These 5 things have to happen BEFORE you teach a new skill...

Let's target skill development in today's blog post. This could be following directions, working on independence in certain areas, or whatever the skill might be that you are wanting to work on with your child.

I love helping parents with this in the Autism Parent Inner Circle. Our 2 main topics are behavior and skill development. 

Developing new skills is an important topic for children on the spectrum. We want your child to constantly be learning and growing. But before that can happen, there are 5 things that need to be put into place BEFORE your child can sit down and learn a new skill with you. 

Think of these 5 topics i’m going to address as the 5 major pillars that are going to hold up a strong foundation for you to work on skill development with your child.

#1 Connection

 You are going to have to get your child to buy into working with you and this starts with connection and bonding. One thing we do know about autism is that in order to get to diagnosis, your child has to have a deficit in social skills. So connection and forming a bond with an adult isn’t always natural or easy for your child. But it’s crucial that we target this before we ask your child to sit down and work on a skill for you. 

If you talk with any of your child’s therapists or teachers, they most likely  target connection with your child before they ask them to work. This is the first thing I did in the classroom every school year when I was an autism teacher. I took about a week to just connect with my students. No child is going to work for someone that they don’t feel a connection with. 

I encourage you to work on this by playing with your child. Get on the ground of your living room floor with them and show interest in what they are playing. 

#2  Experience more success

We need a child to experience a lot of success easily BEFORE we ask them to work hard for us on some new skill. Success goes hand in hand with motivation. When you are successful at something, it motivates you to keep going. Same with your child. They need ways to stay motivated too. So you are going to have to be intentional about pointing out skills and behaviors that your child is really successful at and rewarding them for their success. You will need to find things that you know 100% they can already do and celebrate it like you would with learning a new skill. 

You can celebrate their success on these skills with verbal praise, hugs, high fives, tickles, tokens on their token board or anything else you find motivating to your child. 

Kids feel good when they are recognized. Kids love attention. Use that to your advantage. If your child feels like they rarely every experience success, they could feel defeated. This will result in them being less motivated to work on new skills with you.

#3 A motivator

We all need to be motivated to keep going. Always working on skills at home, school or therapy can be exhausting for your child if they feel like they get nothing out of it. Yes, they are developing important life skills, but they are children and children want to know what's in it for them!

 I suggest allowing your child to pick their motivator. Just because you think a toy or game might be motivating doesn’t mean it is for your child. Or just because you know they have liked an ice cream cone in the past, doesn’t mean it’s going to be motivating ENOUGH to get your child to sit down and work with you.

This is a great opportunity to bring in visual supports to help you and your child. I would let a child pick from 2-3 different pictures of what rewards or motivators they can work for. This would also be a great opportunity to bring in a token board as well. 

If you aren't utilizing a motivator, it could be a struggle to get your child to engage in activities with you. I want to point out that using a motivator should be ongoing. It's not a "one and done" type of strategy. We all want to get something out of hard work. However you choose to motivate your child, it should be ongoing and used all throughout their day. They should have multiple opportunities to earn a motivator. 

#4 Regulation

 If your child is autistic, they likely have sensory differences as well. They might be constantly avoiding sensations or seeking them out. Your child is reacting to their environment in a particular way to regulate their sensory system. 

In order to sit down and work on a new skill, we have to feel good. If we aren’t regulated, we don’t feel good. If your child doesn’t feel good, it’s unlikely that you are going to make much progress in that moment. No one likes to put effort into working on something when their body just doesn’t feel right. 

I encourage you to intentionally build in sensory activities into their schedule right before you want them to sit down and focus on a task. This is going to help your child regulate their sensory system and feel more calm.

Every child's sensory needs are different. You are going to have to find what activities your child responds best to with trial and error. You could also work with your child's physical therapist to help come up with activities for this. 

#5 Limit distractions

Your child’s sensory input plays a big role in their daily life and how they learn. If the tv in the next room sounds like a rock concert in their ear, it’s going to be hard for them to pay attention and focus on the task in front of them. Really try to understand what sounds, smells, sights and textures bother your child and limit these as much as possible when you are wanting to gain their attention to work on skill development.

Once you put these 5 things in place, you are ready to sit down and work on a new skill with your child.

Success is 100% possible for your child. But you are going to have to be intentional with setting them up for success.