SazzJ Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 Hi can anyone help please? We have a child with autism and he has took to grabbing other children. Can anyone recommend any strategies to use please? We have are currently having to allocate one staff member to him to monitor him
Inge Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 The only way we ever found with things like this is for one person to support the child.. in our case it was biting.. and she used it as a sign of affection.. ie only bit the people she knew the best.. same with the children... always the same ones targeted.. she did stop eventually with most of the children but still bit the adults if they were caught off guard.. a hug and teeth! there was never any pattern and was very random we tried to find out if there was a trigger, but none found... our children learnt the signs - a hug in her case - and backed off... they all seemed to understand somehow... We found we also had to teach the parents about why and what we were doing to keep all children safe... Our mother was very understanding and helpful and wrote a letter to the other parents explaining about her child and what she could and could not understand.. it was beautiful, and made all the difference to how they reacted to her and her child.
Rea Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 What a lovely response from mom. I've never heard of a parent doing that before. How brave and understanding of her. SazzJ, it really is a case of following and shadowing and trying your best to intervene. Maybe with constant reminders of how to hug rather than grab he might stop but autism being the varied and complex condition it is, it will take lots of perserverence and even then might lead to nothing. Hopefully the rest of your children will be able to self manage like Inge's children did.
finleysmaid Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 we tend to see incidents like this from both sides ...one the boy must know this is not approprite so choose a word and all stick to it gently/softly/careful whatever parents use at home model this with anything he is rough with (try dolls but may not work) then you need to make sure the other children are safe ...perhaps tell them they are going to help xxx to learn how to be gentle then you need to get them to say no loudly and look cross (or another word if no is not appropriate for this child) you may need to practise this several times with an adult . this will help them to protect themselves (a useful anti-bullying technique for later on) and it will give you a heads up on the fact there is a problem going on. Be boringly consistant!
Cait Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 Similar idea to this, we asked the children to say the child's name sharply in a cross voice and this alerted us to potential problems going on. As you say, 'no' can sometimes be a trigger for tantrum or whatever (it was for us) We found that saying her name like this made her lift her head up to look and that stopped the behaviour
eyfs1966 Posted March 10, 2011 Posted March 10, 2011 (edited) I may be "teaching you to suck eggs" here, but have found that the use of a social story can be really helpful when dealing with an unwelcome behaviour. Your area SENCO should be able to put one together for you. I was very cynical about the use of social stories, but for one asd child with a biting/scratching problem it worked unbelievably well. Give it a go. Edited March 10, 2011 by eyfs1966
Guest Posted March 11, 2011 Posted March 11, 2011 I may be "teaching you to suck eggs" here, but have found that the use of a social story can be really helpful when dealing with an unwelcome behaviour. Your area SENCO should be able to put one together for you. I was very cynical about the use of social stories, but for one asd child with a biting/scratching problem it worked unbelievably well. Give it a go. I agree, social stories can be very powerful. Please make sure that it is very personal to your child though. My SLT recently was asked to make a social story for a child in my class and after waiting for a month she produced a black and white printed one that she'd just downloaded from the internet. It was of no meaning to the child and didn't interest him at all. We ended up making our own with the child's name and photographs and it's proving successful. Good luck
SazzJ Posted March 11, 2011 Author Posted March 11, 2011 I may be "teaching you to suck eggs" here, but have found that the use of a social story can be really helpful when dealing with an unwelcome behaviour. Your area SENCO should be able to put one together for you. I was very cynical about the use of social stories, but for one asd child with a biting/scratching problem it worked unbelievably well. Give it a go. I've never heard of them before. Can someone please give a little more information?
Guest Posted March 11, 2011 Posted March 11, 2011 http://www.polyxo.com/socialstories/introduction.html Hope this helps you with the basics. As EYFS1966 said, speak to your SENCO and get them to help you create one personalised for your child x
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