Do you ever wonder how to get your child to look in your general direction?  A bottle of bubbles and a wand may help.

Picture courtesey of http://www.inlightimes.com/ 

I used to spend a lot of time watching a little girl at camp playing with bottles of bubbles, the sheer delight on her face as she blew and watched the bubbles was just wonderful.  Since then, I have used bubbles with many of the children I have taught.  Here are a couple of suggestions for using bubbles as a teaching resource:

Making requests

When teaching your child to make requests, you want to find things that they have to ask for over and over again.  Food is obviously good for this, because once you’ve eaten a piece of food, you have to request more.  Bubbles are equally good if your child is interested in them - if you hold on to the bottle, then your child will have to make repeated requests to either redip the wand, or for you to blow the bubbles for them.  Bubbles have the advantage of being sugar and calorie-free!

Eye Contact

I started this piece by asking if you had trouble getting your child to look at you.  Generally children will naturally look at things they are interested in - so if your child does like watching bubbles being blown, then use this to your advantage.  Blow some bubbles to get your child’s attention, then when you have it, try pausing sometimes with the wand at your lips - your child’s natural response may be to look at you to see why you have not blown the bubbles.  As soon as you have some kind of eye-contact, blow the bubbles and get very excited.  Build on this, so that your child begins to look expectantly at you.  However, remember to have fun - don’t pause too long and lose interest.  Enjoy!

Ever thought about using a bouncy castle with your child?

Regular readers of this blog may have gathered that I am a huge advocate of playing with your child.  Here’s another way to have heaps of fun together if you haven’t already discovered it.

If you are fortunate enough to have a big enough space, then I seriously recommend buying a small bouncy castle (I have one that is 8ft by 8ft) - if you shop around they can be relatively inexpensive, I bought one for less than $150 complete with pump.  It is fascinating to watch this thing inflate in just 25 seconds!  Then you and your child are all set for some serious fun - whenever you want.

As a teacher I love it when my lessons go well, and the children are learning.  However, sometimes my lessons do not go well and I get indifference from my students rather than enthusiasm.  With mainstream children, you do at least get some level of respect from the students just because you are the teacher, so they may listen anyway.  However, one of the things I love about teaching children with autism, is that if I’m boring them, I know about it right away!

I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, whether you are a parent/carer or a teacher of a child with autism.  Sometimes things we find interesting, or useful, have no interest for our children.  We have a choice in these situations, do we keep metaphorically banging our heads together, or try something else?

I remember trying to teach a child to type - I gave him some words type that I thought would be useful for him to learn as he typed.  The first day did not go well - I put this down to it being a new activity.  The second day did not go well - I put this down to his general dislike of doing work.  The third day did not go well - I figured we would persevere, perhaps after a few more days he would at least accept it, if not actually liking it…

Fortunately, on the afternoon of the third day, when he had the opportunity to choose to work on the computer, this very same pupil chose to spend 20 minutes typing!  The only difference was he was in control of the words he was typing.

Remember my initial intention was that he learnt to type, so I quickly adapted my lesson for day 4 to allow him to choose his own words.  No more problems with motivation.

If your child seems to be disinterested in what you are teaching - see if you can find out how to teach it a different way.  Saves a lot of headaches, metaphorical or otherwise.

It is so natural to teach children to say “sorry” that we probably never really stop to think about it.  Certainly I am very glad that my parents and teachers ingrained that word into me - saying “sorry”, and meaning it, no doubt smoothed my way through childhood and continues to help me maintain my adult relationships.  However, should we teach young children with autism to apologise?

I suppose it depends very much on the child’s level of social understanding - autism affects each child in a different way.  I know one child for example who really does seem to understand that saying “sorry” is significant and is very resistant to saying it after he has done wrong.  However, I have worked with many more who just do not really get it.  For those children, teaching them to say “sorry” seems to be more for our benefit than theirs.  Perhaps there is no particular harm in this if there are no other consequences.

However, I think there can be a danger that when we teach them to apologise for unacceptable behaviour all that we teach them in reality is the following sequence:

Perform behaviour (perhaps hitting, spitting, etc), get interesting reaction from adult (perhaps yelling, or maybe just saying predictable phrase like “no hitting”), perform random action (saying “sorry”), get praise (for performing random action of saying “sorry”).

If the child really does learn this sequence, then we are not really teaching him to stop the behaviour, which is what we want after all.

In my view it is much more effective to give your child lots of attention, perhaps through play, when he is behaving appropriately and to withdraw this attention when he behaves in a way that is unacceptable to you.  This way the undesirable behaviour does not get rewarded and is much more likely to stop sooner.

You can worry about teaching “sorry” later, when your child does seem to show more social understanding.

After all, you and your child are more likely to be kept safe by your child not exhibiting the undesirable behaviours than by him exhibiting them and saying “sorry” afterwards.

I’m going to a wedding this afternoon and I’ll be taking my digital camera with me.  As I was putting the battery on charge earlier, I was reminded how much I use the camera with my class and how effective it has been.  So I thought I’d share that here.

Photographs are a great visual aid, but, if you are anything like me with a traditional film camera, the photos can stay undeveloped in the camera for ages - in fact come to think of it, I think I have had an unfinished roll of film in a camera for the past 2 years!

Digital cameras on the other hand allow you to see the image immediately.  It is this immediacy that makes them such a fantastic tool to use with children.  Many children I have taught recently have been fascinated by them.  If you haven’t tried using one with your child, I urge you to give it a try.  Here are some tips:

* Choose a camera with a big screen if you can afford it - I use a camera with a 2.5 inch screen which seems adequate.  This allows you and your child to see the image easily

* Use it often.  Do not be precious about it - it’s a learning tool for your child, if you can afford to let your child play with it, do so.

* Don’t worry about the quality of your photos - the process is more important than how the image comes out.

* After a session of taking photos with your child - review the images with them straight away.  Play back the images on a big screen, at home I suggest using either your computer or your tv (many cameras come with cables that allow this).  At school, I suggest using an interactive whiteboard if you have access to one.

Some of the things that have come out of using a digital camera with my pupils include:

* engagement and focus (especially while reviewing photos)

* motivation (work first then you can use the camera)

* spontaneous speech (eg naming things or people in the photos)

* use of modelled language (eg John is climbing)

* talking about emotions

* personal history - talking about things we have done in the photos

* another reason, if one were needed, for children to use the computer

There are many other things the children get from using the digital camera, and you can probably think of some quite easily.  However, if you are new to this, then I hope this has whet your appetite.

Sometimes I just take photos with the children so that we can review and talk about them.  Other times the children will suggest things to take photos of, eg themselves performing different actions.  However, as a teacher, most of the time I have a focus for the sessions and I know what I want to get from the review session before I take the photos.

Don’t be scared to just play with it though.  You may find lots of learning happening very easily and naturally.

Anyway, I have a wedding to go to!