How to play with other children?

[Squirrel]

Hello all.

Robin got his diagnosis yesterday, High Functioning Autism, so we should finally be getting some more support in teaching his how this crazy old world works, and how he can integrate with it ... (but there is a 3 to 4 month wait for what I am translating as a Child Development Centre - we live in Sweden)

(He's 4 by the way)

 

His biggest problem at the moment is in playing with other children.

Robin wants to play with them .... but ....

 

He either seems to snatch a toy that someone else is using ....

Command the other children to do something "Come, we go slide now" which is sometimes accepted but sometimes not

Or disturb the game in some way - I think to try to get attention ...

 

He knows about taking turns, and is pretty good at it if he is applying the rule to the situation - he can do this independantly if it occurs to him.

 

We have been discussing the Stop Look Listen technique (from 'Raising your Spirited Child, Mary Kurcinka, highly recommended book)

Stop - before barging in

Look - at what they are playing/doing

Listen - to what they are saying to each other

.... and then join in ....

... but how do you 'join in' ?

 

I'm thinking about taking a spare toy the same or similar (.... if there is one)

Imitating the type of play, already taking place (.... but not copying exactly, that's annoying ...)

and then introducing your own ideas as suggestions - friends might say yes or no ...

 

e.g. cars and car mat.

Friends are driving cars around visiting different locations

Can take a car and drive your own route to different places but following someone exactly might wind them up ...

Can later suggest 'Follow me' or 'Let's play a race /chase/ whatever' .... but of course they might say No, 'cos they might be playing delivery trucks, farm to shop, shops to houses, or something else ....

 

Obviously none of my mutterings on here are suitable for 'clear and concrete explanations' LOL!

Any ideas?

 

Helen

[Karen A]

Hi Squirrel I think it might be a bit of an up and down time for you if you got a dx HFA for your son just yesterday. <'> <'>

 

We finally obtained an AS dx for Ben a few months ago.Even though I had been around on the Forum a while I am still in the process of figuring out how I feel about it.

There is a book called ''Playing,laughing and learning with children on the Autism Spectrum '' it is written by Julia Moor and published by JKP publishers.

Amazon UK do carry the book.I don't know whether you could obtain a copy on import to Sweden or have contacts in the UKwho could obtain a copy and post it on.

I have not read the book but remember looking at a copy in the library.It was well reviewed by a few people with younger children. Karen.

[Sally44]

You seem to be on the ball regarding being able to identify that he is not successful at social interaction for a number of reasons that are common with a diagnosis of an ASD.

The two professionals that I would recommend using are a Play Therapist and a Speech and Language Therapist.

You need both these professionals to have experience in working with children with ASDs.

Most Play Therapists work with children who have emotiona/mental trauma and use play as a therapy.

But there are Play Therapists who work with children with developmental disorders such as Autism.

I went to such a play group for around 18 months. The therapist worked 1:1 with each child (so if there were 5 children in the group there were 5 therapists as well).

To begin with the therapist worked only with my son to get a good understanding of what his skills and deficits were. Then he was introduced into the group.

It is very good that your son wants to play. So he will be able to be taught ways of being more successful. And once a child is successful it increases their confidence and their motivation to attempt to play more.

The Play Therapist also taught each parent how to play with their child at home.

This involved a daily session of 10 minutes building up to 30-40 minutes.

The parent had to have a separate box of the things that could be played with during that session and it was out of the child's reach for the rest of the time.

The box contained all kinds of things, art stuff, small figures, dressing up, etc.

The child always led the play and the adult followed and would comment on the 'emotions' and 'interaction' the child was demonstrating. So if the child picked up a small figure and gave another to the parent and then smashed them together the parent would say something like 'your doll is angry' - and see what the child did or said.

You could not try to manipulate the play or change its direction or introduce anything new at that stage. The idea was simply to help the child enjoy and control the interaction and begin to get some understanding of the interaction by the parent modelling back and giving a running commentry on what was happening during the play. If the child began to get upset or angry over something ie. was trying to cut something and could not do it. The parent could not intervene and do it for them. They had to wait until the child started to become upset. Then they would comment on it ie. 'are you getting upset because you can't cut the paper?', and if the child acknowledged that they would say 'do you need helpl', and if they acknowledged that you would ask 'do you want me to show you how to do it'. etc

Anyway the Play Therapy was very useful for my son and I believe the only reason he is now mainstream and not in a special school is because of his desire to interact socially and because of the input he has received from Play Therapy and Speech Therapy.

The second professional I mentioned is the Speech Therapist. Speech Therapist are the professionals that address speech delays, disorders and social communication and interaction delays or disorders.

For example my son goes to a Social Skills Group that is overseen by a SALT. The skills he learns in that group are then generalised into other environments and with other people. These are skills such as initiating a conversation. Listening and responding on the same topic. Joining in. Looking at what other children are doing. Comprehension of language and behaviours.

There is also a very good ongoing assessment of social interaction skills called SCERTS. I think this originated from the States, but is used in the UK. It is really an evaluation tool that all professionals involved with a child can use to quickly identify what skills and deficits a child has.

So I would also recommend a suitably experienced SALT. I have recently been sent alot of assessment papers from my son's SALT that both I and his teacher have had to complete. I think it was called TALKABILITY. But it was asking very specific questions about social interaction and communication skills.

Hope that gives you some info.

[josie h]

I think play therapy will definatly help your son. If you can't access it, you could try to introduce play skills to him yourself. I work as SENCO in a playgroup and we have had a few children who have been diagnosed on the spectrum. One of the things we do is teach them how to interact with other children. we started with trying to encourage the child to interact with an adult. This involved the adult 'playing' alongside the child initially and then starting to model play with them, extending the activity if possible. We would then introduce another child to the group, playing turn taking activities with the child, encouraging them to take turns by using very simple games eg, rolling a ball to each other, building a tower with blocks etc.

 

I'm not sure if something along these lines would help your child, but I guess its worth a try.

 

Josie

[Squirrel]

Thanks, Ladies.

 

We are on a 3 to 4 month wait for our referral to what sounds like a Child Development Centre (We're living in Sweden)

Once there ... I have learnt from here that it is a SALT that I am most needing, and the play therapy.

 

Thank you for your tips so far - if there is anything further you can think of about the actual process of playing with another child, the actual interaction - that would be very helpful.

 

He's pretty good at turn taking, once he realises that is what is needed.

 

Playing alongside kids with similar equipment appears to be the best way forward .... but how do you practise this?

(I do an awful lot of playing with Robin and modelling such behaviour - both as 'me' and on behalf of his baby brother)

Roadmats with toy cars, the wooden railway, and building with bricks are definitely the easier games in this respect and that's the sort of thing I set up for him when he is having a playdate. He has a tendancy to tell the other players what to do, what 'the story' is. So I need to work out how to explain/introduce the give and take of a normal play situation - different players having ideas and so on ....

(Martin and I have a tendancy to thwart his plans, drive our train through the tunnel rather than chasing his train as instructed, and all that sort of thing, just to try to show that the dictator does not always get his own way!)

 

Has anyone got any particular book recommendations for play skills? I've already acquired a book list as long as my arm from browsing the NAS site but I'd love to know what is really useful with talking, wanting to interact, chatty children like Robin.

 

Helen

[puffin]

While you are waiting for your time at disability rehabilitation to come up (I assume you have been referred to Habiliteringen) - you could contact the local authority special needs team (If you look at your kommuns website under education and click on the link for elevhälsan) this is the team that are actually responsible for delivering support to disabled children in educational settings such as nursery/school:

- they control the budget for SEN assistants in Sweden so you need to contact them about an assistant

- they also have early years SEN special pedagogues and play specialists who will go into nursery and observe and help draw up an action plan with staff

- they will also train staff about HFA etc - in some places assistants get weekly supervision and review sessions

- there are often speech and language therapists there who can carry out a preliminary asessment

 

 

Our experience was that it was better to access the kommun services sooner rather than later as it is the kommuns workers that actually work directly with the kids whereas the county Habiliteringen tended to have a role more as consultants in assessing and drawring up statemets of needs than acutal direct contact with DD1

 

 

[Sally44]

I think that once you have had a thorough assessment by a Speech and Language Therapist (or the equivalent) that they should identify all the language, social interaction skills that need working on.

For example some of the things they are starting to with my son (who is now aged 8), is they have started to comment on what people look like or are doing or on the environment. It is very easy for my son to become absorbed in what he is doing and become unaware of the other people or the environment he is in. When that happens he can quickly lose connection with any game he has been playing with the other children, so by helping him to 'notice' things it helps to bring him back.

He has also done alot of work on stories and putting them in the correct order, as well as having to explain what is happening and to predict what the outcome may be.

He goes to a Social Skills Club and he has been taking in a toy for other children to ask him about to encourage him to give information to others.

In reality, there are so many skills that need to tap into eachother, and you really do need indepth assessments and ongoing monitoring to see what the child is achieving and what they are struggling with.

From a social language and social interaction point of view an ongoing assessment tool such as SCERTS can be very useful.

Regarding play. See how your child is when you do not keep to his need for control. He might be trying to re-enact something he has already seen or heard. If he cannot tolerate the change you introduce, then it might be better to go along, at this stage, with how he wants to interact so that he enjoys the interaction. If he just gets upset then he might become negative about interaction and prefer to be alone.

It is very hard to play the waiting game. But our children do develop, not necessarily at the same time as their peers, and sometimes they don't develop skills across the board so they maybe able to achieve some higher level skills in some areas, and yet really struggle with basic stuff in other areas.

But just knowing what your son can and cannot do is going to be useful for any professional that is involved.