The three characteristics of autism are social communication skills, lack of communication skills, and ritualized stereotypes. The main problem facing the development of children with autism and other severely disabled children is the lack of motivation, especially when learning new tasks and adapting to the social environment and school environment.
Lack of motivation is manifested primarily by tantrums, disobedience, crying, inattention, irritability, sluggishness, laziness, and escape from the teaching environment. There is currently no certainty as to why children are so unmotivated, and one of the selective traits that often cause them to pay attention due to excessive selection of sensory stimuli is one of them; and the lack of desire to try is also one of them.
Whatever the reason, it is clear that before developing effective therapeutic strategies for these children to travel, the motivation problem should be addressed, that is, to find a way to lure the child to find happiness with you, to make him willing to be with you, to want you to be a window into his autistic world and the outside world. Based on years of training experience, there are the following recommendations and strategies.
First, start by imitating your child and establish an interactive imitation mechanism – let him look at you
Focus on discovering the child's interest in following him and trying to get you into him. The child's initial rejection is natural, and he will think that all the external things that he is not interested in are a threat to his autistic world.
First, be patient with him. Although the child ignores you, you must also be next to him, start to try not to disturb him, do not get too close to him, but be sure to keep up with him, no matter what he does, you say the name of the action. For example, if he is in circles, you say that the circle, the circle, the circle, especially for some children who have certain obstacles to language development, be loud, rich in expression, short and powerful, and pay attention to consistency in language;
Second, try to imitate him. Children with autism tend to behave in incomprehensible ways, but no matter what kind of performance they have, they have their own purpose. The child does not imitate you, you imitate him, he knocks on the wall you also knock, you can try to move with him, feel the fun of the activity to the child, try to get the same feeling with the child, carefully experience the happiness after the child's action, but also further understand why he is so. Because you are like him, he will be curious, he will sneak up on you, and you will successfully attract his attention;
Third, extend your attention. The gradual transition from narrow intentional attention to the purposeful follow of instructions guided by the trainer; sudden requests, rapid changes in language, movements, or goals, giving sudden additional, massive information stimuli, while giving them the time and space to assimilate and absorb new information with old information structures.
Attention is a multifaceted, dynamic, multi-layered process and is influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Directional reflex is the physiological mechanism of attention, the frontal lobe, brainstem, and thalamus of the brain play an important role in regulating attention, but studies have found that the physiological mechanism of attention in children, especially the coordination of the nervous system, is problematic. Therefore, attention retention is the starting point and key to improving the effectiveness of motivation training!
Second, artificially create obstacles around points of interest – let him ask you
Many parents understand that when an autistic child wants something, he usually does not tell the adult to go and get it himself, because the home is an environment without obstacles for him.
First, overcome inertial cognition. Many parents think that the child himself has the idea to arrange his own life, in fact, it is a very dangerous idea and practice, when his life is too smooth, the child's world will invisibly close the window of contact with the outside world, and can not guide him to take the initiative to express his will, obviously the parents' unconscious makes it miss a great opportunity. Because the environment outside the family is absolutely impossible to be so smooth, if the child cannot solve the problem on his own and does not have the appropriate communication skills, it is easy to derive many emotional problems.
Second, elaborately design the "obstacles". Parents must be conscious in the home to carefully design some situations with certain obstacles, in daily life must not let the child have every request, you have to create some difficulties, change the method of "difficult" your child, let them learn to take the initiative to ask for help (some children still will not, other family members can stand next to him to demonstrate, let it follow) For example: put his favorite toys higher, want to eat or like to eat things from the place where they are often stored, give the bowl without chopsticks when eating, etc. Sometimes it is possible to deliberately pretend not to understand his intentions and wait patiently for him or force him to express them.
Finally, choose the time to "interact". Sometimes parents should fully observe the child's behavior motivation, learn to choose the right time to forcibly intervene in his world, create more direct interaction opportunities, such as when he assembles a toy car, you deliberately hide one part of it, let him find, and then you appear in time to find it with him, and after similar things happen later, he can learn to take the initiative to seek your help, pay attention to the process is not too blunt, to be natural.
Points to note: keep a certain distance, do not interfere with the child as the principle, carefully participate, do not infringe on the child's subject status, so that the children realize that the therapist's activities are not forcibly invading their world, but parallel to it. The child's mentality at this time is contradictory, both negative and concerned. To appear just right.
Third, the language refinement, starting from the child's interest to play the game - let him play with you
There are several games commonly used in the family (these games can generally be implemented after the child has a certain acceptance of your behavior).
1. Hide-and-seek game. This is something that almost every child likes, but most children are not necessarily interested in simple hide-and-seek games, and you can hide what your child likes along with it, and then gradually transition to simple games. It's similar to shooting things and counting. Parents clap their hands, each time they shoot to let the child count a number, suddenly stop when shooting a certain number, ask the child to say how many times they have been shot; they can also count the number of shots, the child can change the things they shoot at any time after adapting, and they can also take the opportunity to desensitize to fear things, because most children will have a specific object to be afraid of.
2. Guess the game. First place a variety of items in front of the child that he is more interested in, let the child observe for a few seconds, and then let him close his eyes, take the opportunity to quietly take away one of the items, and start to take away the one he is most interested in, in order to maintain the child's interest, let him say which thing is missing; then expand to take away a few things at a time to let him guess; when the child understands the basic rules, he can swap roles with the child and stimulate his joy of playing with people; this game requires the child to quickly notice several items when observing. Thus also exercising the child's attention span.
3. Play poker. One way to play is to take three or four different cards, start the color as diverse as possible, after a period of time you can use the same color cards, randomly arranged on the table, teach the child to choose a card to remember, let him look good and have been staring at this card, and then put the card back on the table, parents can change the position of the card at will, let her report where the target card is, can be rotated, the number of difficulty and number of cards, the number of times to change the position of the card and the speed can gradually change.
Older children can play the fastest game of cards with him, and the rotation and change of cards and mutual communication are very beneficial to the establishment of children's motivation to interact with people. It is also recommended that parents learn a little magic, the transformation of magic is relatively large, can attract children's attention. You can also expand the type of game according to your child's preferences, such as stepping on the shadow, catching the flashlight light, and so on.
Master the basic strategies for emotional stability in an unfamiliar environment – make him trust you
Fear of the unfamiliar environment (mainly lack of security) is a significant feature of the child, in the strange environment parents can not predict the situation will appear, when the unexpected things happen, the child's inappropriate behavior often brings embarrassment, confusion and frustration to the parents, so many parents are afraid to take the child out to play, for a long time, the parents will automatically close the most important link in the child's rehabilitation - integration into society, naturally can not enhance the child's motivation to pay attention to the external world, very unfavorable to the child's rehabilitation. Integration into society and the environment is something that parents must strive to overcome throughout their lives in the rehabilitation of their children. According to the practice of the following methods, the effect is very good.
1. Detailed explanation in advance. Before going to describe the strange environment in detail as much as possible, according to the child's visual auditory and cognitive characteristics, with the child's habitual way to let them know, such as can be drawn, you can also take some pictures or make videos in advance to let him see and detail one by one, it is best to highlight one of the objects that the child is more familiar with, because the child will have a sense of security after seeing the familiar object, and then let him be familiar with it every day.
The second environment is changing, when we give children the explanation of objects and their functions in the environment, we must be concise and clear, that is, we must use the same language, and at the same time, we must describe in detail the changes that may occur in the unfamiliar environment, parents themselves should open up ideas, as far as possible to take into account all possibilities, and inform them of the correct coping strategies, which can be practiced before family affairs.
Second, control during the event. Even if you do everything you should do beforehand, really enter the environment, it is still inevitable that there will be some accidents, when the accident occurs, you must first suppress the child's unstable emotional outburst first (because the consequences after the attack are difficult to imagine) that is, calm the mood first and then solve things, parents must not reprimand the child because of their own face problems, should give the child a full sense of security and comfort, and take away from the scene as soon as possible.
Third, after-the-fact cognitive intervention. Establish normal behavior from mistakes, use pictures of their inappropriate behavior or use the computer to make some small animations to let children understand their improprieties; but also to gradually adjust the child's living environment in a planned and step-by-step manner, remember that it is unchanged, and you will find that the child's ability to adapt to change and the desire to explore external things are gradually improving.
The above strategies help young children better show children's motivations, parents can first observe in the process of accompanying children, find children's motivations, and guide children to pay attention to other things or people. I believe that children will achieve a good interactive effect under the guidance of parents