Hi today, I'm going to talk about whether it's possible to teach a child with autism to cross the
street.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, board certified behavior analyst and bestselling
author.
I fell into the autism world in 1999 when my firstborn son Lucas was diagnosed with
autism one day before he turned three.
As you may know, I have created and run three online courses for parents and professionals,
including my original course which was first created in 2015 which helps early learners,
VB-MAPP level one learners, a second course for intermediate learners and those would
be kids functioning within a VB-MAPP level two and three and my newest course for toddlers
and preschoolers with new diagnosis of autism or just showing signs.
I did a recent video blog on the VB-MAPP and explained the levels there.
But let me quickly go over the levels of the VB-MAPP.
If your child or client is functioning within level one of the VB-MAPP, that would be equivalent
to functioning at a 0 to 18 month level of a typical development.
If they are functioning at level two, it would be 18 month to 30 month level and level three
would be 30 months to 48 months.
Basically if you are functioning within the VB-MAPP at all, you're functioning similarly
to a four year old or younger child.
In one of my Facebook groups for my courses, I had a question.
How can this behavior analyst teach a child to cross the street?
When we inquired what level of the VB-MAPP this child was functioning at, she said, "Level
three."
My answer to her was any child that's functioning within the VB-MAPP either at level one, two,
or three cannot be taught to cross the street.
They only have the language ability and the decision making ability of a four year old
or younger child.
If you Google when can kids learn to cross the street, it's recommended that kids be
at least 10 years old to safely cross a street.
Of course this depends on the busyness of the street and the maturity and decision making
ability of the 10 year old.
It may need to be even older.
The point is is that if a child is functioning within a language ability of a three or four-year-old
child or even functioning as a seven or eight year old level, no matter how old they are
chronologically, it is not safe and appropriate to teach them to cross the street and to do
this on their own at any point if they're still functioning at that level.
However, we can, even with young children who are functioning very much like toddlers,
we can certainly try to teach them general safety awareness, especially to stop at streets,
to be aware of cars and parking lots, to not dart off, to hold the adult's hand if the
child is young, to walk with the adult if the child is a little bit older.
But, in general, you have to stay close.
You have to be responsible because they not only don't have the decision making to cross
the street, they may be impulsive and dart out and get hit by a car.
We need to not focus on teaching them skills to cross the street alone.
We need to teach them safety skill so that they don't get hurt by cars in their environment
with us or another adult.
Teaching general safety around cars is a good idea no matter what the age or language ability
of the child.
But setting a goal and teaching crossing of a street independently, the child should be
functioning at least with the language ability of a 10 year old.
If you'd like to get started learning how to turn autism around for your toddler, your
older child or teen, download my new three-step guide where you can learn how to assess quickly,
make a plan and record data easily.
Please like, comment and share this video and don't forget to download my free guide
today.