Behavioural Intervention for Autism -
Our Experience in the UK
[Contents]
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Behavioural Intervention for Autism -Our Experience in the UK[Contents]
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Use of the photographsWe have found a video and photographs to be very useful. but are now putting more emphasis on the use of large home made booklets of photographs with simple sentences underneath each photo. My wife has now produced two booklets of family stories with photos of members of the family and activities we have done together. A recent one showed about a dozen photographs of a family holiday. Paul is able to read and understand quite a number of words and so each picture has a simple sentence underneath it. Paul responds well to these books and will read the words. He will also respond to the photo and say the name of the person in it. One of these booklets produced in March 98 showed action photos of family members to show sitting, walking, running, etc so that Paul could be encouraged to say "he is walking". "he is running", etc. We also have a number of photos of people in different moods so that we can encourage Paul to say "he is happy", "he is sad", etc. We think that this has been relatively successful in that Paul seems to understand the action photos but it is still to early to say about the moods. Toilet training is still a problem and so my wife has just produced a booklet of photographs showing him going to the toilet with short simple sentences underneath each photo. We are hoping that this will encourage him to understand the idea of going to the toilet. We hope to eventually move on from this and produce a booklet with different independent tasks one after the other. The idea is that Paul will see a picture of a puzzle and then go and do the task. When he has finished he will go back to the book and look at the next picture of another activity and then go and do it. We haven't yet done this and so cannot yet comment on it's success. We have several aims in using these booklets ;_ 1) To use Paul's ability to read simple sentences to help him to develop. 2) To help Paul to remember and understand the past. 3) To help Paul to understand simple concepts like playing on the beach Use of VideosOne of our major aims in using the video and pictures is to get Paul to do alternative activities to 'stimming'. He used to like likes banging hard things e.g. a book, with a finger or part of his hand and will do this for hours on end if left to do so. In the last few months he has taken to banging a soft toy in a similar way and recently has taken to banging the front of his head with something soft e.g. a soft toy or piece of foam. While he does this he drifts off into a world of his own and takes little or no notice of what is going on around him. He therefore needs to be 'taught' to play. We also aim to use the video to teach other skills and possibly some words or language structures. We have used the video to :- 1) Video our Workshop ( four and a half hours!) - this enabled us to look at it numerous times and each time pick up something about behavioural intervention which we had previously missed. 2) Video our son Paul so that we could compare his past behaviour with his behaviour after behavioural intervention. 3) Video other members of the family. My wife has taken videos of activities done by various members of the family which were then copied by Paul. The amazing thing is that if Paul sees something on a video he will remember it and often try to act it out but if he sees the same thing in real life he will usually to ignore it. Paul did not play with toys very much and so we took a series of video shots of his brother and sister playing different games with toys. When shown the video Paul will copy the game exactly. We have now tried to get him to play with the toys with less video input and are trying to extend the range of activities. We are also taking shots of members of the extended family and some short speech interactions e.g. hello, goodbye, etc. Again Paul seems to have learned from these. We are also integrating this use of the video with Paul's behavioural intervention programmes so that he can have a hello programme going and later see the family doing the same thing on video. Cards and Flash CardsMy wife has produced a card index of S.D's(instructions) for Paul's maintenance programmes for use in combination with a large number of cards. Where the S.D. corresponds to a particular picture then that is used instead. |
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Send mail to jchann@globalnet.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
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