An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn

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An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn Page 14

by Rogers, Sally J.


  Turn taking also establishes a kind of balance to the interactions. No one is the boss, and no one is the follower. Instead, the two partners take turns directing and following. One leads, and the other follows; then the follower may lead something new, and the previous leader now becomes the follower into the new routine. We refer to this as sharing control of the play. When partners share control, the activity is balanced. Both partners lead, and both partners follow. This requires each to communicate to the other, back and forth. Neither controls the other or the activity. They share control and trade the lead back and forth. Your child takes control when she makes a choice of objects; acts on a toy; refuses a toy; fusses or reaches; speaks; or communicates with her eyes, body, and facial expressions. You take control when you offer a choice, demonstrate a toy, hand something to your child, or ask a question. Sharing control in turn taking creates an activity that both partners build together—a shared activity. The balance between partners increases the learning opportunities available for the child. It fosters the child’s initiative and spontaneity by giving the child some control. It fosters the child’s attention to the partner when the partner has the lead by focusing that spotlight of attention on the partner—the leader. Each shift of the spotlight highlights a learning opportunity for the child.

  What’s Happening in Autism?

  The social play routines—sensory social routines—that we have encouraged you to build with your child in Chapter 5 build on turn taking. The back-and-forth interaction of you starting a game, your child responding with indications of enjoying the game and wanting more, and you continuing—this whole back-and-forth dance builds the child’s awareness of turn taking and of the whole purpose of communicating. This comes easily to most children, but it is more difficult for children with ASD. They may be less aware of their partner’s turns, because they are less tuned in to the subtle communications of eyes, face, and voice that speak volumes to most babies. For children with ASD, the volume of those communications seems to be turned down.

  Joni wanted so much to play with her 2-year-old son, Jacob. He was her first child, and she had looked forward to being a mother and being a good playmate for her child. She had gathered many toddler toys from garage sales and hand-me-downs, and she had cleared out space in the family room TV shelves for his toys. But all he ever wanted to play with were his little cars, and all he wanted to do with them was drive them back and forth along the edge of the coffee table or carpet. He liked to watch the wheels turn as he ran them along. Joni tried to play cars with Jacob, but he got upset when she touched them, and he wanted them back. She tried to show him how to use the toy parking garage with the cars, but he wasn’t interested in it. He just took the cars off and lay down on his side to run the cars back and forth on the carpet in front of his eyes. It made her sad, having him turn away to play alone. She felt like a failure as a mom and didn’t know what to do.

  Why Is It a Problem?

  When young children with ASD do not tune in to their parents’ communications or do not respond to them (take a turn), they miss the opportunity to build critical skills (imitation, sharing emotion) that underlie communication. The risk is that young children with ASD will continue to play mostly alone, rather than to draw parents into their activities or to look for social responses from their parents. They may become more and more removed from the social world around them and from all the crucial learning experiences available within that world. This early lack of engagement not only interferes with their learning, but also occurs during a very sensitive period of brain development, when their brain cell networks are particularly ready to absorb and process social and language information. This sensitive period lasts only a few years during early childhood, and we want to make sure that those developing brain networks are receiving the input information they need to learn to process social communication.

  Fortunately, there are lots of ways to turn up the volume of your communication, making the learning opportunities present in your turns stand out for your child. In this chapter, we focus on taking turns in play with toys or other objects and in other daily activities, so your child no longer misses the learning opportunities inherent in social interaction but instead learns to expect your responses, imitate you in play, use gestures and words, and experience the fun of social interaction.

  What You Can Do to Increase Your Child’s

  Turn-Taking Skills

  There are six specific steps you can carry out to increase your child’s participation in taking turns:

  Step 1. Understand the four-part framework of joint activities for taking turns.

  Step 2. Start to practice—beginning involves setting up the joint activity.

  Step 3. Set the theme.

  Step 4. Elaborate the joint activity—add the variation.

  Step 5. Close the joint activity and start another.

  Step 6. Create joint activities during other daily routines, to foster multiple areas of development.

  In the following pages, we describe how to carry out each of these steps, give you some ideas for activities to try, and suggest what you can do to solve problems that may come up.

  Step 1. Understand the Four-Part Framework of Joint Activities

  for Taking Turns

  There is a specific structure for carrying out play with very young children that is particularly rich in learning opportunities for social communication and turn taking. Joint activities, or joint activity routines, were originally described and given those names by a very influential language scientist.1 A joint activity is like a conversation, involving a set of turns between you and your child, based on a shared activity. In Chapter 5 you learned how to build sensory social routines, mainly those that don’t involve toys or objects. In this chapter you’ll learn to do the same thing with toys and other items, devising joint activity routines that may last for 2–5 minutes for very young children. The framework consists of the following four parts (each of which is elaborated in one of the remaining steps in this chapter):

  1. One of you chooses a toy and begins to do something with it—the setup.

  2. Then the other joins in on the same activity so that the two of you imitate each other, build something together, or take turns to complete the same activity—the theme.

  3. Doing the same thing for a while can be boring and repetitive, so after a while you add some changes to the play—the variations. During the variations, the turntaking structure continues, and the two of you go back and forth playing a little differently from the way you started.

  4. As your child’s interest in the activity wanes, you know it’s time to start a different activity, and so the two of you finish the game you have been playing—the closing—and move on to something else (a transition to a new activity).

  The new activity begins with another setup or initiation, and continues through the theme, one or more variations, and another closing.

  Rationale. The balance between partners and the structure around a shared theme that are the critical features of joint activities enhance learning opportunities. The back-and-forth interaction of turn taking repeatedly puts each partner in the other’s spotlight of attention. Whenever it’s your turn, your child’s attentional spotlight is focused on you: He sees what you are about to do, hears your words, sees the effect of your actions, and so can learn from it. Then it is your child’s turn, and he can practice right away what he has just seen and heard (with your help), so he is an active learner in the process. Following your child’s interest into a theme that your child understands makes the purpose of your actions clear to your child, and that helps him extract the meaning of your gestures and words. In the variation, varying or adding new play materials or actions to a game adds interest to the activity; keeps it from getting too repetitive and boring; and so helps your child stay motivated to keep participating in the activity and to continue learning, practicing, and strengthening new skills. Finally, ending and transitioning or moving on to the next a
ctivity in an organized fashion help you hold your child’s attention through the transition and helps your child learn to anticipate what is coming next. The joint activity structure will allow you to help your child learn a wide variety of early social communication skills: understanding and using everyday language; imitating actions that similar-age children would do; playing flexibly and creatively with others.

  Jocelyn bought a new toy for 3-year-old Rascheed—a round wooden pegboard that held six fat red pegs and spun around. She thought this would be a good toy for him. The pegs were fat enough for him to hold easily, and the goal for using the toy was clear. But it was hard to get her son’s attention long enough to show him something new. She decided to show it to him while he was having a snack in his high chair. That was one place where he would sit for a while and look at her. So when Rascheed was finishing his crackers, Jocelyn set up the toy on the kitchen table, right in front of his chair. She put the pegs in the base one by one, while talking about what she was doing: “See, baby, here’s a peg. It goes here. And another, and another. They go in.” Once they were all in, she spun the base, and they circled around. (This was the setup phase.) Rascheed was watching intently as he finished chewing. Then Jocelyn took the pegs out fast, put the base on his tray, and handed him a peg, He struggled a little, and she helped him put it in. (This was the theme.) Then she handed him another, and another. She helped as needed, so this went easily for Rascheed. After he had done three, she put in one (her turn), and then gave him another. She put in the last two quickly to take a turn and to move the activity along so her son wouldn’t lose attention. When they were all in, she spun it for him (variation), which he loved! Then she took out most of them and put them in a plastic container, but she left the last two in for him to take out. She helped him put each in the container (closing). Then she took the base off his high chair tray and got him down. Jocelyn had Rascheed’s attention and participation throughout. She felt great about the success of this new play routine!

  Step 2. Start to Practice—Beginning Involves Setting Up

  the Joint Activity

  Rationale. The setup phase is important, because this is where you first hook your child’s interest. You will use your child’s toys as the setup that will allow you to demonstrate the theme, introducing a new action that you would like your child to understand and imitate. For example, the setup might be a group of blocks you know your child enjoys. At a moment when your child is unoccupied, you might set up the activity by getting out the container of blocks (“Let’s play blocks; I’ve got the blocks. Sit down. Block goes on top, another block on top”) as you take a few and begin to build a tower. Remember to include in the setup good body positioning, with you and your child situated face to face. Good communication relies on your being able to see each other’s eyes, facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and words spoken.

  Now the theme is set, and you pass some blocks to your child. Your child’s turn could be imitating what you just did, such as stacking the next block onto the tower, or reaching and saying “ba” for “block”—as a way of signaling that she is motivated to continue the activity. Or she might start doing something else with the blocks. If she does, encourage her and help her build onto the tower or start her own. That’s the theme. Go back and forth, each taking a turn and adding to the tower. Then make the variation happen—knock the blocks down! That’s usually fun for children. Then start up again together. Another variation may be lining them up and then driving a car over the “road,” or making them into a square as a “house” for toy animals. When your child starts to lose interest, or you run out of ideas, it’s time to clean up. Clean up before your child takes off, by having your child help you put the blocks back in the container and put it back. Then it’s time to pick another toy. There you have it: a four-part joint activity, with turn taking throughout.

  Activity: Choose Toys or Objects That Will Be Helpful

  in Establishing the Setup and Will Become the Theme of the Play

  We generally try to choose the same kinds of objects that other children your child’s age typically play with, both toys and household objects (for instance, pans, lids, or other kitchen and bath materials). This way your child will know how to play with these objects when she is with children of the same age. Your child probably already chooses objects to play with without your help. If not, you can choose one or two toys or other objects for play that you think will interest your child.

  Here are some ideas for selecting objects or toys for the setup:

  Choose objects or toys that have several pieces or that will allow your child to do several different things with the toy. Toys that involve only one action or one piece make it very hard to take turns or to come up with both a theme and a variation. When there are multiple pieces or multiple actions (or both), you and your child can each have a turn doing something or making something interesting happen; this is the idea of shared control. Examples include building blocks, shape sorters, books, a bucket of play animals, toys in which balls are inserted and roll down a slide, and so on.

  Caution! Electronic toys are very difficult to use for joint activities, because children tend to want to produce the same action again and again. This makes it hard to take turns, come up with variations, or capture your child’s attention.

  Finally, if your child is already playing with a toy, try to start by joining in, rather than introducing a new toy. As discussed in Chapter 5, joining your child allows you to follow your child’s interest, rather than trying to entice your child to shift attention. You will be well positioned—in your child’s attentional spotlight, interacting, and ready to join in the theme. You can join into your child’s theme, take some turns, and then initiate a variation.

  Caution! Avoid using toys that your child covets highly and/or uses for highly repetitive, ritualized actions. It is really hard to develop joint activities out of things your child handles in a special, repetitive, or ritualized way and wants to have all to himself. Sometimes it’s possible—it never hurts to try—but if your child resists your taking a turn with it, or will not vary the way he handles it, the pattern may be difficult for your child to change.

  What if your child is absolutely not interested in objects? Go back to Chapter 5 and build up your repertoire of sensory social routines first. Once they are well established, begin to work cause-and-effect object play into the sensory social routines. Cause-and-effect object play is play in which you perform an action on a toy or create a “big event” with the toy—you make something interesting happen as a result of an action on a toy. For example, you could play chase (a sensory social routine), but at the end of the chase, pick up a ball, chase your child with it, and then throw the ball in a basket! Use maracas in a dance during a musical sensory social routine that you and your child already enjoy, shake the maracas, and then hand them to your child to shake as part of the routine. Notice that in these descriptions of joint activities with objects, we are breaking the rule used in sensory social routines about not letting children play with the objects. That’s because now we are elaborating on the basic sensory social routine to include turn taking and building children’s interest in shared object activities. In other words, you can use the familiar sensory social routine as the setup and theme for the play, and then use the object as a way of varying the theme (variation).

  Summary of Step 2

  If you have followed along and carried out the preceding activities, you will have discovered activities with objects or toys that will be used as the main theme of a joint activity. See if you agree with most of the statements in the following checklist. If so, you are now armed with important skills for taking turns and teaching during joint activities—knowledge you will use in Step 3. If not, start experimenting during play and caregiving routines until you have found some activities that work for each statement.

  Activity Checklist: Am I Setting Up a Joint Activity

  with My Child?

  ____
My child is playing with toys or objects that other children his or her age would be using.

  ____ The objects or toys have multiple pieces that can be shared during play.

  ____ Different actions can be performed with the object or toy, to prevent my child from doing the same thing repeatedly.

  ____ Any mechanical toy or object with an on–off switch has been removed and hidden, or the batteries removed.

  ____ I remember to situate my child in front of me and sitting or standing comfortably—sitting on the floor, sitting in a chair that fits, or standing at a table that is a good height for playing.

  ____ I remember the rules for how to follow my child’s interests, join in, and imitate or elaborate on my child’s action in play.

  ____ I am conscious of the four parts—set up, theme, variation, and closing—as we go through them.

  Kylie’s parents thought about the different objects that Kylie enjoyed that also would be good for developing joint activities and turn-taking skills. They decided to experiment with only those toys involving multiple pieces. They rearranged Kylie’s toys, with the multipiece objects or toys being in sight and other toys moved to closets or placed in storage (for the time being). The result was a play area containing plastic blocks, animal puzzles, markers and stickers, dress-up items (necklaces, purse, hats, bracelets, sunglasses), play dough, farm animals, and toy drums. Kylie’s parents decided to include Kylie’s favorite books as well as some new ones, because they wanted to encourage and share this interest with her. They figured that they could take turns turning the pages of a book with Kylie. They placed each toy in a clear plastic shoe container, so that all pieces could be kept together but would still be visible to Kylie when she and a parent were deciding which one to use for play. That way they would encourage Kylie to ask for help getting things out of their containers, and would also prevent Kylie from becoming disorganized by having too many toys available at once. They found that doing so helped organize Kylie’s play from the start, because parents and child were able to select together which shoe container to take to the table, couch, or floor. Similarly, when it was time to clean up the play, the shoe container was in close proximity for Kylie’s parents to teach her how to put away all items and place the container back on the shelf before selecting the next shoe container.

 

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