behavioral assessment. This might be referral to an audiologist or to an ENT or someone with specialization in the area of hearing.
2. A full physical should be done to evaluate if there is any pain that could interfere with perceptions of senses. For example, allergy or tonsils may interfere with the ability to swallow or learn speech if the client senses pain when they speak.
3. The evaluation of the vision of a child is important in determining if they are able to see. Recently, it was determined that autistic children often focus on the mouth more than the eyes. It makes sense that increase his ability to see a face through glasses or other corrective treatment for vision might be helpful. If one eye is "lazy" this might interfere with perceptions and sensory awareness of the environment.
4. Some children may not have good strength in there fingers which may limit there ability to grasp and feel certain items. Exercises or occupational therapy might strengthen there ability to grasp objects and more sensory awareness during the manipulation of the objects.
5. Parents might want to evaluate dental health too. The pain of a tooth may distract the child and reduce his awareness of other activities around him.
6. Preventative measures should be taken to maintain peak sensory awareness. For example, brushing the hair away from his/her ears to prevent infection or water from getting into the ear canal. Drying the ears may also prevent any infection or problems with water in the ears.
7. Pain in any part of the body may distract from the child's ability to focus on what is going on in his environment. This includes stomach aches, pain in tonsils and any injuries. Even a stomach ache may lead to the child focusing on that pain instead of the task requested.
In general, referrals should be made when any problem is suspected during the functional assessment. The healthier and happier the child is the faster he will learn. Pain and medical conditions can distract the child awareness through his senses and lead to slower learning and development during early childhood.
Obesity is very common in the past few years in children. Parents can use some of the following behavioral techniques to assist their children to maintain or loose weight when it is recommended by their doctor.
1. Environmental structuring of the home is a basic behavioral technique that can be used. One example is to have only healthy snacks in the refrigerator and kitchen so that when the child is hungry he will eat something healthy.
2. A second environmental technique is to reduce access to the refrigerator. Some newer refrigerators have locks that can be activated or deactivated. This is particularly useful with extreme obesity or Kids with problems such as "Prader Willi" syndrome.
3. A third technique is scheduling which leads to less snacking between meals. Children can be informed that eating is to occur only at meals and during two snacks during the day.
4. Another behavioral technique is to reduce the size of the plate at meals so that it looks like more food.
5. Encouraging children to chew each bite at least 10 times so that they digest the food.
6. Eating only when hungry and not for social reasons can help children to loose weight.
7. Parents can take time to explaining long term and short term consequences of weight gain and over eating or eating unhealthy.
8. Children can be encouraged to participate in shopping and purchasing healthy items rather then items that are high calorie.
9. Parents can purchase books to read that talk about healthy eating and eating food from each food group.
10. Parents might try regularly scheduled weight and height measurements to increase awareness of health and eating habits and the effect on weight.
11. Another concern is making sure to schedule specific limited amount of time for sedentary activities like computer or television. Exercise time should also be included in the schedule each day.
It is never to early to start encouraging healthy eating habits, reinforcing these habits and discussing consequences for you children to encourage healthy eating habits in your children as they become adults!
Adaptive equipment and ABA training of skills for children with autism or developemental disabilities.
Behavior therapist frequently use adaptive equipment during training and later if possible fade out the equipment. For self-care skills training they might use a small potty for the child to make it easier to sit initially during training. For eating skills a built up spoon, plate or non-skid mat might be used. Adaptive equipment can be attained from catalogues, online or with the assistance of occupational therapy. Later after the skill is accomplished some of the adaptive equipment can be adjusted to other sizes and gradually faded out.
Activities such as walking, riding a bike mike also start with training using the adaptive equipment and as the person learns the skill it can be faded out to the next least restrictive assisstive device. Children with developmental disabilities often have some motor skills problems as well. Motivation to overcome the disability can sometimes result in fading the device partially, fading to less restrictive devices and discontinuing the use of the device completely or just using the device for more strenuous longer activities.