However, for now, here are some ideas to manage multiple interactions:
Help family members understand the idea of your child’s attentional spotlight and the importance of your child’s focusing her attention on a person for increasing learning opportunities.
Ask others to wait for a turn rather than interrupting the child’s interaction with you. (This is just good manners, like waiting for a pause or an invitation to join in rather than interrupting a conversation between two people.)
The same idea can be applied to other children who want to join in, as long as they are old enough to learn the idea of not interrupting others.
“Turn about is fair play”: when another person is engaging your child, be sure not to interrupt or vie for your child’s attention. If you interrupt others and try to show them “how to do it,” you risk discouraging them from interacting with your child. All the people who are in a position to interact with your child will find their own way to do it or will ask for help when they want it.
Summary of Step 3
If you have followed along and carried out the preceding activities, you will have found a number of ways to eliminate distractors and increase your child’s attention to you and your shared activities. See if you agree with most of the statements in the following checklist. If so, you are now armed with important skills for increasing and supporting your child’s attentional focus on you—knowledge you will use for Step 4. If not, start experimenting during play and caregiving activities until you have found some methods that work for you.
Activity Checklist: Have I Identified and Minimized Distractors?
____ During play and caregiving activities, my child is frequently attending to me and to our shared activity.
____ I have noticed what distracts my child and found ways to put away, cover, or hide the distractors in one or more rooms.
____ I have had success at moving my child and myself to a different location to avoid the distractors.
____ When I am interacting with my child for play or caregiving, the television and computer are turned off.
____ When others want to join in, I have helped them with the idea of waiting and taking turns, rather than interrupting and diverting my child’s focus.
What about Pablo? For Pablo’s parents, the remote and the TV were the distractors. As much as they tried to interest him in his toys or physical activities, his attention to the TV prevented them from stepping into the spotlight of his attention. However, they noticed that during bath time he enjoyed squeezing his bath toys and making them squirt water. He also liked it when his parents put shampoo bubbles on his hands and belly. They added a couple of bath toys that wound up and swam, and he loved these and handed them back to his parents to rewind when they wound down. They tried blowing bubbles toward him when he was in the bath, and he loved this too, batting excitedly at the bubbles and looking right at them with a big smile, waiting for more.
His parents also found that Pablo enjoyed being seated on the counter to be dried off after his bath, and they began to “rough him up” with the towel, play peekaboo with it, and play games like “This Little Piggy” with his toys as they dried them off. His mother turned him around toward the mirror, and as he watched, she put her face next to his and made silly faces and noises in the mirror. He enjoyed this, patting at the mirror and then at her face.
All of these observations made Pablo’s parents realize that he did enjoy playing games with toys and people, so they decided to take more control of the TV and remote. They made a point of having the TV off during meals, during bath time, and early in the morning. They also began to dress him and change him on the bed in the room he shared with his brother (instead of in front of the TV), first thing in the morning and in the evening before his bath, and they used these times for play on the bed. In addition, his dad sat with him at the table at breakfast, and his mother sat beside him at dinner. They took more control of his food and drink, giving him little bits so he needed to request them more frequently. They also spent social time interacting during meals—having him help pass things, having him give them little bits, and having him help wipe the high chair tray before he was finished.
Having the TV off during these activities cut down the amount of time Pablo was focused on it and increased his attention to them. However, Pablo still spent hours in front of the TV. Finally, after a few weeks, his parents took a huge step. One night, after he was asleep, they put the remote high up in a cabinet. They took more control of the TV, turning it on for 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour before dinner, and 1 hour in the evening before Pablo’s bath. They set a kitchen timer at these times. When the timer went off, they plugged in and turned on the TV and reset the timer for 1 hour. When the timer rang again, they turned the TV off and unplugged it.
The first morning, Pablo searched and searched for the remote. He was very upset when he couldn’t find it. His mother turned the TV on after breakfast for an hour, while she got dressed and ready for the day, and when the timer went off, she was ready with the stroller and his coat. She turned the TV off and put his coat on him immediately, and they headed off to the park. Pablo cried when the TV went off, but he was distracted by the trip to the park, which also provided some good playtime on the swings. When they got home, his mother changed him on the bed, then put him in his seat at the table for a snack, and she sat down for a cup of coffee. She provided some toys at the table while he was eating—a puzzle, a book—and she managed to hold his attention with these for more time than she expected. He fussed for the TV, but she just ignored the fuss, and after the snack they went into his room for some roughhousing on the bed and then some toy play on the rug.
This was the new routine of the household, and in a few days Pablo stopped searching for the remote and began to show much more interest in playing with his parents—with toys, at the table, and in the bath. Mom and Dad had worked very hard to figure out how to eliminate the competition from the remote and the TV, but soon realized that they couldn’t actually compete directly with these powerful draws; they had to remove the competition altogether. They also had to put up with the fussing and crying that they knew would occur in the first few days, but by substituting other activities their son enjoyed, and getting him out of the living room, they got through the roughest part. And, day by day, Pablo adjusted to the new routine.
Step 4. Identify Your Child’s Social Comfort Zone
Rationale. All people, including children, have different reactions to the physical closeness of other people. Some people need more social distance than others. Others love to be close. To attract your child’s attention to your face and body, it’s important to determine your child’s comfort level with physical closeness.
Activity: Learn Your Child’s Signals about How Close Is Comfortable
You are going to carry out a little experiment here: learning from your child where he is most comfortable watching and enjoying your company. That space is your child’s social comfort zone. Wherever your child seems comfortable looking at you establishes the right distance for learning for your child. It may well be that after a while, when you and your child have developed a number of familiar, enjoyable social routines, your child will be comfortable with your coming in closer. But it’s not really so important how close or far out you are; what’s important is increasing your child’s attention to you and being close enough that you can still touch the materials and your child.
Here are some ideas for learning and responding to your child’s signals about how close is comfortable:
During the face-to-face activities you are using from Step 2, pay attention to how close you are to your child and how she reacts to your closeness. Most parents playing with a young child find themselves within arm’s length of their child’s face, able to touch their child’s face with their hands. This is a natural place to be when talking to a young child and sharing play and emotions. Most young children with ASD can handle this level of closeness comfortably
, though your child may need a little time to get used to a closer distance if it is different from the typical way you interact with your child.
If your child shows marked head turns and looks away from you (this is called gaze aversion), back up and observe how your child responds! Backing up goes against most people’s instincts; the natural tendency is to get closer or to touch the child’s face or do something to draw attention. However, some children need more distance to enjoy face-to-face interaction. If you see your child look away as you come in closer, then back up to where you were before the child looked away. See if you can resume your interactions without eliciting gaze avoidance. If not, back up a little more and try again.
Some children are more changeable than others and may change their reactions very quickly during an activity. They may appear to enjoy your closeness during an interaction one minute and then suddenly shift to a less positive mood, even if the activity and your involvement remained the same. If your child’s mood changes rapidly from happy to unhappy, or the opposite, or the child takes a little longer to “warm up” to an activity, you may want to move around a little. Think about what actions or effects your child may enjoy most about the activity, and show these to your child from a slightly greater distance.
Summary of Step 4
If you have followed along and carried out the preceding activities, you will have found the boundaries of your child’s social comfort zone in several different activities, and will have used this to help your child attend to you and your shared activity. See if you agree with most of the statements in the following checklist. If so, you are now armed with important skills for adjusting your position to maximize your child’s comfort and attention for Step 5. If not, please return to the start of the section, review it, and try again. Seek some advice from another person who knows your child very well.
Activity Checklist: Am I in My Child’s Optimal Social
Comfort Zone?
____ My child is not actively looking away from me or leaning back.
____ My child is looking up at me and my actions sometimes.
____ I am in front of my child and close enough to touch my child and the objects between us.
____ My child seems comfortable—playing with objects, smiling at times or focused on play, calm, interested, or happy/excited.
What about Matthias? When we first met Matthias, his main interest was lying on the couch to stare out the window. Dad developed several physical, active games to interact with Matthias, but it still required a lot of effort from Dad to keep the interaction ongoing. Matthias smiled and laughed when he was thrown onto the couch or “airplaned” around the room, but he did not always persist or actively seek out Dad to continue the game. Dad felt that he could at times take it or leave it. So how could Dad elicit more excitement from Matthias?
To figure out this next step, Dad started to experiment with the social comfort zone to see how slight changes in his own positioning might affect Matthias. Dad started by observing differences in how Matthias responded when Dad’s face was up close versus farther away while he was bouncing Matthias on the couch or circling him around the room. When up close, Matthias at times pushed Dad’s face away, but when Dad placed Matthias down and leaned or sat back from him, Matthias tended to follow Dad with his gaze. Matthias’s attention to Dad was most apparent when Dad took a few steps back from the couch to sit on the floor. Matthias got off the couch and ran over for Dad to lift him up in the air. Dad continued experimenting with the physical distance between himself and Matthias, and realized that for physical games, having more distance worked better. It seemed to ignite more effort in Matthias to seek out Dad and continue the game. This was the same for playing an airplane game or swinging him around the room. When Dad stopped to place Matthias on the ground and took a few steps back, Matthias was more likely to look at or lift his arms up in response to Dad’s open arms than when Dad crouched down right in front of Matthias’s face and asked him. The same was true when Matthias was tired of an activity. Dad saw that a little extra space helped him interpret when Matthias was truly finished with a game, because he did not pursue Dad but instead looked elsewhere in the room. Dad was then able to confirm that Matthias was “all done” with an activity and follow his eye gaze to the next play idea. Dad felt more successful in understanding his son’s attempts at communication and in building more interactive games for participation.
Step 5. Join In by Following Your Child’s Lead
It is very common for parents to interact with their child by creating a new activity and offering it when the child is already attending to something else. The child with autism might be engaged in opening and closing a door or rolling a car back and forth, and when Mom or Dad interrupts to propose an unrelated activity, the child might ignore the parent or even become angry and upset. This can make the parent feel like a failure, or at least feel frustrated by the child’s lack of attention or interest in the new activity. Instead of trying to direct your child’s attention to something, in this step you will practice following your child’s attentional focus.
Rationale. Following children’s attention as a way of teaching them may seem “unnatural” or “backwards.” We are very used to teaching by instructing and directing our children. However, many studies have taught us that children, especially young children in the language-learning years, learn language more easily if parents and others follow their children’s attention and talk about what the children are already attending to. Redirecting their attention breaks their concentration and runs the risk of losing it altogether. The following activities use the four main techniques that we employ in ESDM to follow children’s attention. These are major teaching skills that you will use again and again as you follow these chapters along, so practice them until they come easily and naturally to you.
The watchword for Step 5 is this: “Where you lead, I will follow.” Instead of trying to change your child’s activity or focus of attention, try to follow your child’s attention into her current activity and join your child in it. You can use the objects, toys, or activities your child is focused on to build an interaction.
Activity: Use Active Listening
A great place to begin is with active listening. You may know that phrase from other contexts, and if so, you know that it means listening, really listening, to what the other person is saying and working hard to understand the person’s intended meaning. With other adults, we try to understand by listening and by asking questions for clarification, by restating what we have heard, and by giving supportive comments. When we are active listeners of a young child at play, we position ourselves in front of the child so it’s easy to share gaze, watch what the child is doing to understand his goals, narrate his actions, make admiring comments, and add sound effects or drama (drum rolls, cheers). We might help the child—picking up a toy that has been dropped, pushing something closer that the child wants. We also might imitate the child’s actions with another object.
This kind of active listening and commenting can occur in many situations with your child. It creates a situation in which both of you are sharing attention to the same thing, and sharing attention is a powerful tool for child learning. It makes language meaningful, and it puts you into the child’s attentional spotlight—on center stage, engaging and responding to your child’s play (without interrupting or changing your child’s focus). Active listening can also help to maintain your child’s attention to the activity, so you can add more learning opportunities. It communicates to your toddler: “I’m here, I’m interested in you, I see what you are doing, and I’m doing it too.” As you join and follow your child and become more active—with comments, approval, sound effects, and mirroring actions—your child will attend more to you.
Activity: Narrate
Joining your child begins when you share your interest in her activity by watching, smiling, nodding, and gesturing (active listening). It’s easy to proceed from actively and approvingly watc
hing your child’s actions to being your child’s narrator. As you watch actively, add simple single words or short phrases to describe what your child is doing. (The reason for using simple language is to help your child begin to hear individual words and associate them with objects and activities. If your language is too complex, then your child may not understand which word or phrase describes the object you’re holding or the action you’re demonstrating.) For example, if the child is picking up a toy train on the floor, you might say, “It’s a train!” As the child rolls it, you might say, “Chugachugachug!” and help the child roll it. If the child pokes at the wheel, you might say, “That’s the wheel!” The chart at the very end of this chapter provides ideas for narrating other kinds of activities.
An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn Page 10