Teaching Communication to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
This article relates to promoting the social and communicative development of children with ASD in the early childhood years - under the age of 6 years and over the age of 12 months, around the time when a diagnosis can occur and is based on the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) which is a highly acclaimed play-based intervention, specifically designed for young children with ASD.
Building a Relationship
The first, and most important step to teaching communication is building a relationship with the child. It is from this foundation of a strong and positive relationship, that learning and development can occur. The Play Partner Decision Tree guides the process of first meeting the child and developing a trusting and positive relationship in the ESDM. The Play Partner Decision Tree scaffolds the relationship building process, using small, incremental steps before placing any demands or expectations on the child. This enables the child with ASD to learn that that adult is a fun and helpful play partner and in turn, enables the adult to learn as much as possible about the child.
Finding the Smile
Play is the foundation for learning in the early childhood years. A key feature of play is the element of fun. When children are having fun, they learn more rapidly and retain more information, therefore finding the child’s smile (finding the fun) is critical to effectively teaching communication to children with ASD. To step into the child’s spotlight of attention and find their smile, adults can sit opposite the child and comment on their actions and use of the materials using lots of affect. Adults can also bring the materials to life using exaggerated actions and sound effects. All of these techniques support the child’s attention to be focused on you and communicate your interest and enthusiasm to the child.
Joint Activity Routines
The framework of a joint activity routine allows the child with ASD to learn any skill identified during the assessment process through play. There are two types of joint activity routines to teach social and communicative skills:
- Object Focused Routines – where there is a game or object of the child’s choosing between you and the child that you are playing together.
- Sensory Social Routine – this type of routine utilises something that the adult can control, that the child requires the adult to be a part of at each step of the play such as rhymes, songs, finger plays, bubbles, balloons or even a large therapy ball.
Repetition supports the child with ASD to be able to predict the next step in the joint activity routine. Once the child is familiar with the routine, use pauses to prompt the child to fill in the gap or communicate with you to continue. When the child knows what a routine looks like and sounds like, they will be far more likely to participate using actions, eye-contact and vocalisations. All of these components are part of the child learning to communicate.
Dyadic Engagement
Another important framework for teaching communication is dyadic engagement. This refers to a balanced, coordinated, back and forth interaction between two people. There is lead and follow and follow and lead, sharing of turns, sharing of gazes, sharing of smiles, sharing of materials and no one person is in control of the other.
Imitation
For typically developing children, the observation and imitation of others is a powerful tool for learning and how all children do all of their learning in the first years of life. For the child with ASD, at about 6 months of age, they gradually begin to fall out of the social loop as they stop attending to the people around them and more to the objects and interesting details of their environment. The culmination of these missed learning opportunities has a cascading effect on the child’s overall development.
Imitation is one of the easiest ways to elicit a child’s attention to our face, voice and actions. This is what we want most of all for the child with ASD, to bring them back into the social loop and all of the learning that occurs in this context. Learning to attend to others is best achieved by making ourselves worth looking at by using lovely, rich, genuine level of affect in everything we do.
You can learn more about the Early Start Denver Model, including information about upcoming training courses for parents, carers and professionals, working with and caring for, children with ASD here.
Want to learn more about what is going on at Early Start? Find out here.
