Motivating Autistic Children With a Variety of Activities

For those parents of autistic children, you are probably aware of how to motivate the child by employing a variety of activities. However, if your child has just been diagnosed with Autism you are most likely not aware of this as you may not have had the time yet to educated yourself about how this affects the individual. Children as well as teenagers and adults with Autism have a great deal of difficulty conversing and interacting with others while also having impaired communication skills.

In order to help autistic children develop behavioral, language, and social skills, you have to find ways of motivating them to pay attention and learn from this. The key to developing certain life skills may be an early intervention, but these have become easier to teach thanks to the help of some newer motivational methods that are now available. The following are some suggestions for how to motivate autistic children by employing a variety of activities to accomplish this.

Use play therapy that encourages self-expression, provides a sense of accomplishment, and teaches skills to motivate children with Autism.

Allow autistic children to choose the activity they want to engage in such as dancing or jumping and then be sure that you participate in these activities with them. Keep participating with them in these different activities until they communicate with you spontaneously and make eye contact.

Activities involving scripting or "social stories" should be encouraged as it oftentimes helps the non-verbal child with Autism to become more verbal while learning more appropriate behavioral skills. This also helps to improve their communication skills and has the tendency to decrease social isolation.

Employ positive reinforcement during their learning periods and therapy sessions in order to keep communication going. Praising correct answers or prompting another answer after an incorrect one is an excellent way to motivate them into responding more frequently.

Introduce new drills and tasks while still using familiar ones in order to make learning more fun and interesting. Granted, routine and structure are essential to providing autistic children with a comfort zone and teaching them numerous skills. However, Autism studies have revealed that when tasks are interesting and varied, autistic children are better behaved, give more correct answers, learn quicker, and stay more focused.

Incorporate activities that involve sensory integration. These will decrease or increase the level of sensory stimulation that autistic children receive. When a child with Autism is overwhelmed with sensory input, occupational therapists help them to participate in certain activities that help them to filter the amount of sensory input they are receiving.

Finally, children with Autism can also be motivated by employing music therapy and singing. In some cases, autistic children who cannot speak a single word can sing when they are exposed to tunes with repetitive and simple lyrics or phrases. This actually helps them to develop language skills that are lacking while at the same time helping them to eliminate those monotone speech patterns that are so common with autistic children.

For the latest videos and training information on child development as well as books and curricula on Autism please visit childdevelopmentmedia.com.

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