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

by Rogers, Sally J.

  What about Rascheed? After reviewing the activity checklist for Step 2, Rascheed’s parents decided to get rid of his electronic toys. Not only was it extremely difficult to get their son to look at his parents while he was fixated on the toys’ sounds and lights, but the more time he spent with these toys, the more he engaged in arm flapping and body rocking. Rascheed’s parents understood, however, that their son might need encouragement and help to develop interest in nonelectronic toys. Before starting on joint activities, they set out different objects and toys to find out what he might like. They watched Rascheed play with a ball ramp toy (placing a ball at the top and watching it roll down the tunnel), push pegs through their holes, and touch the pages of books that had textures on them. His parents were thrilled that Rascheed paid attention to and seemed to enjoy a few nonelectronic toys. Also, his selection of toys involved multiple pieces (balls, pegs, pages) that could be touched, handed over, taken turns with, and imitated during play. Rascheed’s parents now felt that they had an initial blueprint for starting joint activities with their son, and revisited the Step 2 activity checklist questions with these new routines in mind.

  Step 3. Set the Theme

  Rationale. You need to create a theme inside the play—something that you and your child can each take turns doing to turn the activity into a shared interaction—so that the activity does in fact become a joint activity and turn taking can occur. If your child sets the theme (for example, picking up a rolling pin to roll play dough, rolling the car back and forth, or starting to stack the blocks), follow your child’s lead and take a turn doing the same thing. When it’s your turn, you could simply imitate what the child is doing using other pieces of the material. For example, your turn could be adding another block to the tower, using a second rolling object on a piece of play dough, or taking another ball and inserting it into the tube after your child has done so.

  What If Your Child Doesn’t Take the First Turn?

  If your child doesn’t take the first turn, or if you want to demonstrate a new toy, you can show the child what to do and then give the materials to your child, or you can demonstrate and then give your child his own materials just like yours and help your child copy what you just did. For example, to play with play dough, you might make a shape out of the dough with a cookie cutter and then label the shape by saying, “It’s a star.” In your first turn, you have set a theme: you’ve shown your child how to use a cutter to make a shape and also provided a new word to build your child’s vocabulary. Or if your child likes bubbles, you might puff your cheeks and blow air out of your mouth in your turn with the bubbles, so that your child looks at you and you have a chance to demonstrate the gesture. You could then say the word “blow” after doing this to name the action, and then label “bubbles” when you’ve blown some. Eventually you will find a joint activity in which the two of you can take turns.

  Activity: Name Objects and Actions While Engaging in Turn Taking

  Adding words to your play as just described is something that most parents do automatically. It’s good to add some words, name objects, add sound effects, and label the actions. But for a child with ASD, it’s particularly important to keep your language simple—almost as simple as your child’s, as described in more detail in Chapter 13. If your child is not talking yet, then keep your language short and direct. For example, if the activity involves play dough, you can label objects and actions like “dough,” “open,” “roll,” “push,” “poke,” “cut,” and the names of the cookie cutters (e.g., “square,” “circle,” “tree,” “plane”). Appropriate two-word action and label phrases might include “Open dough,” “Cut dough,” “Push square,” “Take out,” “Put in,” “Blue dough,” “Top on,” and so forth.

  Here are some ideas for words to go with joint activities:

  During toy play, as your child is taking her turn, think of what the object or material is called, and name it out loud when your child is holding, touching, or reaching for it. Do the same for simple actions that you and your child do with the object—“put in,” “take out,” “shake,” “roll,” “bang,” “open,” “close,” “scribble,” “clap,” “hop,” “up,” “down,” and so on. Repeat the word when it is your turn to use the object.

  Do the same during social games without objects. What actions, gestures, and body movements happen during songs and physical games? Start giving names to all of these opportunities.

  Summary of Step 3

  The theme might feel a little repetitive in these first few turns, but that’s necessary so your child can learn what will happen next and also learn to wait for your turn. But it should also be interesting and fun, and that means your child gets her turns quickly. Once you and your child have gotten the hang of this, it should feel balanced, with roughly equal numbers of turns. In play, partners are equal. 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 inside joint activities—knowledge you will use in Step 4. If not, start experimenting during play and caregiving routines until you have found some methods that work for each statement.

  Activity Checklist: What Is the Joint Activity Theme?

  ____ I have found objects or games that provide opportunities for turn taking with my child in play.

  ____ I follow my child’s lead and imitate his or her action when taking my turn.

  ____ I have my child’s attention when taking my turn.

  ____ I use simple language to name the objects and actions during play.

  ____ My child and I take turns, acting as equal partners, to create a theme when playing together.

  What about Kylie? For Kylie’s parents, the biggest challenge was how to take turns without upsetting Kylie. Her parents continued practicing the setup with Kylie—helping her take down the shoe container she wanted to play with, and setting up the materials at her table or on the floor. Kylie had become accustomed to this routine and understood that her parents were there to help and support her interest—to play and have fun! Once the materials were set up, though, Kylie’s parents weren’t sure how to continue their involvement or take their next turn in the activity. They desperately wanted to play with and show her things they thought she might enjoy, but they didn’t want their turns to upset her.

  So they reviewed Chapter 4 and paid particular attention to the strategies of following their child’s lead and using imitation for becoming more involved play partners. Having the toys already organized in the shoe containers and having multiple pieces made it easier to take the next object out and do exactly what Kylie had done with the prior piece: put in the next puzzle item, stack the next block, bang the drum, or scribble on the paper with the marker. They continued naming the objects and Kylie’s and their actions: “Cow, put in,” “Block, on,” “Bang, bang, bang,” or “Marker. Here’s paper. Open marker. Scribble, scribble, scribble.” They also started paying attention to the pace and how rewarding the play was to Kylie, because they wanted to make sure that Kylie would pay attention to their turns without finding it a negative experience. They decided their turns needed to be fun, fast, and focused, so they made quick motions with their turn—putting one piece in the puzzle, placing one block onto the tower, hitting the drum once, or scribbling once on the paper. They also started experimenting with new actions, gestures, and sound effects to add to their turns, such as making animal noises when placing pieces into the puzzle, having the block “blast off” from the ground and land on the tower, or drawing stars and hearts (Kylie’s favorites) on paper.

  Kylie soon started paying more attention to her parents’ turns, and then smiling and laughing at the sounds or effects added to the play, and finally imitating their actions in her turn. She liked their play better. Sometimes she still wanted to play with toys her way and didn’t gravitate toward their ideas right away, but that didn’t concern her parents anymore. If things started to deteriorate, they felt confident with their “rep
air plan” and applied the same strategies of helping, imitating, and narrating play before gradually taking more deliberate but fun turns in the activity. The outcome was a repertoire of common themes or play actions that both parents and daughter could construct and enjoy together.

  Step 4. Elaborate the Joint Activity—Add the Variations

  Rationale. When we play, we pick an idea or theme and repeat it during play, but we don’t remain stuck or limited to repeating the same theme over and over again in the same way. The natural tendency in play is to start a play theme and after a little while begin elaborating creatively on the theme, to add interest and enjoyment. This is the basis of creative play. One minute children might be playing house, and the next they’re action heroes flying around the room to save the day. Or an activity that started off as squeezing play dough through fingers can turn into making animals and then making those animals run, hop, and crawl across the table. Children’s play typically evolves and varies as it goes along, and we want children with ASD to be able to participate in creative play with their peers, as well as to initiate and contribute their own ideas during play. That’s how they learn about different concepts: make-believe, role play, ways to carry out conventional or customary actions with everyday objects. Adding materials, ideas, or actions to the initial theme is called variation or elaboration. It highlights different aspects of an activity so that a child learns different concepts, including that objects can be used in many different ways (flexible play); it helps develop your child’s creativity and imagination; and it also prevents boredom so the learning can continue.

  Activity: Try Different Ways of Varying or Elaborating

  on the Theme

  There is no right way to vary or elaborate on a play theme. The only “wrong” way, in fact, is if you start directing the play, expecting the child to imitate every new move you introduce. Be sure that the theme is really well established first (you have repeated it several times), and that you are following your child as much as you are asking your child to follow you. If variations are hard to think of, just do something different with the same materials while your child is looking, and if she doesn’t copy you or try something else, then help her do what you just did. Praise your child for trying. Then let your child do whatever she wants to do with the materials.

  Here are some ideas for varying the theme:

  Add new materials. After taking turns with a toy or object, begin to add more pieces to the play activities, and show your child how to add them to the theme. For example, if the theme is scribbling on paper with a marker, add a marker of a different color; add some stickers that you can peel off, put on the paper, and color over; or add chalk and show your child how chalk can also be used to make marks.

  Vary the actions. After taking turns performing an action, change the action slightly. For example, if the theme is stacking blocks and you have established the theme of taking turns putting a block on the stack, begin lining them up rather than stacking them. And then maybe drive little cars over the lined-up blocks as if they were a road.

  Add more steps to the action you are performing. For example, if the theme is putting pieces in a puzzle, and you and your child have been taking turns taking each piece out of a container and putting it in, then the variation might be taking all the pieces out of the puzzle, spreading them around on the table, and then showing them to each other and naming the pictures before each one goes in. Or a different variation, for a child who can make simple requests and name the pictures, could be requesting a certain piece from the other person.

  Summary of Step 4

  If you have followed along and carried out the preceding activities, you will have developed different strategies for varying or elaborating the 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 inside joint activities—knowledge you will use in Step 5. If not, start experimenting during play and caregiving routines until you have found some methods that work for each statement.

  Activity Checklist: Am I Varying or Elaborating

  the Joint Activity?

  ____ I know how to add new materials to the initial play theme I have established with my child.

  ____ I know how to add new actions to the initial theme.

  ____ I know how to add new steps to the initial theme.

  ____ My child seems comfortable with the variation—playing with objects; smiling at times; focused on the play; and calm, interested, or happy/excited—and continues to take turns.

  What about Rascheed? In place of the discarded electronic toys, Rascheed’s parents set out a variety of other toys to see what he might enjoy, which turned out to be a ball ramp toy, a peg toy, and a book that provided textures to touch. These toys were used to set up joint activities with Rascheed. Rascheed chose which one to play with each time, and his mother imitated his actions to establish turn taking and initiate the first theme. With the ball or peg toys, turns involved each partner’s pushing through or placing the object in the hole, whereas books involved Rascheed’s holding them and turning pages, and Jocelyn’s touching the textures and pointing to pictures after each page was turned. She also made sure to name each object or picture and action happening in the play: “Push ball,” “Peg in,” “More ball,” “Open book,” “Turn,” “There’s a mouse,” “That’s soft,” and so forth.

  Jocelyn then thought that expanding on the play theme might increase her son’s interest and time spent in the activity. She decided to start with adding materials to the activities, so as not to disrupt or change the actions Rascheed had become accustomed to and enjoyed. For the ball ramp toy, during her turn, Jocelyn showed Rascheed how to hit the ball with the hammer to make it go down the ramp. She repeated the action with the new item during her turns while Rascheed continued using his hand to push the ball in, but she exaggerated the motion with sound effects and alternated between hitting the ball slow—fast and light—hard with the hammer. After a few turns of modeling the hammer, she then handed it to Rascheed and quickly helped him hold it to hit the ball. She alternated between having him use the hammer and letting him use his hands, so he wasn’t turned off by the new theme’s seeming too hard. She also offered choices at times between “ball” versus “hammer” and “hit” (with hammer) versus “push” (with hands), so Rascheed felt that the interaction and the turn taking were balanced. She continued naming each object and action in the activity, to help Rascheed understand and begin to imitate single words related to the things he wanted to do.

  Once adding materials (such as the hammer) proved successful, Jocelyn decided to try introducing other new actions. First she started showing him other actions to do with pegs. For instance, instead of hammering them, she showed him how to stack them into a tower with the connectors on each end and then, once the tower was a reasonable size, how to roll the tower across the table. Rascheed was not expecting this change, but he watched intently as the multicolored tower rolled from his mother’s side of the table over to him. Jocelyn then said “roll” and helped him push it back over to her. She added another peg to the tower and rolled it again, helping Rascheed now do the same. After a few back-and-forth rounds, Rascheed began rolling the tower by himself with smiles and delight, until the tower became too long to roll and fell apart into pieces. But that didn’t worry Jocelyn, because now she had another action to name—“Uh-oh, pegs fell off”—and an opportunity to build the joint activity with several themes all over again!

  Step 5. Close the Joint Activity and Transition to the Next

  Rationale. After you have played for a while, one of three things is bound to happen. Either your child’s interest wanes, or your interest wanes, or you cannot think of anything else to do and the play has gotten really repetitive. When there’s nothing more to teach, or you or your child loses interest, it’s time to put the toy away and transition to something else. This is the closing. In an ideal closing, one
of the two partners makes a move to end, and you keep operating as partners: Follow your child’s lead, but offer guidance through the closing.

  Activity: Maintain the Balanced Partnership While You Close

  and Transition

  Here are some ideas for closing the joint activity and moving on:

  If you see signs that the activity has lost its teaching potential, suggest something like “Are you all done? Should we finish?” and get out the container that holds the pieces, putting a piece in and encouraging your child to do the same. The two of you will put the pieces away together, close the container together, put it back where it goes together, and then make a transition to a new activity.

  Or your child may signal you that he’s finished. If your child refuses to play with the materials any longer, pushes them away, starts to move away, starts being very repetitive in a way that makes it hard to take turns, or shows loss of interest by losing energy, suggest that it’s time to be all done and help the cleanup begin. Some children, after they learn the routine, may say “All done” on their own or begin to put materials away and lead you through the process of closing.