Autism Home Learning

Many of your children use a daily schedule at school. Schedules build on First Then by sequencing longer chunks of time - part day or whole day. Individuals who are on the spectrum have difficulties with organising and sequencing activities. At the same time, they need predictability and routines. Visual schedules are a way of showing what and when , which helps children with autism to understand the structure of their day. This reduces anxiety and increases independence, which is important for self-esteem. Given the current situation and 'stay at home' ruling, it will be helpful for you and your child if you can find ways to structure their day. If you want to set up a home learning schedule, here are some tips : Use visuals to provide information on the schedule which is meaningful for your child. Visual information can be very powerful for our children as many of them have strengths in visual processing. Depending on your child's understanding, the schedule ...

This post is about change to routine and how you might think about creating a new routine at home. We are all experiencing changes to our usual routines, especially now most of us are restricted to staying at home. Changes to routines cause anxieties for many people and currently we are all trying to make adjustments to cope as best we can with imposed changes to daily life.  For autistic children and young people, change is especially challenging. Our children prefer routines that are familiar and many become distressed by the smallest of changes. Creating a new routine at home may well be difficult but, once you have established a new routine that works for your child and your family , daily life may become more manageable and dare I say, enjoyable!  Managing change on this scale may feel overwhelming and you might find it easier to break things down into smaller steps, certainly for some of our children this will be necessary. This post focuses on 2 steps to starting ...