Many children with autism have a difficult time with pronouns.
For instance, if you tell a child, "Hang up your backpack.", that child may say, "Hang
up your backpack.", while he's hanging up his own backpack.
It gets to be a bad game of who's on first.
So today I'm going to talk about my procedures for teaching pronouns.
Hi, I'm Dr Mary Barbera, autism mom, board certified behavior analyst and bestselling
author.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around.
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When children start talking, parents and professionals sometimes notice errors with pronouns.
Some professionals call this pronoun reversals.
This often happens when for instance, a parent goes to pick up a child out of the crib and
says, "Do you want mommy to pick you up?", and the child might echo, "Pick you up."
And then they get picked up as they're saying, "Pick you up."
It also can happen where you're playing ball with a child and you're saying, "Roll the
ball to me.", and the child is saying, "Roll the ball to me.", as they're rolling the ball
to you.So this is how things can get kind of messed up.
So what to do and it's different when you're talking about an early learner versus an intermediate
learner.
I'm going to give a few tips for this very complex issue.
Obviously in the space of just a few minutes during this blog, I'm not going to be able
to give you an exact plan for intermediate learners because this is a complex skill.
But I can give you a few things to think about for both early learners just beginning to
speak as well as intermediate learners.
So getting back to the early learner who is echoing, "Roll the ball to me."
or "Pick you up.", the best way to prevent these pronoun reversals is for the adult,
whether that be the parent or the teacher to stop using pronouns.
Instead of saying, "Roll the ball to me.", just say, Roll ball."
That way the child echoes, it's not going to lead to a program reversal.
Instead of saying, "Do you want me to pick you up?", just say "Pick up."
It's also a good idea to reduce syllable and word utterance length anyway.
So using less words and stopping the use of pronouns are two great things for you to do.
I did a previous video blog on length of utterances called something about Timmy talking, what's
wrong with the goal of four word utterances, so you can check that out.
Now for intermediate learners who have a decent amount of language but are not picking up
pronouns incidentally, I have a protocol where we teach I do, you do and my and your.
And some of these procedures I learned many years ago from Holly Kibbey, who's a behavior
analyst who did a consultation for Lucas and she gave some great advice way back in the
day and I used some of these techniques to create my own procedures.
So I do, you do, we want to start off with an object.
Perhaps you have a pen and the child knows what a pen is and he doesn't have discrimination
errors between pen and pencil, which is often a problem.
So you hold the pen and you say, "Who has the pen?"
That is what you say, whether you're holding the pen or the child's holding the pen.
So if you're holding the pen you say, "Who has the pen?", and right away ... just the
second pause in, "Who has the pen?
You do."
You take a breath and you say, "You do.", because you do is what we want to come out
of the child's mouth.
Then we can hand the pen to the child and we can say, "Who has the pen now?", and we
prompt the child to say, "I do."
Sometimes I even take his hand gently, "I do.
I do.
Good.
Who has the pen?", and you might have to give a little partial local prompt, "I.", and the
child might say, "I do."
Be careful here and don't start off doing this procedure with a child with autism.
You want to role play because every adult I've taught this procedure basically thinks
you have it and then you sit down and you mess it up, because it is not natural to be
holding the pen and saying, "You do.", because you're holding the pen.
So here's a short clip as an example for you to follow.
Hey.
[inaudible 00:04:57].
Who has Elmo?
[inaudible 00:04:58].
You do.
Who has Elmo?
You do.
Good job.
Can you hold Elmo?
Who has Elmo?
You do.
I do.
Who has Elmo?
I do.
Good.
Who has Elmo?
I do.
Good job.
Who has Elmo?
I do.
You.
You do.
Good job.
Who has Elmo?
You do.
Good.
Can you hold him?
Who has Elmo?
You-
I. Who has Elmo?
I do.
Take his hand and have him pat his chest.
Good.
Who has Elmo?
I do.
There you go.
Good job.
There you go.
After I do and you do is mastered, we usually move on to my and your using not items anymore,
but body parts and clothing.
Again, you're going to have to prompt with what you want the child to say, and this often
involves the need for role playing with another adult to get you fluent at these procedures.
So you want to sit across from the child that you're teaching and you want to sit close
enough that you're able to easily touch his arm or your own arm.
And the thing you want to ask here is, "Who's arm or whose shirt?", and you can do nose,
you can do hair, and you want to prompt right away if this is a novel skill the child has
not mastered.
So it might look like, "Whose arm your arm?
Your arm.
Whose arm?
You.
Your arm.", and you go back and forth between the child's body parts and clothing and your
own body parts and clothing, and you teach this in small, short lessons.
Here is another clip of my and your and I do, you do all mastered.
Yes.
Whose hair?
My hair.
Good job.
Whose pants?
My pants.
Whose pants?
You pants.
Good job.
Who has the marker?
You do.
Good.
Who has the water?
I do.
Nice job.
And whose nose?
My nose.
Whose cheek?
My cheek.
Good job.
Whose cheek?
Your cheek.
Whose ear?
Your ear.
Who has the box?
I do.
Good.
Now who has the box?
You do.
Who has the clicker?
You do.
Good.
Who has the book?
You do.
Now who has the book?
I do.
Good job.
In summary, prevention of pronoun errors early on can be reduced by eliminating pronouns
altogether.
So instead of, "Do you want a cookie?", you might say, "Want cookie?"
or just, "Cookie cookie."
For intermediate learners who need systematically to be taught pronouns, I have found that teaching,
I do, you do and then my and your is often the most effective way for learners to pick
this ... these skills up.
However, intermediate learners who are at the VB map level two and three are extremely
tricky to program for and teaching pronouns is just one very small slice of a comprehensive
program that needs to be created and followed by both teachers and parents.
To learn more about programming for intermediate learners, sign up for my free online workshop
on the three biggest autism mistakes professionals make with intermediate learners today.
Leave me a comment, share this video or subscribe to my channel for more autism videos and I'll
see you here next week.