Autism Home Learning

Celebrate Kindness This week’s spotlight on kindness is so apt for the situation we are all in. News broadcasts have shown countless examples of kindness, small and large scale, which inspire and make us feel good. From young children colouring rainbows to give to a neighbour to large scale charitable acts such as those by ‘uncle Tom’. Let’s end this week’s blog by celebrating kindness in your family and make a promise to continue to model and encourage kindness daily. Encouraging Kindness - Art & Crafts Ideas Arts & crafts can be fun for autistic children, although we need to be mindful of any hypersensitivity, including to touch and smell. For these activities you want to draw attention to ‘kindness’ and ‘being kind’, so reducing/eliminating any unpleasant sensations is important as these would shift the focus to the unpleasant sensation and away from the kindness concept. You want these activities to be engaging and fun so choose resources which appeal to you...

Mental Health Awareness Week shines a light on kindness and the benefits for those who carry out acts of kindness. Sadly it is essential we also teach autistic children about what is NOT KIND. It is a sad fact of life that unkindness exists across society. Targets of unkindness are frequently those who are perceived as different in some way. It is widely recognised that autistic youngsters (and adults) are vulnerable to unkindness and often make easy targets. It is vital therefore that we teach about what is not kind and what to do when they experience unkindness . However, this is more complex than it might seem as recognising unkindness requires us to 'read' the intentions of other people. Autistic children and young people may find it difficult to read and interpret the intentions of others. This makes it all the more important to develop strategies to enable them to recognise unkindness, to make distinctions between degrees of unkindness and to know what to do when they...

Developing kindness to others helps to forge social and emotional connections. Practising acts of kindness can promote wellbeing and shared experiences. In this post I consider how we might develop an understanding of kindness in younger children. Developing mutually enjoyable connections with others is important for social and emotional development. The shared experience of good feelings when we are kind to others promotes wellbeing and also helps us to relate to the feelings of other people. By promoting acts of kindness, we can create opportunities for our children to begin to learn about their own good feelings, the good feelings of others and to enjoy shared experiences. Model kindness and make links with good feelings explicit Kindness is an abstract concept for some of our children and previous posts have suggested ways to make kindness more meaningful. A starting point is to model kindness to our children. Find ways that you and family members can carry out acts of kin...

Kindness & being kind have benefits for physical and mental health. Finding ways to help autistic children and young people to understand these concepts is important for developing positive relationships and for their wellbeing. Social Stories & Articles are an engaging way to teach about kindness. Social Stories or Articles (for those individuals who feel that stories are immature or are lies because they are not true!) are a useful way of sharing information about kindness & being kind with your child. Social Stories are written carefully and following guidelines provided by Carol Gray, the founder of the approach. This post is not about teaching you how to write a Social Story, but to illustrate how Social Stories can be developed to teach autistic children about kindness. For more information about Social Stories and guidelines for writing, see:  Carol Gray - What is a Social Story? or  National Autistic Society - Social Stories The following example ...

Kindness is the theme for Mental Health Awareness Week. This is a great opportunity to focus on what 'kindness' and  'being mind' mean. How about you introduce 'project kindness' for the week! This week's focus on kindness as part of Mental Health Awareness Week is a great opportunity to introduce some kindness activities during your home learning week.  Being kind to others helps us to feel good and the more we do good for others, the more we are doing good for ourselves. Many schools would include 'kindness' as a topic as part of Personal, Social and Health Education or PSHE. So this week you could introduce 'project kindness' to your learning week, teaching your child(ren) about kindness through some engaging and fun activities. Kindness has a positive effect on wellbeing for both giver and receiver, so use this week to spread some kindness. What is kindness & how can we see it? For many autistic children, the ...