Teaching Children with Autism Play Skills | Typically developing vs Autism

Dr. Mary Barbera discusses typically developing vs. autism when teaching children with autism play skills.
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As parents we want our children to engage in play, and be as social as possible. In today’s episode I share a part of a rebroadcast of episode 79 where I discuss teaching play skills to young children with autism. We cover what falling behind in play may look like, prerequisites for typically developing play, as well as some introduction into play intervention and play scenarios.

There are a lot of play suggestions and interventions that many children will not be ready for. You really need to focus on these play skill prerequisites or baby play skills before moving onto more heavily language based play. A typically developing baby will first start engaging in play with eye contact, cooing, and smiling at a caregiver’s face. Between 12 to 18 months they will start pointing, reaching, and gesturing toward items they want to engage with. If the child is pulling the caregiver's hand to an item and placing it on it, this is called Hand Leading and is actually an early sign for autism.

After 15 months a typically developing child will bring things to a caregiver to show or get attention. Early play will look like stacking, putting items in something, attending on the floor or at a table, and being aware when someone enters the room. As a typical child develops into a toddler, advanced play will look like sharing, turn taking, greetings, understanding games, pretending, etc. All of these involve a lot of beginning language skills that are really necessary before teaching play skills.

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Dr. Mary Barbera. I fell into the autism world as an autism mom in 1999 when her first-born son, Lucas, was diagnosed with autism. Since then, she became a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst and best-selling author of The Verbal Behavior Approach. Since 2015, she’s created 3 autism online courses based on applied behavior analysis for professionals and "gung-ho" parents. Whether you’re looking for autism parenting strategies, working with developmental delays in children, or in search of autism help for professionals, I can encourage you to subscribe to the channel and join me on my journey. I’ll be providing weekly autism resources that you don’t want to miss.

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[dozergetscrafty]

Can you recommend a channel to me.for a 6 yo with moderate to severe autism? Hes been in aba for almost 3 years and i feel like i should be doing more for him at home.

[lexi_]

Screen affected children also do these things.