A Simple Strategy for Overcoming Resistance in a Child With Autism

Has your child ever vehemently resisted your request to perform a task?
I worked with a young mom recently who came to me exasperated by her daughter's refusal to wash her hands and dry them or sometimes have a meltdown when the mom would do this task for her. The mom was at her wit's end and having tried many ways to make her daughter comply she resorted to punishment and loss of privileges as a last resort.
It turned out that there was an easy solution to this problem behavior but one that the parent had never even considered - she didn't even think it was in the realm of possibilities. Why? Because when I asked this mom if her child had any sensory issues she said, "No, they ruled out the diagnosis of a Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)."
There are many children, on and off the spectrum, that are diagnosed with SPD and the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation places the estimate of affected children at about one in 20 children. Individuals who have sensory issues have brains that are wired in such a way that it is difficult for them to accurately filter the sensory information that is coming in. Either the brain reads the sensory input as way too much or way too little. If a child has significant impairment in this area they earn the label of SPD.
But what if the impairment is not severe enough?
Can such a child still have sensory issues?... The answer is yes.
Children with sensory sensitivities can be hyper or hypo sensitive to different types of visual input or certain touches, tastes, textures, smells and noises. I have known many children who:

• will only wear clothes made of soft fabrics,
• are particular about the seams in their socks and where they fall on their feet,
• gag at the smell or texture of a certain food,
• are overly sensitive to bright lights,
• sit on a cold, hard toilet seat
• have difficulty concentrating due to the humming noise that fluorescent lights emit in a classroom.

In addition to these commonly know reactions that sensory issues can bring about there are many resistant behaviors that can be triggered by a particular sensory challenge, especially if your child is on the Autism spectrum. Your child may not have full-blown SPD yet he or she may be sensitive enough to various stimuli that it will affect his or her behavior in a negative way.
So if your child does not meet the criteria for SPD don't rule out the presence of sensory sensitivities. Just because your senses can tolerate a certain stimuli it is possible that the same experience can assault one or more of your child's senses.
That's right, there may be a simple reason why your child resists certain activities or refuses to cooperate. Your child may not be behaving badly - his behavior might simply be a result of a sensory sensitivity.
When you have a child that is challenged in this way, a simple sound, taste, smell or touch can send them over the top. You may find them refusing to do certain tasks or rejecting activities that seem so simple to us. As a parent it is sometimes all to easy to judge this behavior as willful, stubborn and resistant, especially when we look at it through the lens of our own experience and perspective.
Behaviors can be very baffling to parents, which is why you need to examine them through the lens that your child experiences the world with because most likely it is very foreign to our own. Once you identify and understand that the behavior is triggered by an over reaction to sensory input it becomes easier to address.
As in the scenario of the mom and little girl that I introduced above, it turned out that this young lady had a sensory aversion to the touch of a wet, slippery, squishy bar of soap, therefore she resisted touching it unless the bar of soap was dry and firm. Also, the texture of the towels seemed to be a turn off for her and even though this little girl was not Goldilocks finding a towel that was 'not too hard, not too soft - but just right' was the key to turning her behavior around.
mom switched to a liquid soap that her daughter helped pick out in order to make sure the smell would be agreeable to her - just in case her overly sensitive nose was part of the problem - and mom began to use non-scented fabric softener and dry the towels in the dryer as opposed to line drying them, her daughter had no objection to washing her hands.
I help many parents create sensory-friendly environments that can enhance a child's level of cooperation and reduce negative outbursts. In this particular story, the behavior was resolved in an uncomplicated fashion. Unfortunately, the solution is not always this simple but the outcome can be just as positive especially when a parent is willing to think outside the box and see things from their child's point of view.
If your child displays a behavior that baffles you, consider the possibility of a sensory issue at play. Remember, your child does not have to have a
Sensory Processing Disorder in order to have an extreme sensory reaction to something. Many of us can relate to the awful feeling that fingernails down a blackboard can produce in us. If you can accept this as an understandable reaction in yourself all you have to do is stretch your imagination a bit and accept the fact that something else less typical can have a similar effect on your child.

Connie Hammer, MSW, parent educator, consultant and coach, guides parents of young children recently diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder to uncover abilities and change possibilities. Visit her website to access Happy Parents, Happy Kids - Overcoming Autistic Behavioral Issues at http://parentcoachingforautism.com/how-we-help/products, a program to help you change behaviors, and get your FREE resources - a parenting e-course, Parenting a Child with Autism - 3 Secrets to Thrive and a weekly parenting tip newsletter, The Spectrum.

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Autism Behavior Management Strategies - Changing Your Child One Step at a Time

Autistic children often have behaviors that can easily get under one's nerve. However, regardless how tempting scolding an autistic child may be, it is always better to follow the pleasant way of doing things as this results to positive changes in the child's behavior.
You child's behavior is only as good as your responses to them. If you respond to your child's tantrum, whether by telling him to stop or by rewarding him, you are reinforcing the recurrence of the improper behavior. More often than not, children throw a feat to call your attention. If your child succeeds in doing so by way of tantrums, it is likely for him to repeat such behavior. Whereas if you ignore it and reward only positive behaviors (such as being quiet after a misconduct), you can expect a positive change.
The above example explains how autism behavior management works- ignoring unwanted behaviors and rewarding good ones. But, of course, it is far complicated than that. There are techniques to shape an autistic child's behaviors and ways to encourage the display of unwanted actions. Below are some of them.
1. Understand the ABC model. The ABC model is a simplified way of observing and rewarding a behavior. A is for Antecedent or the event that precedes the behavior. B is the behavior itself and is defined as an action that can be observed, measured, seen and heard. Anything that goes beyond these characteristics are not to be considered as behaviors and, therefore, not covered by autism behavior management. The third is the Consequence or the event that follows right after the behavior. Consequence often dictates whether a behavior will continue to occur or not. Once you fully understand the principles of the ABC model, it would be easier for you to invent and use tools that can modify your child's behaviors.
To test the principle, try to choose one behavior that you would want to reinforce or discourage. Using the above example, throwing tantrums can be reinforced in two very distinct ways - by ignoring it or by rewarding it. What most people do not know is that by simply saying "no" or any command that intends to put a stop to the behavior is one way of rewarding the difficult behavior. The most effective way is to ignore the behavior. Reward a positive behavior afterward (in this case, the positive behavior is being quiet after the tantrum). Choose a reward that is meaningful to the child.
2. Be clear and consistent. Once you have chosen to change a certain autistic behavior, there is no turning back. You have to continue the process of modifying your child's behavior. Also, there should never be an excuse for not doing the proper reinforcement.
3. Reward or punish right away. The best way of modifying a behavior is to give the reward or punishment right away, not a few seconds or minutes after the action was performed. This is because children still lack the capacity to analyze the relationship between events.
4. Lessen the use of reinforcements as the behavior improves. Ultimately, the goal is to change a behavior, not to make a child respond positively only when reinforcement is given. As the behavior improves, try to gradually withdraw the reinforcement. First replace material rewards with social rewards, then replace the latter with non-social rewards until the behavior disappears completely.

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Autism Therapy Methods

Until today, no real cure for autism has been detected. But an early and proper treatment could very much lessen the disruptive behavior and reduce the challenges parents and physicians deal with due to the disorder. An appropriate treatment might help autistic patients to learn, develop certain skills and get a specific rate of independency.

Autism can be treated by occupational therapy that tries to improve patient’s basic skills and functions like getting dressed on their own, bathing or eating alone. Body movements can also be helped by different physical exercises such as massaging.
A first step in the autism treatment is helping these children to modify and improve their behavior, which is usually lead by aggressiveness, repetitive and inappropriate actions. A new behavioral modification method is the Applied Behavior Analysis based on the main idea that patients are more likely to repeat a rewarded action than an ignored one. Autistic children are helped to learn hoe to sustain normal functions inside their environment.

The behavior modification methods deal with highly professional ways of inducing certain skills. All patients must learn how to react and behave in a society; every particular child needs a different therapy method according to his needs and interests. A full time intense care with a therapist and a caretaker is required for every single patient.

Most autistics cannot integrate senses and suffer either from a hypo- or from hyperactivity of the sensor integrating organs. Sensor therapy is usually performed by physical, occupational and speech therapists; they all must work together to erase wrong further accumulated sensor information and induce reorganized sensory knowledge.

In case of problems dealing with the touch sense, the autistic patient will be helped to learn working with different kind of materials and different textures. Listening to several sounds with different frequencies might help autistics integrate noises. Many autistic children suffer from a hyper-reactivity to sounds and even receive them as painful. Therapists must carefully observe and understand the sensor needs of the patient in order to establish an efficient treatment.

Autistic children are most often emotionally reduced and this estate affects also their social communication skills and desire. Therapists usually use a playing technique controlled by the child to help the improvement of their emotional development. Educational social stories are used to help patients understand their own feelings and manage with them. They are also taught to understand others ideas and points of view.

Another behavior modification method is the communication therapy to teach small children with autistic disorders how to develop their language and show elder patients how to use verbal communication. A sustained speech therapy could even help some of the children to use language to communicate with the others.

Autistic sufferers are taught hoe to express ideas, wishes or concerns by using pictures. The picture exchange communication system allows autistics to interact with others by pictures representing ideas, items or even activities.

By: Groshan Fabiola

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For greater resources on Autism or especially about child autism please click this link www.autism-info-center.com/child-autism.htm

Understanding and Dealing With Angry Behavior in Young Children With Autism

If your child hits, bites, screams, pushes and destroys things and you are at a loss for what to do, don't dismay. Negative behaviors such as these are learned and they can be unlearned as well.
Keep in mind that misbehavior is simply an expression of an unmet need or an inability to cope with the circumstances in the current environment.
A child's behavior is always a signal of how he or she feels inside and a child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder who has trouble communicating can become very frustrated with their environment very quickly. Just picture yourself not being able to communicate your very basic needs to the people who care for you? Close your eyes and visualize trying to tell someone you are very thirsty, or the light is hurting your eyes or the music is too loud and not being able to get them to understand. Wouldn't you be a candidate for an emotional meltdown if this were what your world was like on a daily basis?
When you think of a child's misbehavior as a need that is out of balance, your perspective can more easily shift to "my child has a problem instead of my child is being a problem". Then you can focus on discovering what the issue is and alleviate the potential for inappropriate behavior.
Also, we as adults are able to monitor our emotional state and manage the way we express our feelings but young children do not have these skills and need to be taught. This is where we need to step into our role as teacher - giving our sons and daughters words or pictures for their feelings or providing them with additional means to express them appropriately.
Here are some other strategies that will help you prevent and deal with angry behavior:
- Play detective and look for clues in determining underlying unmet needs. The need for attention and control are often the first ones that come to mind. Others might be boundaries, trust, structure, respect, and belonging. For a child with Autism, the unmet need is often the ability to clearly communicate to others what he or she wants. Providing visuals and other alternative means of communication will help keep frustration levels low and therefore avoid the potential for an angry outburst.
- Be on the lookout for stress. Acting inappropriately is often an indicator of stress. Bonnie Harris, author of Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids, states that all children want to be successful. Most children want to please and no child deliberately plans to have an outburst. Is something blocking your child from being successful in his play? Is she stressed due to insufficient sleep? Is his sensitivity to noise on overload in a chaotic environment? Has her dislike for transition been set off due to a sudden change in schedule? These and other triggers for stress can often be avoided.
- Give your child a feelings vocabulary that goes beyond happy, sad, and mad. Acknowledge your child's emotions by identifying what you see and giving the feeling a name. "I see an angry boy who wants something he can't have." or "You look frustrated with that toy because you can't get it to work." or "Are you disappointed because mommy can't play with you right now?" By labeling what you are observing and naming it, your child is learning what it means to be angry, frustrated or disappointed and the word for it.
- Remember to role model. Get in the habit of stating what you are feeling and what you can do about it. Making statements such as, "I am upset because I burnt the toast, I will have to watch the toaster more carefully next time". "Daddy is frustrated because he lost his book again, can you help him find it?" not only normalizes feelings of all sorts but it also introduces the concept of problem solving.
- Make a house rule that has no tolerance for hurtful behaviors. "Being angry is OK but hitting hurts, it is not OK to hit." Hands are for helping not hurting is also a good statement to use when hitting is involved. Focus on recognizing the times when your child uses his hands appropriately and give him specific praise for doing so. "I like the way you use your hands to pat the dog softly. He likes it too. See how happy it makes him."
- Create a "yes" environment where exploration will be safe and acceptable so you do not have to constantly use the word no. When children hear that term at every turn it can be a very frustrating experience for both of you.
As parents, it is always important to address concerning behaviors such as these as soon as they surface. First, spend time exploring your child's world from their point of view in order to help you understand what need is not being met. Second, find constructive ways to deal with behavioral issues up front before they become ingrained so they won't be even more difficult to break later on.

Connie Hammer, MSW, parent educator, consultant and coach, guides parents of young children recently diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder to uncover abilities and change possibilities. Visit her website http://www.parentcoachingforautism.com to get your FREE resources - a parenting e-course, Parenting a Child with Autism - 3 Secrets to Thrive and a weekly parenting tip newsletter, The Spectrum.

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Autism Behavior Ways to Beat The Summer Blues!

Given the nature of autism behavior, summer can actually be more difficult for kids with autism than most. In fact, many parents with kids who have autism dread the start of summer. Why? Summer wrecks with kids' routine. Summer is full of endless days with nothing to do and no plan, no routine, no schedule. If there is one surefire thing you could possibly do to cause tantrums and bad autism behavior in kids with autism, it is to remove their schedule.
Beat the Summertime Blues
All year long, kids with autism can at least rely on a few simple things. The yellow school bus which takes them to school, their classes and activities during school, and the yellow school bus to take them home. Love them or hate them, at least they're there. And having your day structured in some way, for a child with autism, is so much infinitely better than doing nothing.
So what do you do? Well, you have several options.
1. Extended School Year
Some schools will offer extended school year programs to those at risk for falling behind or those who need the extra enrichment and learning that extended school year programs provide. Many kids with autism need consistent learning or else they will start the school year way behind where they left off. They might even end the school year ahead, but they will forget all they learned during the summer and often regress without the structure that school provides.
Often, autism behavior that is problematic masks problems underneath - in this case, that the child needs more stimulation and engaging activities. Ask your special education teacher or principal about this option.
2. Summer Camps
There are, of course, also summer camps. There are dozens of different kinds of summer camps you could send your child to. Decide what is most important for you and your child. Do you want to work on social and communication skills in an autism focused environment? There are camps for that. Do you want to send your child to camp focused on his interests, such as a Lego camp, sports, or arts and crafts? There are camps for that.
Your local Town Recreation department usually has a selection of camps for kids in the summer at relatively low-cost. Often, they will even have summer camp programs designed for those with special needs. You can often get an aide to help your child participate in these activities. The key is planning ahead. Start early. Find out as early as possible in the year whom you will have to talk to and get permission from to get your child the services they need over the summer.
Doing so gives you the best chance of taking the negative autism behavior symptoms you often see in your child during the summer and turning them into positive ones.
Summer Camp Options
You can look at a site like autism.about.com/od/schoolandsummer/tp/camplistings.htm camps to find autism related summer camps that might be good for your child -- or just talk to your local autism society chapter or doctor. Sometimes you can find a great program locally, and sometimes you have to travel for it. Such programs usually incorporate therapy, academics, social skills learning, fields trips and just plain fun into a smorgasbord for autism learning and increasing positive autism behavior.
3. Create a summer learning routine for your child
Learning does not have to stop just because school has. Many experts will recommend that you develop units of learning during the summer to enrich your child's learning. In other words, make your home into a part-time school. Have theme weeks, such as learning about sea creatures with a trip to the aquarium. Learn about mammals and take a trip to the zoo. Take advantage of Internet lesson plans and learning resources.
Try to build a routine for your child over the summer so they will know what to expect. Designate some time each day for learning about a topic of interest to your child, then some time for an activity in the community like the swimming pool, the movies or a museum.
Community activities
The nice things about museums are they often free or low-cost, and some have special programs for kids with special needs. Kids' museums in particular sometimes have autism only days where kids with autism and their parents can have the whole place to themselves. This means they won't have to explain autism behavior to others and can be free to express themselves however they want.
Get into arts and crafts, or develop new hobbies. Summer is a time for learning and exploring interests that there wasn't time for during the school year. Just make sure there is some routine to all this, and you'll be all set. Your child will be enriched, happy, and you will see positive autism behavior (less or no meltdowns, more engagement) if you find a way to engage your child in a routine this summer.

And for further tips and techniques to help children with autism live a happy and fulfilled life, go to the web site AspergersSociety.org and www.AutismParenthood.com. There you will be able to sign up for the free Asperger's and Autism newsletter as well as get additional information to help your loved ones thrive on the autism spectrum.

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