A (0:00)

Today, I'll be sharing the four pillars or elements that will lay the foundation for less stress for both you and the children that you work with. If you implement these teaching strategies for young autistic learners, you will move from feeling overwhelmed and sometimes defeated to feeling like you can handle whatever comes your way at home or in the classroom. Keep listening to more about the Autism Little Learners Framework.

B (0:33)

Hi, I'm Tara and this is the Autism Little Learners Podcast. I am a speech language pathologist with a twist. I've run my own communication based classroom for over two decades and I'm so excited to share actionable tips and strategies.

A (0:49)

For supporting young autistic children.

B (0:52)

My goal is to help you feel more confident and successful when teaching your autistic child or students at the early childhood level. If you are ready to learn some tried and true strategies that really work, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started.

A (1:16)

Teaching autistic children takes a special and flexible approach. Every day will be different when it comes to what works with each student and what strategies you need to lean on. I developed a framework to help educators and parents understand the fundamental areas that are essential for teaching young autistic children. The framework is fluid, meaning that you will go back and forth between these elements often. I'll explain more on that in just a little bit, but first let's go over each of the elements or pillars in the framework. The first pillar is regulate, the second is connect, the third is routines, and the last is teach. As I said, the first one is called regulate. If a child is dysregulated, they aren't going to be in a position to take on and take in learning new things. We know that autistic children often struggle with interoception, which is the ability to sense the internal state of the body. If the ability to sense the internal state of the body is impaired, it can affect self regulation, managing emotions, sleeping, toileting, experiencing pain, and identifying symptoms when they're feeling sick. CO regulation is typically where we need to start at the early childhood level. CO regulation is defined as warm and responsive interactions that provide the support, coaching and modeling. Children need to be able to understand, express and modulate their thoughts and feelings and behaviors. It is the process of soothing and helping children regulate their emotions and body before they have the skills to do it themselves. CO regulation helps children learn to regulate their emotions and behaviors with the help of a caregiver. Self regulation, on the other hand, is the ability to manage and control your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It's a developmental skill that's needed for children to learn to manage their own emotions and behaviors independently. And true self regulation does not really develop until well past early childhood. So we really should not be focusing solely on self regulation. For 3 and 4 year olds. We should rely heavily on CO regulation and begin to teach skills that will be that bridge to self regulation. Some strategies that can help bridge the two include using CO regulation consistently, teaching deep breathing, teaching a calming sequence, using visual cues or video modeling, and you should also talk to an occupational therapist to get their ideas for supporting each child. This is their area of expertise. They can help you incorporate sensory tools that might make a big difference. Meeting each child's needs in the area of regulation is one of the most important places to start when creating a supportive learning environment. Both CO regulation and self regulation are important for a child's emotional and social development. If our child or student is not regulated, we're not going to be able to teach them the skills that are often their goals on their iep things like communication, fine motor, social and pre academic skills. It's essential to be addressing the area of regulation throughout each day. The second pillar in the framework is Connect. Fostering a positive relationship with your autistic students is vital. This holds true for teachers, paras, therapists, everyone. You need to reach the child before you can teach the child. Take some extra time at the beginning of the school year to work on relationship building. Oftentimes in a self contained classroom you don't have to follow a set curriculum that needs to be started on day one and this gives you the flexibility to schedule in a lot of play and activities that will grow your relationships with your students. Then be sure to continue to thoughtfully connect with each individual student throughout the school year. A great way to do this is to find out what the child's interests and favorite activities are. And I do have a free resource that can help you with this. It's called the Child Interest Survey. This checklist is for you to send home to parents to find out what each child really loves and it's geared toward the early childhood level. You can grab it by clicking on it in the show notes or you can go to www.autismlittlelearners.com forward/survey S U R V E Y Once you know what your students love, join them in those activities without going into teacher mode. And what I mean by teacher mode is do not start asking a bunch of questions. We do this without even knowing it. You guys, if you're playing with toy cars, don't say what color is the car? How many cars do you have? Is that car big or little? You get the idea. We need to learn to stop talking and start watching. Observe the child, join in by playing next to them. Listen to what they say, watch what they do, then copy what they are doing. And this is actually a really great way to connect. Don't take over and direct their play, but rather just be with them. Connecting with an autistic child means building a positive and nurturing relationship that goes beyond traditional teaching methods. Positive relationships are important because they provide that sense of security and trust. They enhance engagement and learning and facilitate effective communication, and they offer the foundation for teaching social skills. To foster positive relationships with autistic children, you really should use an individualized approach. Respect the child's autonomy and preferences, build on their interests, follow the child's lead, and create a supportive and understanding environment where the child feels seen and heard. Some additional ways to foster a positive relationship with an autistic child include using an individualized approach and tailoring the interactions to align with their needs and interests. So one year I had a student that loved country singers and I was trying to have him do math activities and trying to have him trace his name. He did not show any interest in that and thus he didn't do it. He wasn't refusing, he just wasn't interested in it. So I had a picture Willie Nelson, and then I had the name kind of dotted out so that it could be traced and boom, he was able to trace. I don't care if we're working on tracing his own name at this point or the name Willie Nelson. I just want to work on the skill of tracing and that fine motor development. So using those interests can really help with that kind of thing. Also respecting the child's autonomy by offering choices whenever possible. Choices within activities, choices within the day, on their visual schedule can be really helpful. Building on the child's interests, like I said with the Willie Nelson example, will help enhance engagement and motivation. Following the child's leads and activities and communication can be really helpful. Creating a supportive and understanding environment where the child feels like you get them. Being mindful of personal space and sensory boundaries, practicing patience and empathy, and paying close attention to verbal and nonverbal cues. So really cueing into that multimodal communication that the child is probably already using. You know, some people say, well, the child doesn't communicate, and I beg to differ on that because speaking is not the only way to communicate. I have had plenty of non speaking students who communicate in a multitude of ways. So I encourage you to learn more about multimodal communication and respecting the way the child's currently communicating. You know, it could be something like they're communicating through sounds like an unhappy grunt or a happy noise indicating they like something. It could be through gestures like pushing a toy away. Okay, they're not saying no or I don't want that, but they're definitely communicating with you and the message is the same. They could be communicating through low tech AAC like pictures, or through a more robust AAC device. I place having an effective communication system and multimodal communication under this pillar of Connect because it's one of the best ways to build a mutually respectful relationship with a child. The third pillar in the framework is titled Routines. Creating predictable routines is essential to reduce anxiety and create an effective learning environment. Within a daily schedule that is as consistent as possible, you will set your students up for success. As they learn the routine, anxiety will lessen and the child's independence will increase. Visual supports can help children learn classroom and home routines. Some ways to create predictable routines are by using visual schedules or posting visual sequences, and by using songs to help children remember the steps to an activity. Predictable routines are important for young autistic children for several reasons. One is stability and reduced anxiety. So these routines offer clear structure, a sense of security, which reduces anxiety levels and helps children feel more in control of their environment. Another reason for predictable routines are learning and development. They create an environment conducive to learning and development, allowing children to focus on the content of what they're being taught rather than worrying about what's coming next. They do also help build positive relationships. Consistency in routines fosters trust, and that leads to more positive and productive interactions between students and teachers. Number four Anticipation and control. Predictable routines allow children to anticipate what's coming next, reduce anxiety, and provide that sense of control over their environment. And number five independence. Predictable routines promote independence among autistic students, empowering them and equipping them with this valuable life skill of learning to do some things independently. Some examples of predictable routines for young autistic children include creating individualized visual schedules that they can really understand. And to individualize them, you need to take into account their attention span and what type of symbol they understand, and that will help you decide what symbol to use. So are you going to use objects or pictures and what's the length of the schedule? A single picture works for some kids and a sequence of pictures works for others. Another example is using visual sequences for common routines like brushing teeth Using the toilet, getting dressed, that kind of thing. And implementing systems such as the all done bucket, a weight mat, the star chart. These are things I talk about a lot. You can go back and listen to podcast episodes about them, but having these classroom wide systems can really, really help with the predictable routines. Once we've taken time and effort to make sure our student or child is regulated, that they've connected with us, and that we've introduced predictable routines, then we can start to teach. Teach is the fourth pillar of the framework. But wait, aren't the other three pillars considered teaching? Yeah, of course they are. But when we think about the majority of IEP goals and objectives, we think about skills in areas of development like pre academic skills, language skills, fine motor skills. And these skills can't be taught effectively unless we've laid the foundation in supporting regulation, connection and developing routines. So I think a lot of times when kids come into a classroom, we want to jump to teach, we want them to sit at a table, we want to teach them these pre academic skills, but we need to think about these three other areas first. Now, when you've reached the area of teach, some modifications that might be helpful with your autistic student include using again, an individualized approach tailored to their preferences, interests and even their sensory sensitivities. So thinking back to the Willie Nelson example, that was a very individualized approach that was tailored to that student's preferences and interests. We want to build on the interests to enhance engagement. We want to know and understand that behavior is a form of communication and interpreting challenging behaviors as unmet needs or an attempt to communicate is of utmost importance. We want to observe and engage in activities that the child enjoys to establish a strong foundation of learning. We want to pay attention to the physical layout and the structure of the learning spaces because this can make a big difference for our young autistic students. Remember that the framework is fluid, meaning that we flow back and forth between all four pillars of the framework. We may be teaching a new skill to a child and they become dysregulated. At that point, we need to set our agenda aside and go back to using regulation strategies to that we know help that child. This is going to be the case day by day, student by student. I hope this framework helps give you some ideas on what to focus on first, second and third. When you have dysregulated students or students who seem hard to connect with. Working on the pillars of regulate, connect and routines first is going to result in a shift in your classroom. Things will start to feel a little bit lighter and a little less stressful. Going to leave you today with a quote. Children learn best when they like their teacher and when they think their teacher likes them. By Gordon Newfield I'll see you next week, same time, same place.