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Issues With Dressing Self... Why The Autistic Child Finds It So Hard To Do... If you think about the issue of "getting dressed", this involves a process. By definition, a process has several steps, several parts to the whole... and, since I believe that the issue for many of these children lies in their inability to properly process "parts to a whole", it now makes perfect sense that this, too, would be an area of difficulty for these children. So, how do you teach a child to get dressed. There are a couple of ways I think would work. I believe that starting with the "hand over hand" technique is probably the best way to go since you "start" the task or "process" for the child and then, somehow, his brain is triggered that something needs to be completed... and so, the child proceeds to complete the task. I found this to work well with the issue of dressing. I then started to label the "parts" by telling Zachary to first put his arms into the arm holes, and then to put his head into the "head hole". I told him to put his left foot in his pants first, then his right foot... and to make sure he pulled his pants "all the way up", and to make sure the "waist" was "done" properly... so that any elastic would lay flat against his waist as opposed to being twisted, etc. I told him to put his left arm in his coat first, then his right arm... and then to put the zipper up. So, again, the key was simply to label the parts of the process... to define what comes first, second, third, etc. and to give a lot of praise when done properly. :o) |
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