Using a ZAC's Browser to Provide Social Interaction

Guest Blog by: Joanna Rien,
UMD Graduate Student

This video clip is of a child and his play partner reading an e-book on ZAC’s browser about a train and animals. As you’ll see, the activity is repetitive and cyclical in nature (client does something, play partner does something, computer does something, and repeat). The use of the concrete animals provides the client with the opportunity to connect what he is seeing on the computer to something that is happening in real-life. This activity is also useful in that it allows the client to complete MOST of it independently (watching the video and communicating on the Augmentative Communication Device saying “go”, “turn page”); however, he still needs a play partner to hit a button on the computer to turn the page and provide the animals. Each person has an important role in this activity.

Many of us use the computer as an opportunity to escape interaction with others, if only for a few minutes, whether it’s to check our email or play games. For children with autism, this is not the ideal. ZAC’s (Zone for Autistic Children) Browser is an educational website created for young children with autism, pervasive developmental disorder, and asperger syndrome. It allows time for the child to use and learn the computer in a safe manner, however if used by a young child independently, the child is apt to learn that he or she can escape social interaction very happily this way. If more interaction with others is the goal, and it is, then ZAC’s browser can be used but the way one uses it should be carefully thought out. If used appropriately and with intention to increase socialization, ZAC’s browser can be utilized to increase communication and interactions with others. You can see one way that this was accomplished in this clip.

A Graceful Way Out

In our Stage Play acting classes, we like to give our young actors a graceful way out when participating seems too hard. We have begun to teach the rule that actors can ask an Acting Buddy to do things that seem too hard. We have avoided a lot of meltdowns by not insisting that children do things. So far, every actor seems to come around to the idea of every activity eventually--actually pretty quickly. It is easier to decide to participate if you know that you don't have to do it.

Stage Play Week 3 Video Models

Here are Week Three video models that I am posting for our young Stage Play actors so that they can learn the new vocabulary and see the new activities before attending acting class:

Stage Play--Week Two

By Tamara Pogin SLP
& Tahirih Bushey SLP
The second week of acting classes went well. Actually, this week was every kind of wonderful. We saw skills on stage that we did not expect to see so quickly particularly the skill of acting out a scene with another person--which for many of our youngsters is very challenging. The actors were delighted with one another and with their own performances.

Each child that attended the large group acting classes this week got a chance to practice new activities in a small group session before our Wednesday Large Group acting class. We practiced in a beautiful 100 year old theater in the Scottish Rite Temple and this location clearly impressed the children. I think that the children enjoyed both locations equally but they were more excited to be with all the other kids at the Play Ground Theater. The new curriculum for the week included new vocabulary and short scenes with two people together on stage.

New Vocabulary: Onstage, Backstage, and Dressing Room. We also emphasized the role of director and continued to emphasize the roles of actor and audience. All of the children came up onstage in pairs and held the onstage symbol and recited, We are onstage. Then they went backstage and yelled, We are backstage. Can you see us? And the audience responded , NOOOO!. The children loved choral response so we need to do more of that. It also gives the children in the audience a role and that helps them sit and wait for a turn.

All of the kids got a chance to check out the dressing room and walk from backstage to onstage. They had spontaneous conversations about how we really need costumes in our acting class. Some children offered to bring in their Halloween costumes. Some of the boys were concerned that they would have to put on makeup. So a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of costumes, and very little for the idea of putting on make-up.

We also added the concept of playing scenes this week and that was fun. We called one scene Giving a Present and the other scene Running a Race. We were very explicit in explaining and demonstrating each scene. We had visuals for the scenes but did not need them because these two scenes were familiar enough to the children.

Giving a Present went well because all the children understood both roles. They clearly loved giving and receiving. Both were desirable roles. Many children started to improvise and pretend something was inside the empty present box. In a practice session, one child gave his mother a pretend present and said, It’s a puppy! She responded with, It’s just what you’ve always wanted. It was easy to vary the scene in simple, meaningful ways. For some children, we provided the variations and other children added variations on their own. The emotions associated with this scene were all happy, and it turns out that happy is easy for most our children to pretend. Some like pretending angry and hurt more but happy is easy. We talked about the present being a surprise in some cases. Surprise is also relatively easy for our actors to act out. We pretended in increasingly complex ways and the children seemed to take in all the details and enjoy the added complexity.

Running a Race was more of a challenge for many of our actors but the issue was that the scene required both a winner and a loser and most of our children had no interest in losing. We tried several approaches to make this easier, including giving one person the role of tripping, which does look fun to most our young actors. When it came right down to choosing though, most were willing to forgo tripping and falling in order to win. Hmmm. So we stopped calling it Winning and started calling it Finishing. That allowed more of our actors to try out the role of Tipping. Then we tried running a race in which kids tied. This was good too but it was hard for two children with autism to reach the finish line at the same time intentionally. We did everything in slow motion but even moving slowly, coordinating movement across a room is hard for our young actors. Which makes it a great skill to practice!

More on week three of acting classes soon. Stay Tuned.

Can a Child Overcome Echolalia?

I was asked this by a parent recently. Worded this way, the question is a little hard to answer. The answer is mostly yes. Yes, many children with autism go through a period of echolalia and use less and less echolalia as they learn more language skills. Many children continue to use rote, memorized language even after the immediate echolalia is gone. It is a long haul for children with autism to learn how to use original, self-generated language to convey original self-generated ideas. Every step of the way is a cause for celebration.

It is not so much that the child overcomes echolalia; it is like if there were 1000 skills that a child would need to talk in complete self-generated, original sentences, a child with echolalia has learned 287 of those skills. I am entirely making up those numbers but my point is, if a child is echolalic, that child knows some important things about communicating--but still needs to acquire many more communication skills. We can systematically teach the child the skills he is missing but meanwhile, echolalia is wonderful because it indicates that the child wants to communicate, is learning to communicate and is trying to communicate with what he knows so far.

The very first thing that I ever read about language development in children with autism was an article by Dr. Barry Prizant on echolalia. I am not even sure if he was a Doctor when he wrote it, it was so long ago. Like many aspects of language development, typical or atypical, it turns out that echolalia is a lot more complicated than one would imagine. I remember the article because it was so unexpectedly complicated that I kept thinking about it even though I had never met a child with autism in my life.

Some reasons why children use echolalia and what to do to help:

1. The child hears people talking as though listening to a song in a foreign language. The child may not have any idea that there are individual words in the long streams of sound that he hears. I hear French this way--like it is a song with a melody that I can imitate even though I don't know what the words mean. I can sound kind of French but not know what I am saying as I imitate someone speaking French. The thing is, I want to imitate that interesting French sound that I hear just like I want to hum a catchy tune. I don't even try to figure out what the speaker is saying. Trying to decode the French is too hard for me but I really like how French sounds so I imitate it. If a child is doing this empty imitation, you needs to help the child understand the meaning of words and phrases. Shorten your sentences. Use less language. Use visuals. Demonstrate meaning. Echolalia is an important sign that you need to do more to help your child with language comprehension.
2. The child repeats what you say because the child wants to take a conversational turn but does not yet have the necessary expressive language skills. The good news is that a child using echolalia for this reason understands that conversation goes back and forth between two people. This back and forth can be hard to teach so it is cool if a child understand this aspect of conversation. A chatty child with autism is much easier to teach than a silent child. But this child still needs to learn how to put his or her ideas into words. You can help a child who uses echolalia in this way by watching for clues as to what the child would say, if he could express ideas, feelings, and intentions in words. Try to read any and all of this child's behavior and translate his behavior it into words. If the child pushes, you say Move, Mommy and the child may then repeat Move, Mommy particularly if you guessed correctly about why you were being pushed. In this case, you use echolalia to help a child learn expressive language skills. It is good that the child repeats because repeating your words will help your child develop expressive language skills.
3. The child does not entirely understand what he hears and repeats it so as to give himself a second go at hearing and understanding. Sometimes the child repeats what he hears under his breath even. Use plenty of wait time after you say things to give this child time to process the meaning of what you say. Add visual supports and demonstrations (as in the previous situations) to increase the child's comprehension of language. It is good that your child repeats language to help himself comprehend better because without doing this, your child would understand less of what you say.
4. Some children are able to use self-generated original language but it still requires more mental effort than repeating what others have said. Echolalia is habitual and easier. For this child, you may need to help the child focus by getting down at the child's level, saying things that alert the child to your genuine interest in his or her thoughts, and in a variety of ways support the child's hard mental work of composing original language. Today, for example, I put a child in a swing, pushed him several times, then stopped the swing and asked him to compose an original sentence, Tell mom what we saw on our field trip. He repeated some of what I said, what we saw.. I gave him a couple more swings and stopped him and said Mom, we saw____ . He said a balcony. I gave him two more swings, stopped the swing and held up one finger and said, Mom, we saw a cool balcony. I held up another finger and and looked at Jacob. He said And there was no one in the audience. I nodded and said, We were the only people in the theater, no one was in the audience. Jacob was on to my topic now and mom, of course, responded with interest to everything he said. Jacob's sentences became increasingly complete and interesting. However, he went back to using more rote, memorized language as soon as we stopped providing that level of support. In this case, it is good that your child uses echolalia because it alerts you to the fact that you need to provide more language support in order for your child to successfully generate original thoughts and express these thoughts in words and sentences.

The main point that I remember from that long ago article by Barry Prizant is that echolalia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Kids with autism learn language differently than other children and echolalia is a tool of that learning process. There are many reasons why a child might use echolalia and if you can figure out the reason, you are better able to teach the child the next important language skill.

Stage Play First Day of Classes

We had our first day of acting classes yesterday! There were a few times, watching it all unfold, that I felt my eyes tear up because there were so many lovely moments.

The children were well prepared for this first day as they had all watched the video model clips (posted previously on this blog so that families could watch them at home). We watched the clips with two children at a time here at the clinic just prior to a practice session where we did all the activities of acting class once and learned the visual schedule. We pointed out to each child who his or her acting buddy was going to be as we watched the clips together. Each child got a picture of his or her acting buddy. When they met together for the first time in the lobby of the theater, you could see how happy and excited the children and the acting buddies were to meet one another. The meeting between parents and acting buddies was also very warm as parents were clearly pleased to meet the volunteer (acting buddies). (Eye brimming moment for me.)

Prior to the class, children had practiced every activity of the acting class in our clinic in a practice session. Tamara Pogin, Speech & Language Pathologist, my colleague and the co-teacher of Stage Play had practiced each activity with the Duluth Playhouse children's teacher, Ashley Mathison and with all the volunteer acting buddies. The video models were made during this practice session. We all practiced every part of what we were going to do.

During our pre-teaching session with pairs of children, we became certain that our curriculum was at the right level of difficulty. We knew, in fact, that every child was going to exceed the class objectives because our clinic practice sessions went so well. But we could not know how well the first day of class would go as there would inevitably be many more people and a new place. We worried that it would be overwhelming to some of our children and some of our volunteers. We hoped that all our preparation steps would be enough to help the children and adults through whatever happened.

It was a little overwhelming to some but it was overwhelming like a birthday party is overwhelming to a young child. Happy excitement prevailed. Every child wanted to be there even though most of them had to work really hard to keep excitement in check. Without much time or additional support every child participated in every activity of the class. We felt this was a cause for celebration! (And teary eyes.)


I put one clip below so you can see the opening activity of each class, Popcorn Attendance. A second clip of Popcorn Attendance will be on my next post, along with the acting class learning objectives.


PREPARATION

From the first day that Tamara and I had an idea that we would like to teach children communication and social interaction skills using the context of theater, to yesterday when we made this a reality, there were many steps. We sell the idea Kate Horvath, Duluth Children's Theater Director first. Kate already had the seeds of this idea planted and it was not difficult to create a shared vision for a collaboration of our two agencies. Then we both set out to sell our idea to our respective directors. Luckily, our two agencies are small, flexible, and open to trying new things so it was only a few meetings and a couple of months before we were preparing in earnest. Here were the steps:

1. Creating a curriculum
2. Training the volunteers
3. Making video models of each activity
4. Creating a visual schedule
5. Teaching the visual schedule by using it in a small group session first
   
6. Letting the children try each acting class activity in a familiar setting with one other child
7. Sending home visual supports like an actor card and an audience card (see picture)
   
8. Using other visual supports like circles with the child's picture for children to sit on
9. Giving each child a water bottle to help the child stay calm by allowing each child to hold something and put something appropriate in his or her mouth

Actors Introduction

After Popcorn Attendance, Actors Introduction is the first activity at our weekly Stage Play class. Each actor will introduce himself or herself just as these actors are doing in the clip below. Notice that each actor is turning around to face the audience. If an actor does not want to do Actors Introduction, it is OK to ask an Acting Buddy to do Actors Introduction. If the bigger clip of Actors Introduction takes too long to load up, use the smaller clip below it.