Follow Up to Whole Brain Teaching

I got such passionate responses (both negative and positive) from readers of this blog and especially  my colleagues here at the Scottish Rite Clinic that I think if might be interesting to continue the discussion. I thought I would link a video of the system being used in a Kindergarten class where there is a slightly more natural interaction style and it is easier to imagine how a real class would respond to this style.

My feeling, however, is that some teachers and students would love this system and some would hate it and not very many would be neutral about it. Another important issue, of course, is whether it would work with any particular child with ASD with appropriate modifications. Would it be better or worse than other teaching styles?

Safe Emergencies and Halloween

I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of a Safe Emergency as I find ways to prepare children for Halloween.  Halloween is a Safe Emergency Holiday where many people have decided that it would be fun to pretend to be brave about all the scariest things in life--injury, death, spiders, dark nights, and walking up to knock on the door of houses where strangers live.  As odd as this cultural celebration is, it is not a stretch to understand a holiday like this.  This kind of a holiday exists in many cultures.  Even more common and similar is  the kind of pretend play that you see with seven year old kids on the playground of any elementary school. You be the terrorist and you go in the hills over there. I will be a Pilot and I will bomb you but you try to get away!  Apparently, children are prone to re-enacting whatever terrifying thing they hear about.  By the time we are grownups, our Safe Emergency play has become video games, movies, books, rock climbing, and so on.  There has to be a reason that so many of us choose to spend our free time in activities like this.  I call these activities  Safe Emergencies.

Possible reasons for Safe Emergencies:

1. We need to practice in order to be prepared to handle real emergencies.
2. We like the feeling of control over scary things that we get when we play.
3. We like the feeling of alertness and mental focus that comes when we are a little scared.
4. We learn important emotional regulation, empathy, imagination, language, social interaction, motor and problem solving skills by engaging in Safe Emergencies.
   

Family Monster Game

I think of many games as being Safe Emergency Games--meaning that the game is a little bit scary but still safe.  This quality in a game seems to make it interesting for children but finding the "just right" amount of scariness is important.  Too scary and the child can't tolerate the game.    Halloween is a community wide Safe Emergency Game but it is often too scary for children with ASD.  I have been doing many versions of this Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) game with children this month to help children prepare for Halloween.  Next week, I plan to add monster masks for some children.  Here is one family playing this game together:
 

More Costumes and Props

Guest Post by Tamara Pogin SLP

We took this weeks practice acting class outside to a part stage. The wind nearly blew our costumes and props across Lake Superior, which was right behind our stage but it was fun for the actors to be out in the sunshine on a new stage.This week during Stage Play acting classes, our young actors really got excited about costumes and props. Many of them related to costumes and some shared that they had a Spiderman, Batman, or Ariel costume hanging in their closet at home. We explained that props were things that actors used on stage for a scene. During the prop game this week, we asked our actors to stretch their imaginations and come up with different ways of using ordinary objects such as an empty picture frame and a piece of a floating pool noodle. The actors were up for it! The acting buddies got things off to a great start by demonstrating the idea of the game and generating some ideas for uses of the props for kids that might get stuck. Many of the actors came up with their own ideas. Some of my favorites were using the pool noodle as a light saber, a black tablecloth as a “cloak of invisibility,” and an empty picture frame as a camera.

The costume game consisted of two actors choosing a costume and then acting in a short scene made up by the director, usually consisting of one line from each actor and a little stage direction. Our costumes this week consisted mainly of a box of hats and some scarves. We discovered in our pre-teaching sessions that it was much easier to let our actors choose their own costumes for this exercise. When the costumes were dictated, some actors didn’t want to wear them. Some didn’t even want to do the scene. However, when the actors chose their own costumes, all of them were willing to participate in the scene made up “on the spot” by the director. We realize that in the acting world, many times characters and costumes are assigned. Right now, our objective is that our actors get acquainted with becoming another character and interacting with another actor onstage.

It is Just Pretend, Right?

I was playing Cranium Cariboo with a five year old child who has an Autism Spectrum Disorder and with his little sister, Amy. Actually, I was helping them play with each other but I had to stay very involved to keep them taking turns and enjoying the game. Amy is three and her brother is five. I might have been the one to learn the most from the game, though. Amy was my teacher.

Cranium Cariboo is a favorite game of mine because it has several of the best game elements ever, but I still need to modify the game somewhat to make it useful for my young friends with ASD. The game provides a little purple key that opens any of the 15 doors. First two great game elements: keys and doors. Behind each of the doors may or may not be a bright colored ball. Two more great game elements: Balls and a little bit of uncertainty. As the child finds each hidden ball behind a door, he or she puts the ball into a chute via a hole and when all the balls are collected and crammed into the chute, a treasure box opens to reveal a shiny jewel. Three more great game elements: Collecting several bright objects, putting things into a hole, and a treasure box. This game is nearly perfect with so many delightful elements but children with ASD may still find it hard to persist and stay calm enough to play the game because of the element of uncertainty. Sometimes a ball is behind a door and sometimes nothing is behind a door.

The uncertainty element, minimal though it is, can be so overwhelming that I need to support children who have autism so that they can get through this part. If I don't help (and even if I do) my young friends often cheat, leaning down to peek in the doors and see where balls are located. They don't know the social concept of cheating, of course, and it really does not apply when children are this age but sometimes a parent gets upset when a child peeks. So, I need to support parents, too, to get them through this part since they don't know what high level concept cheating is or how many prerequisite skills a child needs to understand first. The truth is, I think peeking is a good strategy if the child feels distressed, just as I feel that it is OK for me to skip to the end of a literary thriller if I get too overwhelmed with the tension while reading a book. Unfortunately, it ruins the book for me if I read the ending and I think it ruins the game, emotionally, for the child to peek and find the balls, so I try to avoid the peeking/cheating issue altogether and provide another strategy to help my young friends deal with the disappointment of not finding a ball behind every door. I used a "dealing with disappointment" strategy to help Amy's brother, and it worked but the educational part for me was how Amy responded.

My "dealing with disappointment strategy" was inspired by Dr. Stanley Greenspan, who suggests that adults should use pretend play solutions to solve real problems--with the real problem, in this case, being that a child can feel upset to find no ball. I distract the child from the potential discomfort by pretending that finding no ball is a HUGE catastrophe to me. I pretend to get very upset and say something like, Oh No! This is sad news! NO BALL! Both Amy and her brother were riveted by this bit of theatrics. (I love it that I can be an Oscar award worthy actress when playing with children.)

My theatrics were entertaining enough that finding a ball or not finding a ball were equally rewarding for Amy's brother but my exaggerated expressions were a little too convincing for Amy. She turned with a look of distress on her face to ask her mom if everything was really OK. Tahirih is just pretending sad, right? she said, looking as though she were ready to start crying. Mom assured Amy that I was, indeed, Just Pretending. Amy calmed down right away with her mom's assurances. She took the key to look for a ball and fervently commented, I just love this game. This process of regulating her emotional state with pretend play was so interesting to Amy that she checked everytime with mom to see if I was just pretending and every time she commented on how much she loved the game.

The Ducks Go Marching Two by Two

If you play with toys that come in matching pairs, you will multiply the game possibilities by more than two. I recently bought two large sets of rubber ducks, so, now I am busy thinking of games to play with the duck pairs. These ideas would work with lots of toy pairs. The previous two posts are related to my recent massive duck purchase and you might like to follow-up by reading these previous posts if you have a collection of ducks or any other large critter collection.

I set out my duck sets today determined to discover new ways of playing with them. In my play room, I split a low table in half with masking tape. In my mind the tape was meant to serve as a kind of fence. My plan was that whoever I played with would get one side for his or her ducks and I would get the other for my ducks. I have so many ducks in this collection that I felt we could split them up and still each have plenty. When the first child of the day, Carter, came to play, I put a Popsicle People Doll of me on my side and a Popsicle People Doll of Carter on the other side. He had never seen the table set up like this so I had to explain it. This is Carter's side, I announced and this is Tahirih's side. (See note below for explanation of Popsicle People Dolls)

Hmmm I pondered aloud, right after Carter sat down, I want Car Duck. I put the duck that I have named Car Duck on my side. Here Carter, this is Carter's Car Duck. With two identical ducks of many kinds, the game became about each of us getting one each of every kind of duck. I showed Carter how to request ducks by doing it first. I want Guitar Duck! I said next--and after three or four ducks were handed out, I waited for Carter to request a duck.

No matter what level of skill a child has, I can show him or her a way to request. With a non-verbal child, I might teach the child to push a talking button that says Duck Please. For a child like Carter, I gave each duck pair a name like Car Ducks, Golf Ducks, Fireman Ducks showing him words to describe/label ducks and showing him how to combine words. For a child who is able to engage in pretend play, I might sell ducks from the box of ducks making the box into a duck store.

Carter is not quite ready to play like this but if he was ready, I would have handed Carter's dad the box and suggested he become the Duck Salesman. I would have taught Carter how to request a duck at a Duck Store by saying How much is your Fireman Duck, Sir? Carter's dad might reply saying Fireman Duck costs five cents! Setting up a Duck Store would be as easy as placing a sign on the box that says Ducks for Sale! With a Duck Store, we could play any number of buying and selling ideas. Today, Carter was introduced to the idea of collecting ducks on his side of the masking tape fence but in a year, he may become a duck entrepreneur. Toys don't really have to get old if you use them in new ways.

Now it turned out that Carter had his own idea about how to play with ducks. He wanted both of the Car Ducks, and both of the Golf Ducks, and both of the Pit Crew Ducks, so I quickly made a change in my plan to accomodate his interest in pairs. We both began to collect duck pairs. I mention this because it is easy to get caught up in your own plans for a game and miss using a child's much more motivating ideas. With Carter, I began to offer him pairs rather than single ducks. Carter likes letters too, so we put pairs of ducks on letters.

Depending on the child, this pair duck game might have become all about negotiating for favorite duck pairs, trading duck pairs, complaining when a duck does not have an identical matching duck pair, choosing girl ducks versus boy ducks, or as mentioned above, selling and buying duck pairs. I might have quickly put up a sign on the Duck Store that read Ten Ducks for a Quarter! and pretended the idea of buying in bulk. I hope that Carter starts to understand pretend play like this soon. I have lots of ideas for when he does.

Note: Popsicle Dolls are paper dolls with a real person's face on the doll, and the whole doll is stuck on a tongue depressor stick. I don't think that Tongue Depressor Dolls sounds as good a Popsicle People. More about using this strategy on Autism Games under Family Dolls

Mask Games

Alex has recently become quite interested in the idea of Halloween and also with the concept of Growing Up. This got me thinking about how often children tell us what they need to learn about next. Every detail associated with Halloween is fascinating to Alex, his mother told me. Likewise, Alex likes to talk about when he was a baby and how one grows from being a baby to being a kid and then on to being a grown-up. His dad thinks he might have started to grasp the concept of death, too, after a grandparent's recent death. It would seem that Alex is intrigued with the concept of transformation--the mysterious process by which people apparently change so dramatically as to become something else entirely. It is possible that this new fascination is motivated, in part, by fear. But even if it is, Alex has chosen the smartest possible route to mastering this fear--he wants to talk and play about it. Halloween, as he has intuitively understood, is a perfect tool for understanding transformation.

The question, from any child's point of view, has to be How does one thing become another thing? Over the years, I have heard many genuine and intelligent questions from children about how people change from one state of being to another. I remember my preschool-aged brother wondering aloud when our dad would become a baby again. My mother was expecting my little sister at the time and some kind of confusing explanation had probably been provided to my brother to prepare him. It made us laugh when he asked this but it was a reasonable question given how mysterious the transformation from lump in mommy's tummy to baby to adult must have been from his four year old perspective.


My daughter, at age three, wanted to know if I was going to be living in a different house after I returned home with eight inches less hair. Children don't know, and can't guess at the full implications of a dramatic change. If dad puts on a monster mask, has he become dangerous? This is a very reasonable thing to wonder. I once heard a story about a little boy on his first airplane ride who asked, When will we shrink small? He must have observed a number of airplanes transform from huge to tiny and wondered what happened to the people inside. How intriguing but also scary these processes of transformation must be for a child. It is not surprising that a child is scared when things and people are changing in some mighty strange ways around them.

Not all children with autism are ready to learn from the theatrics of Halloween and if your child is frightened or is steadfastly ignoring the whole thing, I would trust your child's judgement. But when a child, like Alex, has assigned himself the task of understanding some of the dynamics of transformation, Halloween is a really good tool for learning. Remember that you are not just helping your child learn about the nature of transformation, you are helping your child develop emotional coping skills for transformational change. Extend the holiday before and after the one day celebration so you will have time to talk and play Halloween inspired games. The conversation and play will get richer and more meaningful as your child learns. You will not be able to fully explain the complex dynamics of transformation because there is a lot of information that one must acquire over years and years to really understand. But you should realize that the real topic is not how does a person turn into Humpty Dumpty but rather, how do injured people get well again? How do babies appear from nowhere? Why do beloved grandpas disappear forever? How do weddings turn a favorite auntie into a wife who lives an airplane ride away? What changes will happen to me in my life? By talking and playing at your child's level in the fantasy world of Halloween you will help your child feel more in control and less anxious about whatever strange transformations occur in your child's life.

There are some fun Halloween Songs and Games offered by my friends at Super Simple Songs, check these out!

Update on the HUGSS Launcher

I have an update on my previous post (H.U.G.S. Science) about using science materials and experiments with kids who have autism. This week my colleague, Tamera Pogin M.A.C.C.C. and I used The Launcher to Launch small objects into the air with several children. The kit recommended soft items and light items for safety and mostly we used these but launching small characters off into the air was popular, if slightly less safe.

There was a nice social, pretend play possibility to launching characters that made it a good bridge activity taking kids from a physical cause/effect idea to a pretend cause/effect idea. I carried on with my little characters pretending that they had bumped heads, broken shoulders, and so on. Soon my young friends were also pretending injury. Many characters needed to go to the doctor where bandages were gently applied to the character and sometimes to the child too. One child was not so sure who got hurt and wanted his own doctoring and that was ok because for him this was early pretend play. Parents and I were pretty loose and accepted any story line. We moaned and groaned and clutched our heads and shoulders--and then grinned and giggled because it was delightfully silly. For my young friends who have the symbolic skills to participate in pretend play for at least fragments of time, this game was remarkably engaging and a good system for helping children hang on to a pretend play idea for longer. Dr. Stanley Greenspan (Floortime Intervention) would have been proud of how well the parents and I connected one idea to another and added complexity with each launch. Characters were "all better" and ready for re-launch right away at first and gradually needed prolonged recovery time in the hospital with more and more medical care applied. For all the kids, the physicality of the launch itself was the lynch pin that held this activity together. Whenever the child lost interest in pretend play, or could not sustain the story any longer, we could keep the activity going by launching another character.

Tamera told me that she was surprised by how hard it was for some of her young friends to play with the launcher. It is easy to forget, or not to be aware of how many sensory issues get in the way of participating in play. Two of her little ones had trouble placing the launch board on the triangle piece underneath and unless you center it and hit the right side, it does not do anything. No launch. When Tamera placed the board on, and the child did hit the right end, it was still hard for these children to visually track where the launched item went. They did not predict correctly and/or look in the right direction and so missed the entire exciting event. Items, once launched, move fast, making them hard to track if visual tracking is not a well-developed skill. We discussed launching toys that had bells in them like pet toys often do because these would make a noice and might be easier to track. I thought a feather might move slowly enough but it turns out that a feather does not launch at all. So much for my physics instincts. So, motor planning difficulty, visual tracking difficulty and lack of experience with this game made it a failure for some kids. Tamera wants us to make some video models of using this and our other new science materials and this may help. If kids know what is going to happen to some degree, it is easier to participate. So, I expect we will make some video models and share them here with you in the future.

Tamera said that a strategy that made the game really fun for one of her kids was launching things that hit the ceiling. We discussed getting a pie tin and hanging it from the ceiling to make a fun target that was closer to the floor. The ceilings in our rooms are high and most items don't launch that high. With a tin, we could experiment with the placement of the launcher and problem solve hitting the tin. We could also talk about sound since a tin would make a better sound than our ceiling does. Dr. Greenspan would be happy with this idea too because he recommends lots of joint problem solving activities as one of the important componants of his intervention program. The launcher was, already, a good joint problem solving activity for all the kids who were able to comprehend and manipulate it. They did become increasingly purposeful and deliberate whether planning a ceiling hit or planning a painful landing for a character. Generally, we think The Launcher will become part of our standard repertoire of games.

Tools of the Mind

The other morning, I heard a discussion on Public Radio about a NIH study of a preschool curriculum called Tools of the Mind. This curriculum included using pretend play as a means for teaching young children self-regulation skills and executive function skills. The results of the study were impressive with youngsters showing more pro-social behaviors of the kind and quality that, coincidently, we are constantly targeting as we teach children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I was convinced (re-convinced) that social pretend play is a near perfect system of social learning and children who have autism need more support so that they, too can engage in pretend play learning.

Pretend play is highly rule bound. When a child is pretending to be the mother of a sick infant, for example, the rules of being a mother are demanding. One has to act like a mother and not like a puppy or even get distracted by something that is mother-like but socially off task. Whatever the child knows about being a mother, the child must call to mind and portray these characteristics as appropriate in an evolving social situation. The combination of restricted role and dynamic social play are what hones mental skills that we call executive function skills. The child playing opposite our pretend mother, a youngster playing the mother's sick baby, may first pretend to cry and then fall asleep and then to crawl away and the pretend mother must decide how a mother would react to each of these situations. Other children are likely to lobby for their ideas about being mother and refine or expand the general knowledge about what a mother can or can't do. You get the baby some milk the sick baby actor may instruct. No, no, the mother has to stay with the baby all the time! another child may scold as she grabs a stethoscope and prepares to be the baby's doctor. There is planning and analyzing and choosing from among all the options that the group of players have experienced or witnessed. Learning could not be any more focused or intense than it is during extended pretend play. Pretend play is potent learning magic.

In a Tools of the Mind based curriculum, many hours a week are devoted to pretend play. Time for pretend play is what I hear preschool and kindergarten teachers lament giving up in favor of a more drill based curriculum prescribed to insure that children learn reading and math skills early. The practice of throwing out pretend play for a more adult directed education of preschoolers is like when we decided to throw out breast feeding babies in favor of baby formula. The Tools of the Mind study indicate we should re-think throwing out pretend play in school. Likewise, many serious programs for children with autism are drill heavy and pretend play lite. Many programs devote no serious effort toward teaching young children with autism to engage in pretend play--certainly not the hours a week it would require. If we believe that a typical child will need to have hundreds of hours of pretend play to master self-regulation and executive function skills "or cognitive control skills, including the ability to hold information in your mind; to resist habits, temptations or distractions; and to adjust to change" then how much more so do children with autism need the opportunity to do so and then the opportunity to get those hundreds of hour of play in. All this is sounding like a Floortime promotion, isn't it? I've gotta go back and re-read those Floortime books.

Can We Go?

Can we go? this little boy asks by pushing the talking button. Mom shakes her head no and they wait or nods yes and they move to the next orange flower. Those of you who know RDI will recognize this game--which we have taken and done with a variety of children in many different versions. It is a great Moving Together Game and if ever there was a game to teach your child, this is it. Regardless if your child as Asperger Syndrome and is highly verbal or if your child has just acquired some early Joint Attention skills and barely able to stay with you in a game with several steps--this is still a great game to teach. Model the game for your child with another adult or with another child or let your child watch a video model of the game first. Don't give up without showing your child the game over and over and helping your child learn the game many times. This child needs the Talking button to communicate verbally but for many children, we have someone stand behind the child and ask the adult partner Can we go? until the child can ask this for him or herself. Your child can just say Go? or even nod yes as a question. We don't care how the child communicates in this game because we are trying to teach the child to watch the adult, ask for permission, enjoy the no as much as the yes since the no is never final in this game. The adult should be focused just as this mom is. When the roles are reversed, and the adult is asking the child for permission to go, the adult must be very animated in facial expression. If the child says no, the adult sags and pouts and pretends to be very disappointed. Then asks again. If the child says yes, the adult grins and moves happily to the next location. Every time the adult models disappointed, the child sees how to accept a no without a meltdown.

On the new Moving Together Games page on Autism Games Website I discuss versions of Can We Go? I have put one clip from the website below. There is a version that I wish I had on video tape to show you. Some years ago, there was a dad/son team who played this game. The first time the son, David, said no to his father in this game, his father pouted but stayed still. David laughed so hard he nearly fell down. He loved telling his dad no. He love it so much that the game got stuck. He must have said no ten times in a row. So Dad, knowing his son well, said Can We Go Elephant? David did not know what that was but he loved elephants so he said yes. Dad moved with David to the orange flower and then made a perfect elephant sound and David joined in. Can we go seal? Dad asked next. Yes, said David. They made seal sounds that could have come from Sea World. And so on. It was highly entertaining and they came up with more sounds than I could have ever imagined. Although the creative families who come here make up many versions of this game, this remains my favorite.

Fishing in the Classroom

Some of you may know that I got started making Autism Games for my daughter, Serene--who is a special education teacher working in an International School overseas. She identified some students who had Autism Spectrum Disorder and wanted me to send her some good activities to do with these kids. In particular, she needed preschool games and activities since she had not worked with children that young before. Teaching children with autism is complicated so I learned to post video clips on You Tube so that I could show her what to do. I also wrote out long descriptions of how to play various games and we were both gratified to discover that this long distance consultation worked. Her preschooler is now participating in circle time, likes coming to school, is talking, and, one-on-one with her, this little guy is developing pretend play. My website does not include much direction in pretend play yet but Serene and I have discussed teaching strategies.

Recently, I suggest that Serene take some pretend play activities into his classroom and involve his peers in pretend play with him. For some reason this has seemed much scarier to Serene than any suggestion that I ever made before. I tried to describe what I had done when I worked in preschool classrooms. I told her that I just gathered up all the kids as my audience, putting them into little chairs to watch a "show." Then, I requested one or two good pretenders to come play with me in a new pretend play theme area that the teacher or I had set up (bakery shop, airplane, mechanic repair shop, Hair Salon.) The chosen pretenders and I would play in the area for a few minutes with me making sure that the play scheme was relatively simple in language and actions. In a bakery, I'd assign the role of baker to bake, the salesclerk to sell, say, a muffin and the customer to buy the muffin. Usually, I'd make it up as I went. After running through this basic play routine, I would send my fellow pretend players to the audience and choose a couple more kids to come play with me. We would then run the same basic script over again. Eventually, I would choose some of the students who were less able pretenders or communicators and we would play together for our kid audience and if need be, a classroom aid would feed lines to kids who needed help from the first batch of kids to the last. After it seemed that all the kids who needed to be pre-taught how to play in the new theme area were somewhat comfortable, I let the kids go on to play independently or with the classroom aid as support.

So this system evolved naturally and did not seem too hard as I remember it, but Serene has been planning her first theme play area for some time and gathering stuff together and thinking it through. She has clearly found the whole process intimidating She chose fishing as her theme and made a boat and got fishing rods and even sent me the script:

Captain: "Let's go fishing."

Boatman: "Okay."

(They climb into the boat.)

Captain: "Start rowing."

(Boatman picks up his oars and starts to row).

Boatman: "I see some fish!"

Captain: "Me too. Let's stop and fish here."

Boatman: "Okay, here's a fishing rod for you."

Captain: "Thanks."

(They start to fish.)

Boatman: "I caught one!!"

Captain: "I caught one!!"

Boatman: "Let's go home and eat them."

Captain: "Okay."

(They row home and get out of the boat.)

The script made me laugh, I guess because I never planned it out in this much detail before. But then Serene cooks from a recipe and I cook creatively--and we are both really good cooks. Apparently the plan and the script worked. She taught her first pretend play section in a classroom today and the kids participated--including the little guy she is hoped would play her carefully orchestrated fishing game. She felt a little foolish setting herself up as actress fisher-person but happy to see her student pretend in his classroom with peers. I need to tell Serene that she will stop feeling foolish after doing enough foolish things in public--which is strangely the truth. I now do foolish looking things on You Tube and have 1000 people watch and it does not bother me at all. I keep my eye on the goal. The kids are playing! That is the the goal and the goal has been won!

Pretend Play and Costumes

The day after my nephew's wedding, there was a present opening event at the home of the bride. My sister and her husband were getting dressed for this event at a hotel and I was visiting with them for a bit. As my Persian/American brother-in-law gathered up his dark blue suit, my sister, in a teasing voice said "Oh, are you going to go today as an old Persian guy?" Picking up on her tone, her husband pondered "Hmmm, should I go as the old, balding, Persian Father of the Groom or should I go as a young, hip, American Dad?" She hastened to reassure him that he was not really that bald. I commented that I thought it was cool to have identity choices. He grinned and gathered his conservative suit and disappeared into the connecting room to dress.

This moment made me think about how many social signals are conveyed with clothing. It also made me think about how my best pretend play sessions with children often involve good costumes. A man's white dress shirt, a pair of swim goggles and a child who otherwise barely participated in pretend play willingly became a "scientist" in the "chemistry" lab. Teaching children with autism requires that one highlight or emphasize various aspects of social behavior and in pretend play, a good costume is a way of highlighting an identity change. You might even call a costume a "visual support" for pretend play.

I recently invited my daughter to shop with me for some new clothes and she informed me, as I made my final selections that I had not bought "new" clothes but rather had bought my "old" clothes all over again. I get stuck in my costume selections, apparently, and so too do many of my young friends. Little girls (with or without autism) may find the idea of being a "Princess" so appealing that they are unwilling to give up this role for any other. Little boys (with or without autism) may decide that a particular superhero suits and no other character will do. Spider-man is popular lately. So, while being entirely compassionate about the tendency to get stuck, I usually write a social story at the beginning of our pretend play sessions and explain when a change in costume will occur. I might write something like this:

Pretend Play is Different Every Week

This week, on October 1st, Amy will be a princess in a blue princess dress. Next week, on October 8, Amy will be a pirate and wear pirate clothes. We pretend to be different kinds of people every week. Tahirih will get Amy a different costume every week. This will be fun.


A quick social story like this helps us avoid many a meltdown but even more importantly, it helps Amy learn that she can pretend many different characters--thus using pretend play to explore the social world around her and explore facets of her own character.

Now, if only someone would write me a social story, I too might buy some new clothing that is different from what I have worn for years and like my brother-in-law, I could have some identity choices.

Related Note:

A visual support is anything that a child can see that helps the child understand what he or she is expected to do. We all use visual supports all the time--from lists, to street signs, to electronic organizers but creating and using visual information to supplement verbal information is very helpful to children with ASD.

A Social Story is a visual support strategy created by a speech pathologist named Carol Grey where a child is given a short simple story to explain the social dynamics of a situation and giving the child guidance about what would be appropriate social behavior.

Here is a video clip of a simple visual support being used. This visual support is called a First/Then card. Two pictures are lined up, and the child is shown which activity will be done first and which activity will be done second: First/Then