before I had a son with autism and then
became a behavior analyst I never
imagined how hard it would be to teach a
child to blow his nose today I'm going
to break down the steps and give you
some easy strategies to help you teach
your child or client how to blow his
nose
hi I'm dr. Mary Barbara autism mom board
certified behavior analyst and
best-selling author each week I provide
you with some of my ideas about turning
autism around so if you haven't
subscribed to my youtube channel you can
do that now by hitting the subscribe
button and the notification bell - in
addition to autism many children
including my son Lucas also have severe
allergies one of my clients I'll call
him Andy had such bad allergies that he
would actually get shiners under his
eyes and be very congested in the
springtime for months I have done a few
prior blogs on medical issues since I'm
a registered nurse as well as a behavior
analyst and in my medical blogs I give
you some pointers on ruling out medical
issues teaching children how to tell you
they're in pain and all sorts of things
but today I just want to cover how to
teach nose-blowing which is such an
important skill especially for kids like
Andy with significant allergies so Andy
was about 5 at the time and he was an
intermediate learner on the BB map so he
was talking but not yet conversational
but he was learning very quickly since I
had previously wrote a blog on the steps
for teaching nose blowing with videos of
me teaching Lucas you may want to check
out that blog I've also taught multiple
clients how to blow their noses and
because of my background with nose
blowing I thought Andy would be a really
good candidate to learn this go before I
get started with the steps we used for
Andy let's talk about some per episode
skills I found that children need some
basic skills before we can teach a
complex skill such as nose blowing some
of these skills include the ability to
follow directions to imitate and to
or ask for things they need Andy had all
these basic skills so the first step to
increasing or decreasing any behavior is
assessment can a child blow his nose at
all take a tissue
can he just to get tissue and wipe his
nose can he throw a tissue in the trash
can when he's done once we have these
assessment steps done then we need to
make a plan to teach the skill and we
should really make a plan to teach for
very short periods every day the problem
with nose blowing is that people only
think about teaching blowing noses when
the child is actually sick and this is a
problem because when kids are really
congested they're not at they're not
ready to learn they might be having pain
and pressure and that's not the time to
teach initial nose blowing so part of
the plan includes gathering some
equipment I found that actually a
clipboard is a great idea some people
recommend just having the child blow
things on a table but the problem the
nice thing about a clipboard is that the
mouth blowing can be isolated below the
clipboard and then you get something
like a cotton ball and you can have the
child take a deep breath close his mouth
and then blow through his nose and blow
the cotton ball you can either tear the
cop even tear the cotton ball into
smaller pieces and make it a little
easier you can also blow pencils and and
bigger objects again kind of make a race
with it you can each have your own
clipboard I mean there's just a number
of ways to make this kind of fun and
measurable and they can actually
see what they're blowing you then can
isolate each nostril and close up one
nostril close their mouth and now I'm a
little congested I'm having a hard time
blowing that with that nostril and that
one is better we do also want to teach
with tissue so the child can have a
tissue I can have a tissue and we want
to teach holding the tissue squeezing
nostrils squeezing one one nostril and
taking a deep breath and closing your
mouths before you attempt to blow so as
you can see this is a lot more
complicated than than you may have
thought in summary teaching nose blowing
is a fairly complex skill but you can
break it down get started today
assess where your child or client is at
make a plan gather some equipment that
you have at home practice daily sessions
I usually find just three minute or five
minute sessions like let's practice
blowing your nose we're gonna do these
quick quick little tasks and get you
stronger and work on this while you have
the energy while you're not sick and
then you know you have to generalize it
to tissues and the quick learners the
intermediate learners that are quick to
pick up skills sometimes surprise you
and learn very quickly then you have to
generalize it when they are sick and
when they are really congested because
you have to blow probably a little bit
harder to get that mucus out anyway
hopefully you can practice some of these
skills and get your children and client
blowing their nose to get started
turning things around for any child with
autism I'd love it if you would download
my three-step guide to get you started
this guide covers three steps you can
take today to help any child or client
whether there are toddler or a teen and
whether you're a novice parent or
seasoned autism professional I know
you'll find some helpful advice
this guide would love it if you would
share share this video leave me a
comment and subscribe to my channel and
I'll see you right here next week
[Music]