Today I'm going to talk about the three big skills I believe every child or adult with
autism needs to reach their fullest potentials.
Hi.
I'm Dr. Mary Barbera.
Autism mom.
Born certified behavior analyst and bestselling author.
I came up with my big three skill theory shortly after my book was published back in 2007 and
I'm going to give you a couple of examples of where, of kids that helped me develop this
theory before I tell you what the big three skills are.
So, first we have Joe.
He was about in fifth grade.
He was in autism support classrooms.
Some general education inclusion and Joe had pretty scattered skills.
He could talk, but they were working on a lot of academics including math facts, but
Joe was increasingly having problem behaviors.
In fact, one of my visits he was overturning a desk and he was in the hallway and he was
punching fish tank and just really bad behaviors to the point where they were considering, staff
was considering transferring Joe to an autism private school.
But through working with Joe we managed to get his behaviors under control and now he
is doing very well.
There's also another boy who was 16 years old and he was in another classroom and he
was not talking and we were working on things like matching and receptive identification,
but I found out pretty soon after I arrived that this boy who's 16 was not toilet trained
at all.
He would walk down to the hallway, at the nurses bathroom, down the hall and there he
would change his diaper and he was pretty compliant with that whole routine, but it
just really didn't make sense that we weren't tackling toilet training for a child at 16
years of age.
So, my big three skills that I believe should be a focus and we should be striving to have
in place are these.
Requesting.
The ability to request your wants and needs, in some way.
Either vocally, picture exchange with a meditative device, but if you can't get your needs and
wants known then that is going to lead to major problems.
So Joe, even though he had language, he for some reason because I guess he needed more
direct instruction he wasn't able to tell his teacher when the math became too hard.
He wasn't able to request for assistance or to say things were overwhelming and so he
acted out instead.
So that's big skill number one, the ability to request your wants and needs to a stranger.
Big skill number two is major problem behaviors at or near zero.
This includes no aggression, no property destruction.
No self injurious behavior.
Those kind of problems, just like Joe almost got moved to a more restricted placement willmost
likely not allow you to be included to the maximum extent and won't allow you to even
be included into community events and workplaces eventually and then big skill number three
is toileting.
Independent toileting is my preference.
That you be able to do the whole routine by yourself would be awesome and not be on a
schedule, but not to tackle toilet training at all.
This 16 year old apparently his parents had tried and had some limited success when he
was younger, but the school staff just felt like, well he's 16 there's nothing we can, but
there's always something you can do because using applied behavior analysis, we can change
behavior and we have to look at which behaviors are socially significant to change.
So, when I came up with this theory years ago, probably eight or ten years ago, I had
done a blog on it and I actually got some feedback that wasn't too positive from some
people.
Some people were saying you know my child has autism plus, cerebral palsy plus this
and they can't be toilet trained or whatever.
Or you know, I don't know the reaction was kind of strange for some people to say.
I'm not saying that you can't have any quality, you can't have any quality in your life.
I'm just saying that whether you're a parent or a professional, whether you have a five
year old, a 15 year old or a 50 year old.
If you can't, if you're not striving to work on these three skills, requesting, problem
behaviors and toileting, but you're working on math facts or matching or whatever, these
three skills are going to give you the most bang for your buck, so if these three skills
are not in a child's IQ for instance, they should be.
If they're not, if we are having major problem behaviors.
If the child's not requesting readily throughout the day.
If the child's not toilet training, then we as a team, professional or parent, home or
school, I think owe it to these kids to really focus on these three big skills first.
So, those are my thoughts.
I hope you enjoyed this video blog.
If you did, leave me a comment.
Share this video blog and for more information how you can get started with either a new
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Whether you are a parent just starting out or a seasoned professional, so click the link
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Hope you enjoyed this blog and I will see you next week.