This Special Life

Autism Advocacy & Support

For Parents

Need To Calm Down

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Need To Calm Down?  There’s a Space For That!

Creating calming and sensory-friendly spaces in the home.

Home.  It’s where we are most comfortable and secure.  It’s where we can be free to unwind and relax after a long day. We usually know exactly where to go to do just that.  Our room, favorite chair or spot on the couch.  

Home should be this way for kids with autism too.  Yet if kids have difficulty with self-regulation or have sensory issues home may not feel this way to them.

Does your child feel at home in spite of their sensory processing?

The good thing is you can help your child feel at home by creating calming and sensory-friendly spaces.  Keep reading for some tips on how to do just that.

Knowing Your Child’s Sensory Needs

Kids with sensory issues often have difficulty taking in information through their senses.  They process things differently. The things they see, hear, touch, smell or taste can be challenging, no matter where they are, including home.

Home needs to be set up for them so that they can have a break from the world.  It needs to be more than just sending your child to their room and shutting the door though.  Creating calming spaces that are geared specifically to your kiddo’s needs is key.

Take note of your child at home and make a list of things and spaces they gravitate towards and triggers that set them off.  

Is there a fragrance they don’t like?  Too much light in an area? A favorite corner they gravitate towards?  Knowing these types of things in your child can be your guide as you create calming and sensory-friendly spaces throughout your home.

Calming Spaces

Kids love having choices and options, your child should have different places they can go to calm down or relax.  So where can your child go in your home?

One place to start is their bedroom.  Whether it’s to calm down from sensory overload or simply just wanting a break to play, the bedroom should be a reflection of your child so they can be in that spot without having to worry about their sensory input.

Moving beyond bedrooms it’s a good idea to have other spaces where your kid can retreat.  Perhaps your child prefers quiet spots and a room that gets less traffic can be a place for them.  Maybe your child loves to move around and the basement, which provides space to run and jump, is a good area for them.

Sensory Friendly Spaces

Once you figure out where the calming spaces are in your home, it’s time to bring in tools to make it more sensory friendly.

To help kids feel like their bedroom is their domain take stock of things like temperature, lighting, and sounds and make adjustments if needed.  If your child is old enough, get them involved to help arrange furniture, select decor or make changes.

I had a client whose room was in front of the house and got a lot of road noise.  A white sound machine helped fix that problem. Another client’s bedroom got the afternoon sun, room darkening shades resolved that issue.  Taking it a step further, I had another client who absolutely loved dinosaurs so his room was covered from floor to ceiling with dinosaurs. It was his space to play and talk about dinosaurs all he wanted.

Depending on your child’s sensory needs, bring in equipment or toys and set them up in their favorite places around your home.  Let’s say your child self regulates through deep pressure or jumping. Set up a foam cushion chair or mini trampoline. If your child calms by playing with fidgets or chewing make sure they have easy access to those things.

It’s also a good idea to make any necessary adjustments throughout your entire home to help your child feel more comfortable.  Little things like the type of light bulbs used or putting up visuals can make a world of difference.

Creating calming and sensory friendly spaces in the home can have such a positive impact on your child.  Following these tips will ensure that when your kid walks through the front door they will truly feel at home.

Our Experts Reveal 6 Easy Strategies To Have A Sensory Friendly Holiday

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Not sure how to support your autistic child through the holidays? Worried it’ll be too much for him or her?

The holiday season has a way of sneaking up on us every year. Before you know it, you’re in the thick of lists, decorations, giving away toys to make room for new toys, ordering online, shopping in crowded malls and grocery stores, planning elaborate meals, and making more lists.

You’ve barely had time to mentally prepare yourself, let alone your children. And if you have a child on the spectrum or who is otherwise sensory sensitive, the holidays can become even more stressful. 

You may feel like you are fighting a losing battle in trying to protect your child from overstimulation. Or, you may be unsure of how to handle situations where your child seeks out highly stimulating holiday-related experiences, but becomes over excited easily. In this article, we will talk about a few simple strategies that can make all the difference in balancing sensory input over the holidays. 

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, or you celebrate other holidays like Hanukkah or Diwali, we’ve designed this how-to guide to be applicable across holidays and busy seasons in general. With flexibility and intentionality, you and your children can enjoy this time together, and make special memories that won’t stress you out to look back on.

Set Goals

Whether you go all out or tend to be more minimalist with holiday celebrations, it’s important to be intentional. Goal setting for the holidays will help you decide what you want to prioritize and what you can let slide. By identifying what you’ll do (and what you won’t do) in advance, you’ll set yourself up to feel successful when things get busy. 

For example, if hosting an annual Christmas or New Year’s Eve party is one of your valued traditions, prioritize that while bumping attendance at other parties off the “must do” list. Or, perhaps Christmas is an important holiday for your family to go visit grandparents who are a long drive or flight away – and so, for New Year’s, you might stay in and watch a movie with popcorn and hot chocolate.

Have Doable Days

In addition to Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day, November and December in general can be stressful. And, you may have up to two weeks of full days with your children at home due to school breaks. During this time, understand that though they might not show it or tell you, your child is working really hard to cope with changes in routine and extra sensory input. 

Think about how you can decrease demands on them and on yourself. That way, they can keep directing energy toward self-regulation, and you can keep supporting them to do this and helping them recharge. It’s a full time job and you need to give yourself room to do it.

Let Go of Expectations

When you let go of expectations for what your holidays will look like, you create space to enjoy the small moments with your child. For example, you might not make it to the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at your local park, and that’s OK. You don’t have to do things that are overtly holiday-themed in order to enjoy the holiday season with your family. That night might be spent at home reading books like Llama Llama Holiday Drama (buy on Amazon here) or Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree together, or playing music in the background while working on a puzzle or drawing. 

Be ready to let go of expectations in the moment. Especially for children with ASD, the ability to regulate in overstimulating situations can vary from day to day or even hour to hour. You may make plans and then break them. On Christmas, if you are staying local, you may not make it to visit every family member’s home as you’d planned. 

If you’re traveling and visiting family out of state, you might be helping your child learn to operate a new toy or take turns playing with cousins instead of sitting down to a family meal. If you let go of expectations ahead of time, you’ll have more fun going with the flow wherever you are on the big day.

Dealing with Overstimulation

There are two skills to have in your toolbox when it comes to dealing with overstimulation around the holiday season: how to avoid it, and how to problem solve when you can’t. To avoid overstimulation, you can do things like skip the crowds by shopping online, visit Santa Claus on a weeknight rather than during the weekend, and wrap gifts in hand-stamped brown paper instead of glitter and curly ribbons. 

But it’s not always possible to avoid situations that will become overstimulating around the holidays, and you shouldn’t have to. Maybe you really want to go to that block party in your neighborhood where there will be lots of kids running around, or maybe you can’t get out of shopping on the weekends due to your work schedule. That’s why you need strategies to deal with sensory overstimulation in the moment.

3 Strategies To Deal With Overstimulation During The Holidays

1. Carry a “sensory shield kit” in your car. 

Stock it with noise cancelling headphones, fidgets, sleep masks, a favorite book or stuffed animal, and whatever other items work best for your child to help them calm down or tune out too much stimulation.

2. Introduce Fewer Gifts & Toys

If your child receives more gifted toys with all the bells and whistles than you were expecting, don’t hesitate to put some away in the closet for a rainy day in January. Sometimes opening a brand new toy a month or two after Christmas Day means your child can enjoy it more.

3. Have an early New Year’s 

Netflix offers a pre-recorded countdown, so you can celebrate New Year’s at whatever time works best for your child. Balance festivity with consistency by integrating fun activities with established routines. This helps your child practice successfully dealing with stimulation that is a little bit more than what they’re used to, without pushing them too far past their sensory comfort zone.

Dealing with Dysregulation

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to have sensory sensitive holiday season is to know ahead of time that there will be hiccups, and that is normal! Sensory input is one way that children on the spectrum can learn from their environment, and sometimes they’ll learn through situations that don’t go so well. 

For example, despite all your best efforts your child might have a tantrum because they don’t want to leave the play area at the mall. Or, they might get so excited about watching their favorite Christmas movie on Christmas Eve that they have difficulty calming down to go to bed.

Consider using a system like the Zones of Regulation or the Incredible 5-Point Scale to help you and your child cope, either in the moment or while debriefing later. Focus on modeling being calm in the moment to help them regulate, and be as neutral as you can (even though it’s totally normal for you to feel stressed, too). Later, talk about or practice how the situation could be handled differently next time, with your child or partner, but don’t overthink it too much. 

Parenting a child on the spectrum is a master class in flexibility, and you’re constantly going at a hundred and ten percent – so give yourself a break during this holiday season, too.

Got An Easily Overwhelmed Child? Try Social Stories. (You’ll Thank Us)

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Are you having a hard time getting your child to understand social situations or learn a new skill? Did you know there is an effective tool out there that is easy to use and fun? What is it?

Social stories!  

Here is a quick and easy guide to social stories.  In this article, I will show you what a social story is – and how you can easily make and use them at home.  

What The Heck Is A Social Story?

Children with autism often need help navigating social situations. Knowing intuitively how to act and what to say may be difficult, especially since some children on the spectrum struggle with understanding social cues, have speech delays or sensory issues, or focus on repetitive behaviors and/or stimming.

Simple greetings and social graces may come easy to neurotypical kids, but sometimes getting a child with autism to say “hello” to someone can be quite the task!

Social stories can help make these situations less overwhelming.

A social story is a narrative about different situations or skills that a child may experience. It uses simple language and pictures so kids can easily understand and visualize the story.

Almost any topic can be used in a social story. You can write about big life milestones like the first day of school or going on vacation. Stories can also be about everyday situations, like getting ready for bed or going to the store. Stories also can teach skills, like how to greet a friend or how to pick up toys.

Social stories are a wonderful tool that helps kids learn how to act and what to say in almost any social scenario. Sometimes verbal cues are not enough to teach concepts to kids with autism. Social stories helps kids see the skill or situation, which in turn reinforces understanding.

How To Create A Social Story

Typically the child reading the story is the main character! Most of the kids I’ve worked with love having a story written about them. Writing the story from this point of view helps place the child in the setting so they can relate better.

The structure of the story starts with a descriptive sentence, followed by a perspective sentence, then a cooperative sentence and lastly an affirmative sentence.

Here is an example to give you a better idea:  

I play with toys everyday: Descriptive sentence describes the situation. Sometimes I get upset when I have to stop playing: Perspective expresses characters view of the situation. When I get upset I can take deep breaths: Cooperative shows an action character can use to work through situations. It is good to stay calm when I have to be done playing. Affirmative affirms the desired behavior character uses.

With each sentence you can draw simple stick figure illustrations to correspond to the story. Stories can simply be written on notebook or printer paper folded in half.

Depending on the age of the child you can get them to help come up with the wording or draw pictures. They also enjoy being an author or illustrator.

How to Use Social Stories

A social story can be used at any time anywhere! The important thing to note is that the social story needs to relate to your child’s life.  

Before starting a story think of a skill that your child needs to learn or an encounter they may experience. Is there a skill your child struggles with? Is there something they need to learn? Is there an event coming up your child needs to prepare for? Answering these questions will help you determine the topic.

If you are helping your child acquire a new skill you can read a social story before practicing the skill. For example if your child is learning to make his bed you can read the story before making the bed. If your child is heading out to an event you can read the corresponding social story in advance to help prepare them for the event. Let’s say your child has a doctor’s appointment in a month, you could read the story over the course of a month so she knows what to expect when she gets to the appointment.

You don’t have to read the stories just at home though. Stories can be taken along to the store, read in the car or kids can bring them to school!  

Social stories are an effective and fun tool to use when it comes to helping kids through skills or situations. I have had great success with my clients over the years thanks to social stories. In fact when I’m struggling trying to get an idea across to one of my kids I think, “let’s make a social story about this,” and only then is my child able to better grasp the concept.

If you are struggling with helping your child with something try making a social story!

Play With Blocks, Teach Self Regulation

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Did you know you can give your child therapy when you play with them?  You may be wondering how. Through play therapy! The great thing about play therapy is that it doesn’t feel like therapy. It’s just like normal play except with a bit more purpose.

Curious how you can teach your child by simply playing with them?  Keep reading to find out how play therapy can help you help your youngster.

What Is Play Therapy?

Play therapy is an intervention created by Dr. Stanley Greenspan that focuses on the relationship between the provider and the client, or in this case parent and child.  The thing is you don’t have to be a therapist and your kiddo doesn’t have to be a client! 

Another name used for play therapy is “floor time” because a lot of play takes place on the floor and parents get down to play at their child’s level.  You probably already do that on a daily basis.

Play therapy focuses on activities that engages children.  In other words, playing activities that your child already enjoys.  You probably do that when you play with your kid too.

Playing a favorite past-time on the floor probably sounds like regular play time.   What makes it therapeutic is that it focuses on using relationships to help children grow intellectually and emotionally.

Without the child realizing it, play sessions are lead by them.  Adults participate in play that is on the child’s developmental level and builds on their strengths.  Through this process the adults help kids expand their intellect, communication skills and emotions.

What Does Play Therapy Teach?

The goal of play therapy is to teach kids intellectual and emotional skills in 6 areas which are:

  • Self-regulation
  • Relationship building
  • Communicating with others
  • Complex communication interactions
  • Emotional ideas 
  • Emotional thinking

Play is a natural methodology for kids to learn and practice self-regulation, communication and exploring emotions so that they can reach their full potential.

What Does Play Therapy Look Like

Play-time happens in a calm space.  During play-time kids select the activity and start playing.  The adult then joins the child and follows their lead. From there, while playing, the grown-up engages in interactions with the youngster in a back and forth manner.

Let’s use building blocks as an example.  Let’s say your child starts building a tower.  You let them stack a few blocks, then you help build.  Keep interactions minimal, just follow their lead or imitate them.

Next your child crashes the tower with his hands so you follow suit.  After awhile you suggest building a taller tower, or using a ball for crashing.  As you build you slowly expand the activity by changing the type of tower, labeling colors or shapes or bringing in action figures.  All of this helps your child respond and interact with you.,  

As your child grows, you can use strategies to help build your child’s interests to encourage higher levels of interaction.  Going back to the block illustration, you can use the same play themes with other types of building toys like Lincoln Logs or Legoes.  You can try building a house instead of a tower.

Tips For Success

Play therapy is a great way to bond with your child and teach him or her valuable communication and emotional skills.  To ensure success be sure to:

  • Meet your child at his or her level
  • Assess your child to see how he or she is feeling, acting so you know how to respond
  • Let your child lead or initiate activities
  • Avoid introducing ideas too soon
  • If child gets frustrated either stop or back away
  • Keep it fun

Don’t underestimate the power of play!  You’ll be amazed at what play therapy can do for you and your child.

5 Simple Ideas To Help Your ASD Child Learn To Read

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As a parent of a child with autism, your role becomes mother, father, child development expert, therapist, advocate, and teacher all wrapped up in one. This constant feeling of having to be “on” for your child across all environments is exhausting.

It can be hard to balance making time to engage in relaxing family activities (that don’t feel like they have an agenda) with making time for meaningful learning exercises (that don’t feel inordinately difficult).

In this post, we will discuss how to embed practice opportunities for one such skill that can be difficult for children with autism to learn – reading – within the home environment. By embedding these opportunities so that they naturally occur, interacting with novel material becomes social, fun, and easy.

Create a Literacy Rich Environment

In addition to stocking up on a variety of children’s books, you can create a rich literacy environment in your home and community in other ways as well. For example, let photographs and art hung on the walls serve as vehicles for conversing around imagery and practicing visual sequencing (“it is raining in this picture, so the woman has an umbrella to keep her dry”).

Visit your local library or bookstore, either for a playgroup or structured story time activity, or simply to browse books or play in the children’s area. These activities help to build a foundation for your child with autism where reading their environment as well as reading text becomes an intrinsically motivating experience.

Find Practice Opportunities in Daily Life

Engineers do all of the proverbial heavy lifting at the outset, before anything is actually built, by design. This way they don’t have to think about it later; everything they have included in their blueprint becomes automatic during construction and ongoing building usage.

Similarly, as a parent you can frontload literacy to begin with, making it easy to practice with your child with autism during ongoing daily living activities.

For example, purchasing magnetic letters for your fridge, foam letters for your bathtub, alphabet puzzles for the playroom, and alphabet board books for your child’s bookshelf increases ongoing opportunities to practice phonemic awareness (sounds associated with each letter), blending (“C-A-M spells Cam! That’s Mac backwards!”), and other early decoding skills such as rhyming and vowel vs. consonant awareness. 

Listen to Audio Books

Consider audiobooks as a way to embed literacy on the go or while doing other things at home, like playing with Legos or making dinner. Audiobooks can be an enriching experience even when you and your child are just listening rather than trying to follow along with the speaker word-by-word in a printed book.

Audio books also help create an early foundation for comprehension skills by exposing your child to narrative patterns across a variety of unique examples.

Let Literacy be Fun

You may be reading this and thinking “this all sounds wonderful, but my child just doesn’t like to read.” Children with autism may have a harder time accessing motivation and reinforcement within books than others, and this can start as early as during the first and second year.

They may not seek out books, or decline to finish a book being read to them. They may fixate on one particular book about a favorite subject, and insist on reading that book and only that book over and over every night at bedtime.

The important thing to keep in mind with early literacy is that it should be child-directed. By honoring your child’s requests and opinions about books early on, you will teach them that their actions matter.

The child with autism whose parent allows them to naturally close a book on page 3 rather than getting into a power struggle over making it to the end of the story may be much more likely to initiate reading all the way to page 5 or beyond on the next day.

It is OK to follow your child’s lead when it comes to literacy and reading, even if that results in unconventional outcomes. By freeing yourself and your child from excessively prescriptive ideas about what reading “should” look like, you create room to explore the wide world of literacy as it links directly to your lives, and establish a foundation for more complex reading skills to emerge later on.

Is It A Temper Tantrum Or A Meltdown?

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We get it – it’s really hard to tell if your child with autism is having a sensory meltdown or a temper tantrum. And knowing the difference is really important – you want to deal with temper tantrums differently than a sensory meltdown! 

As parents of autistic children, we want to be sensitive to our child’s specific needs. We certainly don’t want to discipline them if they’re in sensory overload. It’s serious enough that you should learn the difference.

So, in the heat of the moment, how do you know?

According to experts, temper tantrums occur when your child doesn’t get what he or she wants. Your child is firmly in control of their behavior, and trying to get YOU – the parent – to do something.

A sensory meltdown, on the other hand, occurs when your autistic child loses complete control of their behavior. It’s a psychological traffic jam of information.

Here’s some key things to look out for if you’re not sure whether your child on the spectrum is having a temper tantrum or a meltdown.

Is It A Tantrum?

  • Goal oriented – your child is making a scene to get what they want
  • Watching for reactions – your child wants to see what you’ll do now that they’re making a scene
  • Injury avoidance – your child avoids things that might hurt them
  • Ends when the goal is met – your child stops having a tantrum when they get what they want
  • In control of behavior – your child can start and stop their tantrum

Tantrums are appropriate for infants and toddlers, and help your child learn self control. They’re an attempt to manipulate you, and an attempt to “test the boundaries” of what you’ll allow. 

Is your child checking out how you respond, or does the fit increase or decrease in intensity based on what YOU do? 

Is It A Sensory Meltdown?

  • No goals – your child doesn’t ask for anything and isn’t making a scene to get their way
  • Ignores your reactions – your child isn’t interested in what you’ll do
  • Ignores harm – your child is reacting (not thinking or manipulating) and ignores potentially dangerous situations
  • Slow to end – your child doesn’t stop or only stops when they’re not in sensory overload (meaning, they don’t stop when you give in to their demand).
  • Not in control of behavior – your child goes into “survival mode” due to being over stimulated and react instinctively

Meltdowns occur with children (and adults) who struggle with flexibility and self-regulation. They occur when the individual has too much information to process and can’t process it in a regulated way.  

Unlike tantrums, your child doesn’t care what you do – they flip into survival mode and want to get away from all the stimulation. The meltdowns don’t end quickly, and they stop when a trusted adult helps them calm down or they exhaust themselves. While you can soothe a temper tantrum, you can’t soothe a meltdown. 

While each child with autism is an individual, some general warning signs of meltdowns include spacing out or stimming prior to the meltdown.