One of the challenges of working with children on the autism spectrum is to model, encourage and teach flexible play. Children with ASD tend to get “stuck” on a topic, toy or animal so they want to continuously play with that object or play out the same scenario. Since I work with several preschool boys, I want to introduce topics that typically developing boys are interested in so my little clients can be appropriate play partners.
What boys aren’t fascinated with dinosaurs? One little boy I work with is very interested in marine animals, particularly sharks and seals. In order to move him to new topics, I started out playing with him on the playground as we acted out marine animals of his choosing. Then I told him we were going to be dinosaurs. I got out my little books that briefly described different dinosaurs and asked him to pick which one he wanted to be. Then I had him select one for me. WE read a few facts about each on so we could act out their life. I was to be the stegosaurus with the bony plates up my back and the spike on my tail. He was a T Rex, the large meat eater who I would have to watch my distance with since I was a plant eater. Our other play partner was a Triceratops with his “frill” which got caught on the beam above the slide when he was at the top, ready to come down. I was wielding my spiky tail if anyone came near me.
These little books offered just enough information to fill in our pretend play scenario and add some relevant information for this little boy to play with his peers. The next day we read about some other dinosaurs and added a new one to our group.
To round out the dinosaur theme, we read, I Wish I Had a Dinosaur by Anggabratra and When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Lise Broach.
Kids’ dollhouses provide a wonderful backdrop for pretend play, as children re-enact their common experiences of eating, dressing, cleaning up, going out to play, taking naps and bathing. Dollhouses come in all sizes and levels of complexity. I have used Fisher Price’s “My First Dollhouse” with children as young as 2, moving up to “The Loving Family Dollhouse,” for realistic homes and figures to act out imaginative play.
Moving from people to animals, Calico Critters just introduced its Country Treehouse for the characters’ indoor and outdoor play, building on a child’s interest in acting out scenes from their lives.
Gather your furry friends for an afternoon in the treehouse. Don’t worry, there is plenty of room for everyone, big and small. With multiple play vignettes–a deck, hot tub, lake, pagoda, water slide or rooms with a view–several kids can play at once. Hop aboard the canoe to cruise the lake, drop the trap door to slip down the slide, munch on a picnic under the pagoda, or relax in the hot tub.
Add your own critter sets and furniture suites to the two monkeys and boat provided with the treehouse. Plenty of stickers are included to personalize your new woodland home. Hang your pictures, stack your books, display your best dishes, and throw down the “Welcome” mat and it’s time to invite friends over for imaginary play. Once the props are assembled, kids just rotate around the circular, three dimensional play land, lost in their world of pretend.
Check out the newest family of Hedgehogs who look quite at home in the forest. Kids love their stand-out hairdos and combs to tame their locks.
Mothers told me that the treehouse is best played with on a short, small table so several kids can play alongside each other, absorbed in one of the mini-scenarios. One side lended itself to outdoor play with the water slide, lake and alfresco eating areas, while the other side brought little hands indoors as they arranged and re-arranged furniture and accessories in the rooms.
Parents should be the producers of play, setting out the critters and their props, letting their child direct the action at the treehouse. Language and play skills are built and reinforced as kids are in charge of their play.
The opinions expressed in this review are solely those of the author. “Calico Critters Country Treehouse” was provided for review by International Playthings.
Recently, Heidi Stevens , the Features Editor at the Chicago Tribune contacted me because she liked my article on “Nine Tips to Get Your Child to Talk About Her School Day,” and wanted to interview me for an article she was writing on that topic.
Last week, her article, “Kids Won’t Talk About School? Experts Reveal How to Get Kids of All Ages to Talk To You About Their School Day,” ran in the Chicago Tribune and featured some of my suggestions as an expert.She mentioned my points that you should know your child’s friends, what they are doing in class (read up on the class Web site) so you can be an informed conversationalist about her day. Many kids say that recess is their favorite subject so be a student of recess. Know what games they play with the kick ball or what equipment is popular with your child. If snack is important to them, be able to talk snack.Avoid a lot of questions but start some open ended statements and pause for your child to fill in. One of the other experts quoted in the article, Jim Fay, of Love and Logic Institute, suggests a 30 mintue rule which I like. “Make your first half hour together question free.” Let your child relax, get a snack, unwind after his day. Then get the conversation going.
Respond to complaints by problem solving together and working through soluntions, giving your child the words to work through difficulties. If your child says, “I hate math, I’m no good at it,” you might respond by saying, “I’m sorry. I can see you are frustrated. Show me your math book and let’s see what is hard.”
After reading a book to your child, extend the experience with an activity–talk about how the story relates to your life and your child’s experiences, act it out with props or draw a picture.
Recently I read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, using the cute plush pigeon who yells, “Let me Drive the Bus” when you squeeze him. Little Elle loves Mo Willems books and has used them to learn to read. She got so excited when I finished the book, that she got out her markers and drew this darling picture (minus the toes on one foot!) I can tell what details she took away from the story by her drawing.
Use your child’s illustration to launch a discussion and re-tell of the book. Talk about what happened at the beginning, middle and end. What changed? What was the problem and how was it solved?
As we encourage kids to think about a good story in a picture book, the sequence of events and how they relate to one another, we are helping kids to think like storytellers and writers.
I was listening to WCBS News Radio this week and Charles Grodin did a piece on when you are going to tell about something bad that happened, start with the punch line that everything turned out okay.
So on that note, I will start by saying my husband is okay, thank heavens, but this weekend he was in a bike accident with his biking buddy. They were close to home after a ride, going relatively slow when their wheels collided and both fell. My husband landed on his back, hit his head and was unconscious for a few minutes. I got there when the ambulance and emergency personnel had arrived and were asking him questions (like who is the president of the United States?) He spent a night in the hospital for observations and was released by the neurosurgeon with a diagnosis of a concussion. The emergency room physician said the helmet saved his life. Thank you to Gyro for making such a safe helmet. We know where his head hit because the interior material is compressed and there is no mark on his head.
I found it ironic that as I was sitting in the ambulance waiting for the EMT workers to assess my husband, two teenagers cycled by without helmets. I wanted to yell to them, but they were gone before I knew it.
So let me yell out to whomever is reading this. PLEASE wear a helmet when you ride and make sure your kids always wear a well-fitting helmet whenever they get on a bike. You don’t have to be going fast to get injured.
I have had two meetings in the last two days, representing families of children who are being considered for special education services within the public schools or Birth-Three programs. It occurred to me that having sat on both sides of the table (I worked for 20 plus years in the public schools and am now in private practice), I could offer some help to parents navigating the system of special education.
- Know the program you are pursuing and what qualifies a child to be included. If you are pursuing Birth-Three services, understand what kinds of services they provide (social work, speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) and what the guidelines are for qualification (such as a child scoring two standard deviations below the mean in one area of development, or 1 1/2 SD’s below the mean in two areas).
- Be prepared with copies of any prior testing on your child that will help in the next assessment. Bring copies of past evaluations to the meeting.
- Write out specific examples of your child’s functioning in different settings–home, school, playing with a friend or in a group. This is immensely helpful to the evaluators. Since they don’t know your child and you know her best, this gives them a head start. Be specific such as, “During a play date, Emma plays by herself, talking to herself and not seeming aware of the other child’s requests.” When the kids started playing tag, they were running around her while she seemed unaware of their game.” When parents give me specific descriptions of how their child reacted or what they specifically said, I can be a better diagnostician and ultimately be more helpful in planning a program to help their child. Give your written examples of behaviors, sentences, or sounds that your child typically uses to the evaluators. (Give a list of sounds your child uses, and examples of words she mispronounces if you are concerned about her articulation.)
- If applicable, have written reports from other professionals or teachers who work with your child.
As with several children I work with, they often perform very differently at school versus home, or one-on-one versus in a group. Have the teachers or therapist again give specific examples from their venue. One teacher this week told me, “He doesn’t enter into a group play activity unless he is prompted and only greets each child by name, rather than talk to them during play.” - Ask the professional what the sequence of events and likely timeline will be for evaluating and possibly placing your child in the program. This week one mom found that her school district does not begin the process of assessing children in the summer, even if they turn 3 over the summer. That mom started making alternate plans for her child to receive the services he needed while waiting for the school program to kick in in September.
One of the more challenging sounds to correct in a child is a frontal lisp. It is hard to retrain the tongue to be placed accurately behind the teeth rather than protrude forward. Sometimes progress is faster than others.
I have blogged about success using techniques from Pam Marshalla’s excellent seminar on “Practical Therapy Tips for Persistent Articulation Errors: Frontal LIsp, Lateral Lisp and Distorted R.” Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised at how quickly a child picks up on the cues and arrives at a correct production.
That is what happened with 6 year-old Sam last week. (I don’t work on correcting a frontal lisp until a child is 6 or 7 years old.) Using some of the techniques I learned from Pam as well as others I started with a long “E” and progressed from “E” to ”T”, encouraging him to extend the “T” and get extra air flow. He actually started to say an “S” as he prolonged the “T”. Then I modeled “EATS”, adding the “S” to make “TS,” stabilizing the place for accuracy. He was able to repeat final TS words (eats, hits, waits, wants, etc.) so I left him after the first session with a list of final TS words to practice. The next session, built on “EATS” and we added “E” at the end for “EATSEE” still releasing lots of air after the “T”. Eventually he could separate it to “EAT SEE” and he had an initial “S” sound! After that session I gave him a list of initial “S” words to practice and try in sentences if he could. The practice piece is essential because I am asking him to change a habit which is hard. He is re-training his tongue and jaw, to go to a new place for his “S” sound.
It is important to take into account jaw placement when evaluating and treating a frontal lisp. According to Pam Marshalla, a classical frontal lisp is a tongue and jaw placement problem because a child tends to lower his jaw when the tongue is protruded in a lisp. Work on jaw stability is an important part of therapy to correct a lisp.
Introduce your child to Playmobil’s “Wildlife Care Station” and you’ll lose them to great creative play involving compassion and care for the injured animals. Two wildlife workers have the tools to round up the hurt animals in the fenced yard or padlock them into the crate for safety as they recover. With plenty of sticky bandages and re-usable casts, your little veterinarians can feed the baby leopards from a bottle or offer their parents some delicious grass or carrots. This little playhouse in the jungle offers lots of places to move the people and animals to change the action. Turn the station around and the wildlife workers tend to their paper work on the laptop computer on their desk or get a little sleep after pulling down the murphy bed from the wall. Lots of shelves can hold their supplies–rope, maps, or medicine. My little play partner spent hours spinning stories as different animals approached the station and the workers took over. The band-aids were especially interesting as the rhino ended up covered from head to toe. Apparently her recovered because today they are gone!
The opinions expressed in this review are solely those of the author. “Wildlife Care Center” was provided for review by Playmobil.
Spring break and I headed to the North Carolina beach. After spending the last few months analyzing the new toys from the International Toy Fair 2010, I sort of forgot what kids naturally invent at the beach.
It began with Will thrilled with an ant crawling from armpit to armpit. Ben chased hermit crabs until they disappeared into a hole. We gathered up shells with just the right sized opening to string onto a stick for our “jingle sticks.” What started out as digging for buried treasure, soon turned into making a huge hole to hide in with Daddy. Let’s not forget the pure fun of racing into the waves, giggling and running back, even if the water was freezing according to us adults.
Next week I will be attending Time to Play Magazine’s Spring Showcase in New York City where they kick off the warm weather season announcing the hottest toys for outdoor play.
Maybe right now I will be happy just letting the warm sand sift through my fingers and call it play.
Summer vacation never looked so good. Load your family of four into their SUV, hook up the boat trailer, pack a picnic and grab the sand toys. This new Playmobil adventure set highlights the company’s incredible engineering and attention to detail in their props for pretend play.
When you arrive at the beach, unwind the winch and watch the speed boat lowered off the trailer to launch into the water. Mindful of engaging accessories, the creators have provided life jackets, flip flops, hats and sunscreen for the kids, as well as a bucket, sand screener, pitcher, shovel, rake and sailboat for play. Mom and Dad have a roller suitcase to hold their belongings as well as a duffel bag. Cups and a picnic basket transport lunch on the boat. After a day on the water, just hook up the boat and watch it slide back onto the trailer.
The fun in the sun theme appeals to both girls and boys who played with this set. With each added accessory, a child’s pretend play was extended–a water bottle for a drink, a suitcase to plan packing for a trip, cups to create a meal, sand toys to cast in the beach, and a dog to add to the mix. Kids invented rich stories with these props, and were mesmerized with each new action or participant.
We floated our boat in the water but my next move is to get the Playmobil motor to attach to the boat so we can take our story on the water.
Sherry Artemenko, MA-CCC, is a speech-language pathologist with more than 35 years experience and founder of Playonwords.com. The opinions expressed in this review are solely those of the author. “Family Van with Boat and Trialer” was provided for review by Playmobil.
