This is part two of a video blog series I started last week where we are covering the
five areas where parents and professionals of kids with autism often get stuck.
This excerpt I'm going to cover what to do when you are having little to no progress
with teaching receptive language.
That is uh touching when you say touch banana or touching body parts without any kind of
modeling like touch your head.
So today we're co we're covering how to get unstuck in that area.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom Board Certified Behavior Analyst and bestselling
author of The Verbal Behavior Approach.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around.
This video blog is going to be a short excerpt about an area where parents and professionals
get stuck and see little progress and I'm going to provide some tips on how to get unstuck.
The number two area where people get stuck is receptive ID or receptive commands.
That is following directions like touch your head or come here or touch the banana as you
have pictures down on the table.
That is all receptive without a visual prompt.
So if I say touch, touch your head and I give a prompt, um, that is actually part imitation
and part receptive.
Um, and that's actually a good way to teach it.
But if you don't fade your prompts, uh, systematically you will get a child who does not understand
language.
And I have seen young kids and older kids with, with um, little to no receptive, uh,
language.
And this is a big problem for, for cognitive awareness, for, for everything.
I mean, if you don't understand the language that people are using, uh, can lead to a lot
of issues.
Um, and people say, well, you know, he's not making progress.
Um, and you know, what should I do?
But the biggest things I teach is for receptive body parts for instance is you want to make
sure you have the imitation really strong.
So we, we would start with imitation with objects.
Um, and then we would go to imitation with body parts and then we combine that with touch
your head and the child touches head.
And then we would use transfer procedures to say, touch your head without a prompt.
But obviously this is very um, complicated and it doesn't always go that easily.
But I do think, um, in addition to boosting up your imitation skills to get those receptive
body parts and receptive commands going, we also have to increase the matching and the
scanning.
Um, before we really go to receptive ID or receptive identification, touch the banana
for instance, we want to get that as a match.
So giving them a picture of a banana and instead of saying match, I actually usually say banana
cause I want everything to be as multiply controlled as possible to get as much as I
can for free.
If you enjoyed this video blog, I would love it if you would leave me a comment, give me
a thumbs up and wherever you're watching to really find out the best ways where you can
comprehensively, uh, get unstuck is by attending a free online workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop.
And I'll see you right here next week.