Teaching kids with autism to make choices can be very challenging considering you can't
always be exactly sure that they're picking the choice that they actually want.
Usually kids with autism who have trouble making choices, pick the first choice or the
last choice and not really choose what the preferred option is.
Hi, I'm Dr Mary Barbera, autism mom board certified behavior analyst online course creator
and bestselling author of the verbal behavior approach.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around.
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Today I'm sharing a small excerpt from a question answer session that I did within my closed
private online community where I answered a question about how to teach kids to make
choices.
Do you have any tips on how to teach choices?
My son typically repeats the last item said 9 out of 10 times.
Thank you for all your tireless work and your amazing and help so many people.
Well, thank you so much Paula.
So choices, making choices is really a tough thing.
Um, a lot of kids pick the first choice.
If you give them 2, um, a lot of kids pick the second choice, um, when given 2 or, or
when given 3, the best thing to do is to provide a visual of the options, but that's not always
convenient possible.
And you do want the child to be tuning in and picking his, his favorite choice.
But one of the steps to making better choices is to use a visual, a visual choice board,
um, a visuals of pulling, uh, the corn chips and the banana out.
Um, and having the child, uh, reach for one and then say the word or, or say the word
and then reach for, to get it.
But I, the other thing I think I show in some of the video somewhere in the early learner
courses is, um, say you have pretzels and corn chips.
A lot of people, a lot of professionals, they use tackle boxes and things.
I don't like that because even the intent of reaching in the tackle box, you don't even
know what they're going for.
But, so if you have pretzels in corn, chips in baggies on opposite side of the table,
and then maybe you have the water in the back, you can see intent, you can see they're looking,
they're reaching, um, and then you can kind of stop them and have them say or sign.
So those are all good things, um, to think about when you're having choices.
The other thing, if they can't make a choice intraverbally, like do you want the corn chips
or the banana?
Um, it's probably because their intraverbals are really weak.
Um, so you're here you have an intraverbal bonus video, which I would highly recommend.
I would, I would do that as part of the intermediate course.
I recommend the intermediate assessment I created.
The intraverbal sub test is hugely important and the self care checklist, but strengthening
of the intraverbals will help choices as well.
And then the final thing, um, Lucas really had a problem with picking the first response.
Um, so we would, uh, a couple of things we did to improve it and it has really improved
now.
One of the things was he's, he's pretty good at intraverbals.
Like he knows, uh, a banana’s yellow.
He knows, uh, you know, so colors and those sorts of things.
So we could say, we could ask him questions with choices is a banana, red, green or yellow?
Or if he always picks the last response, you want to put it in the middle, you want to
put it up front.
Um, what I found with Lucas is a lot of people were giving him choices and putting the one
they thought he want in the first position.
So he wasn't really paying attention.
So having them answer questions with choices, intraverbally if they're good at, say colors.
That was a technique that helped sometimes giving them 3 choices instead of 2.
And the final thing that helped Lucas was, and his behavior analyst who's had, who's
been on his plans since the age of 9, he's 23.
Um, she's awesome.
She came up with a plan that he would repeat the 3 choices and then make his choice.
So if we said you want goldfish crackers, pretzels or corn chips, he actually likes
all 3 of those, which I'm not promoting junk food because like it is a problem, but just
use those as an example so he didn't have to repeat goldfish pretzels or corn chips.
And then, okay, which one do you want?
So kind of like prevents that knee jerk reaction.
So hopefully, uh, gave you some ideas.
I hope you enjoyed this short snippet.
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And for more information, you can attend a free online workshop at marybarbara.com/workshop
and I'll see you right here next week.