What You Can Do Right Now

Even if working with an RDI^® Certified consultant is not appropriate for your family at this time, there are a number of things that you can do to help your child right now. Following is a short list of lifestyle changes that you and your family can make that will have a tremendous impact on your child with autism:

1. Slow Down. Do Less. Autism is an information processing disorder. Children with ASD need to be given plenty of time to process what is going on around them. Be prepared to wait for your child. When you ask a question or when you want your child to do something, give him time to process the information. Try and wait for as long as 45 seconds (wear a watch if you have to) before repeating yourself or giving more information. Time to think is a vital thing for your child.

Most parents of children with autism are anxious to see improvements right away and we see very young children with schedules that even adults could not keep up with! Parents mistakenly believe that exposure is the same as opportunity. However, if a child is not yet able to make sense of the world around him because he cannot process all of the information from his environment, constant exposure to stressful situations can be counter-productive. A less is more approach can work better. Slow down and get rid of unnecessary activities in your life. Re-prioritize the time you have and spend more of it just being with your child with no expectations or demands. You will both benefit from the change.

2. Change the way you communicate with your child. Studies in the field of communication demonstrate that we generally use 80% experience-sharing language and 20% imperative language in our everyday life. When a child is diagnosed with autism we see this ratio getting turned around. Children with autism often give limited emotional and sometimes verbal feedback, therefore, parents spend a lot of time trying to "get" something from children with autism -- a particular action or response. Parents want to know what our children are thinking and feeling but for a child with an information processing disorder, this inverse style of communication can be highly demanding. It also serves as a poor model for how people communicate in real life settings.

Spend more time using experience-sharing communication with your child and talk less. Insert pauses in your communication to allow your child time to process and formulate a response if he desires. Remember also that true experience sharing communication does not require a response from your child. You are merely sharing with your child what you are thinking and feeling. Experience-sharing communication includes comments, declarations, predictions, and reflections. Try to minimise the use of questions, directives, prompts and requests (although all of these are necessary at times).

Examples of experience sharing statements:

• That is my favorite color. It really makes your eyes look blue.
• When I was a kid I loved climbing the apple tree in my back yard.
• Wow! It sure is a mess in here!
• I would love to get a picture of you!
• We're going to get really wet if we go out in that rain!

** A fun experiment to help illustrate this point: Take a sunday drive with your spouse and tape record the conversation for a half-hour. When you return listen to the conversation with a pen and paper, making tally marks for each kind of statement. Next, listen to yourself through an hour of communicating with your child and see if you can tell the difference.

3. Modify Your Environment. Take an honest look at your environment and set the stage for enhancing your child's ability to focus on the most important information. Remember, autism is an information processing disorder. Children with ASD often have trouble shifting their attention and can have difficulty knowing what is the most important thing to focus on at any given time. If your environment is filled with things that compete for your child's attention, now is the time to remove unnecessary distractions. Turn off the TV or radio. Get rid of clutter and excess belongings. Temporarily set aside toys or objects that may be overly distracting. Make the information that you are presenting him with the most important thing in that moment.

4. Model your thought process. For a child with autism it is often difficult to understand how others have arrived at conclusions in any given situation. They may think that you just automatically know what to do when confronted with a problem. To help your child understand how you arrived at a decision, how you solved a problem or dealt with uncertainty, it is helpful to model your thinking process for them through self-talk. Preface your comments so that the child understands that you are working out a problem by saying something like: "Hmmm, let's see what happens when ..." or "I wonder what would happen if ..."  The only certainty in life is that we will always face uncertainty, modeling how you cope will help your child to feel less anxious.