Simple Behavior Modification Exercises I Do At Home With My Autistic Child

Return To HOME Page

Given what I knew of Zachary's inability to integrate the parts in his world into the whole, his inability to understand the whole without first understanding all the parts within it, there were several exercises I came up with for Zachary.   At the time I had originally come up with these, I thought Zachary's problem had to do primarily with an almost fanatic need for order.   A few months later, I came to the realization that Zachary's problems were, more specifically, with a subset of the ordering function - the processing of partialities or parts to the whole!

In doing all exercises,  I found it was critical to "put things away" for a few days and then take them out again...that helped me gauge Zachary's progress because I could see if his frustration levels were the same or had decreased when the exercises were "used again" after a while "away from them".  

The idea behind all these exercises was simply to help Zachary cope with partiality and the realization that things are not perfect and that somehow, he had to be able to adapt to that.   I wanted Zachary to be able to allow for the "in between" situations, or the "non-ordinary", for him to see that although there was a need for "order" in life, not all things had to be "perfectly ordered".

The fact that I could literally turn Zachary's frustrations "on and off like a switch" told me I was on the right track.  

Also, in doing these exercises with Zachary, I saw that they involve "real work and effort" on his part as he was very tired after we do these things... and that was normal.   Having studied psychology through graduate school, I knew that "therapy" was often hard and exhausting work for the person going through it.    As such, I was careful to gauge "when he has had enough" and allowed for "breaks".    I found that when I stop "working with him", Zachary immediately wanted an "order fix" as I came to call it.  

The difficult part for me was to control "order fixes" as much as possible so that he could get the stress relief he needed yet I had to make sure that, as much as possible, his "order fixes" were either very short or involved more "productive" activities.    Ideally, I wanted the need for an "order fix" to be "satiated" by everyday things that did require order, like putting away toys, working on the computer on educational software, watching an educational video, etc.  as opposed to allowing the "order fix" to be one such as "spinning".  Zachary had to learn that it is ok to have some order, but that satiating his need for order had come from "appropriate" tasks that required order, not from engaging in  meaningless activities.   I say "meaningless" here only in the sense that activities such as "spinning" do nothing to teach Zachary anything... although I am well aware of their "stress relieving potential" for the autistic child (and as such, at times, these activities, although meaningless in what they teach, can be used as valuable coping tools when life simply gets to be too much!).

I found that after time away from these exercises, when they were "picked up again", Zachary did experience renewed frustration, but the level of that frustration had often been significantly reduced in terms of intensity or actual time it lasted.  As such, I knew these exercises were helping him learn to cope with issues of partiality.  In general, it did not take much time to "regain" lost ground due to the simple lapse of time.  Fact was... I knew Zachary needed a break too... and a "break from things" was the best way for me to see whether or not what I was doing worked.

Introduction Increasing Eye Contact

 

The Goal Breaking Nonsense Language

A World Of Order©

Basic Tools For Parents Hand Over Hand

Fractions and Quantity - THE KEYS To So Much!!!

Words To Cope Modeling Clay  
Label Everything Sharing
Using Body Parts Brushing Teeth  
Getting Zachary To Use A Pencil/Pen Plastic Shapes  
The Random Walk    
Room of Colors    
Using Puzzles In A Nonsense Way    
Using Household Items In Therapy    
The Basket    
Plastic Easter Eggs    
Wooden Blocks    

 Return To HOME Page

 

Copyright 2002-2008 All materials I provide on this site including several key words and phrases are copyrighted materials.  All rights reserved.  Please see Use of Materials for more on this issue.  For general comments/questions, contact me at jbrohart@hotmail.com 

Things have a tendency to disappear on the Internet, but I can often find where the information has been moved or find replacement links addressing the same issue.  There is a lot of information provided on this site and any assistance with broken links is most appreciated.   My site has now been hacked twice.   If you get bounced to sites for online drugs, etc., report this to me at once using the above email as this is a result of hacking on my site.  This had nothing to do with me and/or my site.  Read more on hacking issue.

DISCLAIMER - The statements here mentioned and/or found in my materials have not been evaluated by the FDA or any other government agency or person in the medical field or in behavior therapy and are not meant to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent any illness/disorder and/or behavior.  This information is not intended as medical advice or to replace the care of a qualified healthcare physician or behavior therapist.  Always consult your medical doctor or behavior therapist.  All information provided by Jeanne A. Brohart on her website is for INFORMATION PURPOSES and to GENERATE DISCUSSION ONLY and should not be taken as medical advice or any other type of "advice".  Information put forth represents the EXTENSIVE RESEARCH and OPINIONS of a mother based on her experiences and research and provides information as it relates to one family's journey with autism in hopes that other families may benefit from this experience and/or research.  The creator of this site is not responsible for content on other sites.

DISCLAIMER - PART II - Now... for those of you who think "mother at home researching" means "uneducated person with unfounded information"... I have 10 years of university... 3 degrees... and over 30,000 hours of research into these areas.   For anyone who thinks my research is "unfounded"...  read the RESEARCH FILE posted on my home page... with its over 1,000 references ... for your reading pleasure... because... quite clearly... you haven't read it yet!    

Autismhelpforyou.com   Breaking The Code - Putting Pieces In Place!©