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Posts Tagged ‘emotional development’

Part 1 – Why ‘Play’ is SO Important for Children with Autism

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One thing that you need to understand is how important PLAY is for the thinking, language, emotional, problem solving and creative skills development of children with autism. So many people underestimate the importance of PLAY.

Ok. So how does play develop and what should your child be able to do in play?

Stage 1

From birth to 18 months of life, much of your child’s play will revolve around Sensory Play.

This means feeling different textures, learning about how their body feels when it is moved in different ways, listening to interesting noises like birds tweeting, the clock ticking and how different people’s voices sound different and can make interesting noises etc, etc. Their sensory play will continue to develop and become more complex during the first 18 months. Read more …

Posted in Therapy Strategies | 10 Comments

Is there a ‘Magic Formula’ for Autism?

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Since you are reading this I’m guessing that the subject line may have grabbed your attention ;)

which is great because….

What I have to tell you today is very important. In fact it may change the way you think about just about every aspect of your child’s treatment.

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I often get asked to give families strategies to help deal with specific behaviours such as ‘toilet training’ or ‘picky eating’ or ‘poor sleeping patterns’.

It would certainly make my job MUCH easier if I could tell each one of you that ONE particular strategy would be the ‘Magic Formula‘ for solving each of these issues.

But the truth is…

because every child with autism (like any child) is so incredibly different and so unique, there simply isn’t a ‘magic formula’ or one strategy in particular to remedy these individual behaviours.

But there is a solution… so please read on. Read more …

Posted in Therapy Strategies | 8 Comments

Dealing with your child’s challenging emotions

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I was reading back over the questions that you posted me and there was a common theme emerging…

“What is the best way to deal with  my child when they are feeling upset, frustrated, annoyed, disappointed?”

I am pleased that this topic was raised because it is an area of treatment that I get quite passionate about and I would like to share my thoughts with you…

So often we are happy to engage with children (not just special needs kids!) when they are happy and joyous, but we tend to disconnect with them when they are experiencing more challenging emotions.

But why do we do this?

Feelings of frustration, sadness annoyance etc are all basic (and completely normal) human emotions that we all encounter on a regular basis. But when this happens to our own child we are naturally driven to find a way of making them feel ‘happy’ again by saying things like “Stop crying”, “You’re okay”, “Where’s your happy face?”, “It’s ok, how about we have something to eat”.

But all this actually does is disconnects us from what they are really experiencing and feeling, and we miss an important opportunity to ‘connect’ with our child and to help them learn and grow from the experience. Read more …

Posted in Therapy Strategies | 3 Comments