Building Confidence in Children with Autism
Building confidence in children with autism helps them learn and grow. A confident child will approach the world around them with a calm demeanor, curiosity, and openness to experiences. Adults may help autistic children feel more confident by providing predictability within thier day. Predictability is often associated with the consistent scheduling of events throughout the child’s day. When a child can predict what will happen they become less anxious and more confident.
Using consistent words and phrases and pairing them with consistent objects and actions can also provide predictability. Autism causes deficits to varying degrees in the ability to understand verbal sounds and attach meaning to them. Further, if the children do understand the individual spoken words they may not be able to fully process strings of auditory information, or words in sentences. Many children with autism will often be able to comprehend and respond to either the first word, or more likely the last word of a sentence. It is my experience that children with autism most often respond to the very last thing they hear.
Purposefully spoken words and phrases paired with consistent items or expectations help children process language. When caretakers learn to use their words carefully they can greatly enhance the child’s ability to pair those words with items, actions, and concrete concepts to create meaning. When we understand the meaning of words we can predict what will happen in relation to those spoken sounds. By proactively choosing vocabulary to assist the needs of a child with autism, caregivers can improve understanding and build confidence in their children.
The following 3 suggestions can help caretakers develop well-chosen words that assist children with autism to develop meaning from the spoken sounds presented.
“““““““`
1. Moderate your Vocabulary
Speaking in one to four-word sentences will help children focus on the most important piece of information. For instance, when teaching vocabulary, instead of saying to a child “this thing is called a backpack” simply show the item while simultaneously stating “Backpack”. Later when asking the child to “go get your backpack out of the closet and bring it to me,” mom can simply hold her hand out and say “Backpack.” The child will create meaning from the gesture and single word that could not be made from the long phrase.
This is not an invitation to speak in baby talk. Baby talk and speaking in cutesy terms actually inhibits language growth for children with autism. Use real words and phrases or language chunks that are organized into short, clear, concise, verbalizations.
Matching shortened phrases with directly related visual supports such as objects, pictures, actions, pantomime, and gestures will provide just the enough important information to assist children with Autism to understand the interaction.
“““““““`
2. Establish Predictable vocabulary routines
Begin using repeated phrases to develop predictable vocabulary routines. In schools, phrases such as “sit down”, “line-up”, “first — then”, “check your schedule,” and “do this,” are phrases that are repeated exactly the same way and practiced so often that the children become extremely proficient at following the instruction. These language chunks become as easy to understand as single words due to their consistent and persistent use. Consistently used language not only helps the children understand the request but provides them a way of predicting the correct response.
“““““““`
3. Focus on the positive expectation
As I discuss in my book Understanding the Challenge of “No” for Children with Autism, speaking in an affirmative action request instead of the negation of an action can greatly improve understanding. Children with autism struggle with deciphering statements requesting the negation of an action. While it is not impossible for these children to learn some regularly used negative statements, it takes more effort and exposure to the exact phrasing to produce consistent results.
Tell the students what to do versus what not to do
Barbara Bloomfield
When requesting to stop an action we are asking the child not only to process the sounds into meaningful concepts but to also employ critical thinking skills to decipher an indirect message. Further, if the children do understand a statement such as, “No running,” to mean cease the action, there is no information given that indicates what other action is expected. What is the request, “No running,” asking the student to do; skip, gallop, walk, tiptoe, crawl, stop? While the message may seem clear to the speaker the receiving child with autism is often oblivious to the full expectation.
In order to provide the child with clear directions with which the child can easily comply, a short direct request such as simply stating, “Walking,” will provide the information needed to gain the most appropriate response.
“““““““`
Clear communication is the backbone of all successful interactions. When adults make the effort to speak in short, affirmative, and concrete terms with children with autism, they provide the child the opportunity to better understand. Improved understanding of language allows the children to predict the following events. This prediction alleviates anxiety and grounds children with the confidence needed to perform well.
