Friday, February 19, 2010

Autism Behavior: Why Do You Need To Look For Hidden Meanings?

One of the interesting things about Autism is looking for the hidden meanings in our children’s behaviors. It is almost like being a detective. You have to look for clues in everything they do.

This is one of the activities that a parent will do that will help the most. Looking for the hidden meanings in behavior will calm our children and meet their needs. It really does not seem to matter whether your child is verbal or non-verbal.

Even with a child who is verbal you seem to have to figure it out. It is almost like having a teenager. For people who do not have a teenager, the parent can not ask them a direct question. Of course for teenagers it is for other reasons a direct question does not work.

For children with Autism they may not be able to answer you even if they have speech. On the other hand children with Autism are trying to communicate. They are trying to tell us things about their wants or needs. It is up to us to figure it out.

Parents also did this with their toddler’s. Parents did it naturally. Toddlers can not explain so we have to figure it out. Children with disabilities might use gestures or noises.

They may use behaviors, particularly behaviors that have gotten them what they wanted before. Sometimes children with Autism repeat behaviors they see others do. Again to get something they want or need.

Not all of the behaviors we are looking at are even problem behaviors. Next time your child with Autism has a puzzling behavior think back to when you have seen it before. Was it your child or someone else?

Think about the context of what was going on at the time. Also thing about what the result was in the past. Can you use that? You might recreate that or do some quick thinking to change the result.

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