Many Toys, Little Interest

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have activities or several toys that you had purchased long ago, and they are still in the box or original packaging not even opened yet? Have you ever opened a new activity for your child and see that they do not play with it the way it was designed to be played with? Have you ever tried showing your child something new that you bought and was so excited to show them, only to see that their reaction is minimal, or they have no interest in it at all? Through my years of teaching, I have met many parents who would say to me things like, “ I bought this for their birthday a couple of months ago, but they didn’t show any interest so I put it aside for a later time” or “I opened this the other day to show them how the car goes down the track, but all they wanted to do was take the car and spin the wheels while holding it upside down”. These types of situations I would often see and hear about when teaching children and families. Parents simply do the best they can with trying to get things that they think their child will like and/or what other kids their age are playing with.

For a child with Autism, play skills can be one of the areas in which help, and assistance is necessary when it comes to how to play with something. Not only is teaching how to play with something sometimes necessary but increasing motivation to want to play with that activity is another variable that will need to be recognized and important to establish. Teaching both skills at the same time can be tricky and takes some creativity on one’s part to make this happen, but I assure you it is possible to do and rewarding to everyone once you see all your hard work come to life.

Many times, children with Autism tend to engage in what is commonly referred to as self-stimulatory behaviors, stimming or stereotypy behaviors. This means that you may see behaviors such as repetitive types of movement with their own body or with objects that stimulate their senses. Examples of this can include constant spinning of various objects in their hands, moving their head down while consistently moving a car slowly past their eyes, dumping baskets of objects onto the floor to see them crash and scatter about, repetitive vocal noises, pushing buttons repeatedly so the same sound can occur over and over again, watching or rewinding certain parts of movies on the tv/iPad, etc. These and other types of self-stimulatory behaviors can be difficult to compete against because it is hard for the observer to gauge the level of feeling and sensitivity it produces for our children who are doing it. As a result, you may see children use or play with toys that seem unusual or not how they are designed to be played with.

In my experience teaching, before I introduce any new activity to a child, I first become what I refer to as: The Careful Observer. This is where I observe the types of play and/or self-stimulatory behaviors that the child is engaging in with and without toys present.

Let’s look at this example below:
I am looking to introduce to Johnny various types of balls to play with such as Koosh balls with soft rubber spikes, balls with dimples you can press in and a rubber ball that lights up that you can squeeze and bounce. Before I introduce and bring out these items for Johnny to see, I observe him in his natural environment and how he plays without anyone engaging with him. When I observed Johnny, I noticed that he engaged in self-stimulatory behaviors such as: spinning various types of objects he had in his hands, liked running back and forth down a long hallway while making repetitive vocalizations and liked to yell out numbers as he was running.

As The Careful Observer, I can start to get ideas on how I can teach more appropriate play skills from what I observe and form a plan as to where to begin with both introducing the balls and pairing these items up as possible reinforcers in the future. In other words, you can get ideas from what you observe your child do. This information can be used as a doorway that can lead to successfully competing against self-stimulatory behaviors and teach more appropriate ways to play with items and activities by pairing them with positive reinforcement and making them fun, fun, fun!

For example, since I observed that Johnny likes to run up and down the hallway, I could also run up and down the hallway with him while I bounce the ball. Since I observed that Johnny likes to vocalize numbers, I could stand at one end of the hallway and throw each ball one by one while counting them each time they are thrown past him or towards him. Since I observed Johnny likes to spin objects, I can take the Koosh ball with soft rubber spikes and spin it around while vocalizing and pairing up the words “spin” and “stop”. Taking the time out to be The Careful Observer and watching how your child plays with objects or what types of self-stimulatory behaviors they are engaging in, can be very informative and helpful to you about how you can gear your play with them and the preparations you can make when introducing new activities.

To help guide you through this: I have attached below, a free downloadable cheat sheet that will help you get started and provide new ways and ideas about how to play and pair up new or even existing activities you want to try to introduce so that your child can learn more appropriate play skills.

*** If you haven’t done so already, please remember to subscribe here to get the latest buzz blog posts, access to my free downloads and be the first to get information about upcoming announcements! ***

All my best,
Sue