matrixluver wrote:
Just ask Temple Grandin, a well-known very successful adult on the Autism Spectrum, who had far more severe behaviors and communication challenges as a young child. She credits her mother with teaching her proper behavior and not letting the disability be more disabling than it needs to be.
Alot of this behavior seems spoiled, it's just being expressed in an AS way. I would make the rules very explicit, make a visual representation of how he can earn privileges, and LIMIT his access to the preferred privileges. Token economies work well as they teach children the value of working to earn tokens (which turns into money as an adult) and it's very concrete. They earn the tokens or they don't. Much harder to "blame" the adults, puts the responsibility for earning rewards on the child. I've found this works well with AS kids.
I have to tell you, though, as a kid "tokens" and "money" meant nothing to me. Up through middle school age they just didn't matter. I was not able to keep the abstract concept in my head long enough for them to have worked. My parents tried, when I was very young, to tie my allowance of a nickel a week to doing chores. It didnt' work. So I had to do the chores anyway, with no nickel. No chores done = no supper. Supper got put on a plate in the fridge and when I did the chores I could have it. That worked. It had to be something more immediate, more substantial, than a token (or a star on a chart, or whatever). I couldn't follow the "do it now, get paid in something you really like later" concept. Too much in between the action and the outcome. Once the routine got set, if it was Saturday morning I swept the floor, even if someone had just done so and even if I'd just eaten - because that is what I did on Saturday mornings. I swept the floor....
But yes, you have to be extremely explicit in saying what you expect. And don't expect a kid to extrapolate anything implied out of what you say. (Or you're going to hear yourself saying "you know what I meant" a lot to a bewildered kid, who doesn't.).
04 Dec 2008, 3:11 pm
