Teaching a Child with Autism to Wait and Accept No: Essential Skills
Learn how to teach a child with autism the vital skills of waiting and accepting no for an answer. Discover strategies and practical steps to help improve their quality of life through behavior analysis techniques.
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ESSENTIAL SKILLS: TEACHING A CHILD WITH AUTISM TO WAIT AND ACCEPT A Comarniceanu Alexandra, BCBA REFUSAL
As behavior analysts we teach a lot of skills because we aim to increase the quality of life of the people we work with. Two major skills that have a huge impact on a person s quality of life are the ability to wait and the ability to take no for an answer.
THE ABILITY TO WAIT Materials needed: a visual timer on your phone, an hour glass, a kitchen timer, etc. Steps: 1. Measure the time interval the child is able to wait (when he wants something), before starting to emit challenging behaviors. 2. Start from there, and select you initial time interval by adding a short amount of time.
3. Use your child preferences in order to teach this skill. Think of the things he likes and group them into two categories: things he really, really likes and things he moderately likes. Start with the second category when teaching. 4. Create a lot of learning opportunities throughout the day: keep the visual timer with you and wait for situation in which your child indicates that he wants something of moderate value (stimuli from the second category you identified). 5. After he shows you that he wants a specific item, you quickly show him the visual timer and you ask him to wait.
6. After the initial time interval passes, we immediately hand the desired item to the child. We make sure to create at least 10 learning opportunities throughout the day, in different contexts, with different people and objects. Generalization is crucial! As the child starts to have success, we increase the time interval gradually, so that he is able to wait for longer intervals.
Also, when we pass the 1 minute mark, we can start to introduce some easy activities while waiting. Attention: the visual timer needs to be in sight at all times! As soon as he is able to wait for variable durations for items in the second category (moderate value), we move to items in the first category (high value) and we repeat the process.
ACCEPTING NO FOR AN ANSWER After teaching the child to wait, we can move on to teaching another essential ability: accepting being told no . Steps: 1. Use your child preferences in order to teach this skill. Think of the things he likes and group the into two categories: things he really, really likes and things he moderately likes. Start with the second category when teaching.
2. Create a lot of learning opportunities throughout the day and wait for situation in which your child indicates that he wants something of moderate value (stimuli from the second category you have identified). 3. At that point, quickly tell him that you can t give him that, but that you can give him a choice between two other options of the same value as the item you refused to give. 4. Moreover, you will show him the two items offered, as you are offering the choice.
5. If he chooses one of them, you simply give it to him and allow him to enjoy it. 6. If he emits challenging behaviors, he will loose access to the two items offered as a choice. As soon as he has success and is able to accept being denied access to items of moderate value (second category), we move to items in the first category (high value) and we repeat the process. We make sure to generalize the skills and create opportunities in different environments, with different items and different people.
