Maintaining a calm and organised state of arousal is often at the forefront of our minds when treating children on the spectrum.
Why?…. because we know that this leads to more successful interaction and learning opportunities. There is so much about life that does not make sense for these kids and as a result anxiety can certainly be a constant challenge.
There are heaps of different strategies we can incorporate to achieve a greater calm. One of the things that I often try and implement into my therapy to achieve this is ‘blowing’. Since these kids are often spending significant periods of their day in ‘survival mode’ it means that their breath can be really quite shallow. Therefore the types of blowing activities you might want to incorporate are those that encourage deeper diaphragmatic breathing. My favourite pieces of equipment to achieve this are: Read more …
