Reprinted by
permission of Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015, Autistic Logistics, Kate Wilde, ISBN
978-1-84905-779-0, www.jkp.com.
Kate Wilde, Director, The Son-Rise Program
My
book Autistic Logistics will be published by Jessica
Kinsley Publishers on December 21, 2014 in the United
Kingdom, and January 21, 2015 in the United States.
Autistic
Logistics is
for you and ALL parents who have children on the autism spectrum …
helping with the everyday challenges of parenting outside of therapy time or
school time. The book is based on The Son-Rise Program®
principles and techniques, however, it can be used by ANY parent,
caregiver, therapist, teacher or family member who loves a child with autism. Autistic
Logistics will be very helpful if the primary therapy for your child is
ABA, Floortime, RDI, Verbal Behavior, Handel, Intensive Play therapy or any
other. It’s truly for everyone who wants help with the following:
·
Sleeping
Challenges
·
Hitting
·
Tantrums
·
Toilet
Training
·
Introducing
new foods
·
Tooth
Brushing
·
Hair
Cutting
·
Dressing
·
Boundary
Setting
Most
of these challenges take place outside of therapy or school time but happen
every day, every week, and every month. Autistic Logistics is
designed to help with “everyday” challenges.
Autistic
Logistics
is extremely practical, full of concrete step-by-step strategies that you can
implement immediately with your child. It also has exercises that you can do to
help you understand your child and yourself on a deeper level and put the strategies
into practice with comfort and ease.
Enjoy this sneak preview of Chapter 4 of Autistic Logistics
… Reprinted
by permission of Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015, Autistic Logistics, Kate Wilde, ISBN
978-1-84905-779-0, www.jkp.com.
Chapter 4 – Motivation: The Key to Everything.
Motivation is everything.
We work harder, learn quicker and engage more when we are really interested and
enjoying what we are doing. Raun K. Kaufman in
his book, “Autism Breakthrough: The Groundbreaking Method that has Helped
Families All Over the World.” says:
“Motivation is the engine
of growth. It is the single largest factor in your child’s learning and
progress. When a child is following his or her own intrinsic interests and
motivations, learning comes fast and furious.”
I worked with Gabriella a
beautiful young girl of 7. Gabriella loved food, wanted to eat and look at
pictures of food all day long. At that time food was her one and only
motivation. Because Gabriella focused nearly all of her attention around food
her parents were trying to move her away from food and get her into doing
something else. They wanted her to read, learn math, and experience more of
what “the world had to offer”. They did this by introducing subjects and
things that had nothing to do with food. This was not working. She showed no
interest in what they were offering her. This was because they were completely
ignoring what it is that she enjoyed - food.
The idea is to use your
child motivations, by marrying the goal or skill you want your child to learn
with what it is they enjoy. We did that with Gabriella. So instead of trying to
get her away from the subject of food we embraced it and made it the central
focus of everything we offered her. Over the next two years she learned to
speak through naming all the different foods. She learned math by cooking her
favorite foods and measuring out the ingredients. She learned to be flexible
and spontaneous by making up her own recipes. She learned about the different
cultures of the world through studying their different foods. She even learned
French and Italian!
It is important to note
that this is not about giving rewards for a job well done. It is about
putting what they enjoy at the center of the activity or learning.
This is going to be so
important as you go about encouraging your child to do all the skills outlined
in this book.
Carl was 10 years old and
he loved staccato rhythms. He would tap out rhythms using his fingers on
the floor the walls and the backs of books. His preferred state of being was to
lie on a beanbag and tap out rhythms. One goal we worked on with him was to
encourage him to be more active. So I brought in a skipping rope. Instead of
introducing it to him in a traditional way I showed him how he could use the
skipping robe in a way that I knew would interest him first. I took the handles
of the skipping rope and tapped out a rhythm. I then gave it to him and he
taped out a rhythm. Then I swung the skipping robe in a way that the rope made
a rhythm on the floor. This helped him become interested and interact with the
skipping rope. We had a lot of fun and by the end of the session he had
attempted to skip. Hooray for Carl! Putting what he was motivated for, tapping
at the center of the activity helped him reach the goal of being more active.
FIND OUT WHAT MOTIVATES
YOUR CHILD
We can find out what really
motivates our children by observing where they put their attention. Then we can
marry their motivation with the goal we have for our child. This book is about
how to help our children with their self help skills such as taking a bath,
sitting on the toilet, eating new foods and much more. These endeavors will be
so much more successful if we do them in a way that interests our children. For
some of you it will be immediately obvious to you what motivates your child,
for others it may not be so apparent. The exercise below is designed to help
you find out what motivates your child.
Exercise 1
Spend 15 minutes a day for
five days just observing your child as they play by themselves. Notice not just
what they are playing with but how they are playing with it. What senses
are they predominately using? As you observe them notice what they are doing,
if they are tapping things with their fingers then that is their motivation. It
does not have to be playing with something in the traditional sense. Our
children play and explore differently. The following list will help you observe
in a particular way. Just tick the boxes that are relevant to your child.
□ He touches or taps
things in a rhythmic way.
□ The rhythm is fast
□ The rhythm is slow
□ The
rhythm is staccato
□ The rhythm is syncopated
Write your child’s favorite
rhythm in the space provided below.
He is visually
stimulated.
□ He looks at things out of
the corner of his eye
□ He lines things up in
neat rows
□ He likes to arrange
things in scenes
□ He likes to arrange thing
in piles
□ He stares at the wall, or
ceiling, or at the woodwork, or light switches
□ He stares intently at his
own fingers as he slowly wiggles them
□ He looks at patterns
while running his fingers over the pattern
□ He will watch the credits
role down the TV again and again
□ He will draw
□ He likes to watch the
chalk dust fall
□ He watches things that
move like fans or any electrical equipment
□ He stares at light on
floorboards
□ He watches little things
falling through the air like rice
□ He watches a scarves fall
through the air
□ He closely watches the
wheels of a car spin
□ He watches a piece of
string dangle
□ He waves a belt along the
floor watching it move like a snake
Write what and how your
child watches things in the space provided below.
She likes to
engage in physical activities.
□ She runs from one
side of the room to another banging her hands
into the walls
□ She paces
using large steps starting slowly and gathering speed, then slowing down and
again gathering speed
□ She flaps her
hand, stimulating mainly his wrists
□ She flaps her
fingers only
□ She shakes
her head from side to side
□ She pushing
her tongue against the side of his cheeks
□ She chews on
any object she has
□ She slaps the
side of her head, legs, or claps her hands.
□ She jumps
□ She is
constantly in perpetual motion
□ She holds an
object most of the time
Write your
child’s particular physical activity in the space provided below.
He likes to
listen to sounds.
□ He puts a car up close to
his ear and listens to the whirl of the car wheels
□ He makes sounds to
himself as he jumps, spins, or watches things fall
□ He listens to the clank
of a belt buckle falling to the ground as he watches it fall
□ He bangs doors, listening
to the click of the door handle opening or closing
□ He says the same phrase
or word over and over again, with a particular inflection or rhythm
□ He shakes bells
Add the specific sound your
child likes to hear in the space below.
She likes
patterns.
□ She likes to do puzzles
□ She likes numbers
□ She likes to spell words
□ She likes to solve math
problems
In the space below write
your child own specific interest in patterns.
He likes to
engage with textures and touch.
□ He loves soft things
□ He loves hard and bumpy
textures
□ He loves furry things
□ He likes sand paper
□ He will wrap himself up
in a blanket
□ He loves silky cloths
□ He will roll cars up and
down his arms
□ He likes soft touch
□ He likes hard pressure like squeezes
□ He loves ribbon
□ He loves the feel of hair
In the space below write
any other texture or touch your child likes.
What kind of
spaces does she like?
□ She likes the doors and
windows to be open
□ She will always close the
door
□ She will surround herself with cushions
□ She will play underneath
the table, or in a small play tent or lay house
□ She will play surrounded
by a fortress of books or stuffed animals
□ She likes to play in a
dark space
□ She likes to play in a
light space
In the space provided below
write down any other kind of space your child enjoys.
What type of
characters does he like?
□ Plastic Disney
characters?
□ Soft plush Disney characters?
□ Movie characters?
□ Characters
from a storybook?
Write your child favorite
characters in the space provided below.
What music or
song does your child like?
Write them down in the
space provided below.
Does your child
show you a color preference?
If so write in the space
provided below.
Exercise 2
This time notice how your
child responds to what YOU do. As you read below see if your child likes you to
do any of these actions. If you’re not sure
then find out by trying the action with your child. If they do, then that’s
their motivation.
□ Speaking in funny voices, like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
□ Using slapstick humor like pretending to fall on a banana peel
□
Big gestures, and big facial expressions
□
Big celebrations
□ Singing to them
□
Playing musical instrument
□
Dancing in big and funny ways
□
Whispering
□
Using anticipation
□
Talking softly
□
Clapping hands
□
Pretending to be an animal
□
Reading books out loud
□
Tickling him
□
Big squeezes
□
Blowing on his body
Add
any other things that you do that motivate your child in the space below.
Now you have just created a
list of your child’s own unique motivations. As you read the upcoming chapters
use these specific motivations to encourage your child to want to do the goals
in this book, by putting your child’s motivation at the center of the activity.
For example:
Marcus’s story: goal
= eat new foods, motivation = Spiderman.
Marcus was 5 and completely
in love with Spiderman. I think the only clothes he ever wore while I knew him
was a Spider Man Costume – so cute! While he loved spider man he seemed not to
be so interested in eating. He was underweight and his parents understandably
were very concerned about his health. So we took his motivation for Spider man and
married it with our goal of wanting him to eat. We started by making up stories
about what Spiderman loved to eat after he has done his days work of being a
super hero. He was amazing at drawing so we drew cartoons together about spider
man and every place we could we would draw spider man eating, or stopping off
at the shops to get his favorite foods. These were of course all the different
foods that we wanted Marcus to eat. We would then bring in what we started to
call “Spiderman Meals”. We introduced the food on Spiderman party plates and
while we were playing we would stop for a Spiderman munch.
Within a couple of weeks he had started to put on weight. This was because we
made eating the most interesting we could for him by putting what he enjoyed most
“Spiderman” at the center of the activity.
You can pre-order your copy of Autistic Logistics now at…
USA: Amazon.com
Or
UK: Amazon.co.uk.
