Do you have a hard time playing with an autistic child? Yes? But how much are you available to play differently?

Hi guys! I'm Adriana Fernandes, Speech Therapist And today I'm here to talk to you about playing with autistic child And also share with you some steps that I usually follow to get engaged with them, to get them to play Whenever I receive new parents to evaluate the child, I ask them: "What does your child like to play with? " Or "What does he play with?

" And the answer I get from most parents is: "He doesn´t play with anything, he doesn´t know how to play. " From then on, from the first meeting with this family, I will try to find out what the child likes to do as how he relates with objects, what is his interests, how he plays. And I have a very good example of this.

It was me, the parents and the child and among various toys I presented to him for evaluation I delivered these building blocks They are already called building blocks, right? To build. We look at them and already have an idea of what to do with them, we already have an expectation of what child should do with them.

So, as you may have already seen in other of my videos, I started by observing the child, what he would do with those blocks that I delivered. And I saw that he didn´t build anything, He took the blocks, look at the piece a little and put it behind. I didn´t say anything for the moment, I just noticed.

He was doing it piece by piece. In the second moment I looked at Mom. How was she going to intervene, try to play along, try to get into his play?

What was she going to propose? What was going to happen? And I was not surprised that her proposal was to present the purpose of the game, right?

Then, she was beginning to build a castle naming the colors and geometric shapes of the blocks. I looked back at the child and his reaction was not to get into her proposal. Then I decided to act, I decided to add an affective element to do some indirect intervention to try to enter into his play, to see if he could share with me what he was doing.

At that moment, what did I use? My own voice, an interesting intonation, my body and I began to follow what he was doing. Blue, behind!

Yellow, behind! Green, behind! And I tried to get more and more involved in the voice, in the body, in the expression so that he could take an interest on me.

And I was paying attention to how much I needed to stretch the vowel, to whittle in intonation to keep it with me. At how much I had to wait to speak "behind” to him to respond with his look So I did: Reeeeeed (silent. .

. ) and it was a quiet time to see if he came and at one point he even imitated the world "behind". And the most enjoyable thing is that we got a connection.

He switched from a child who was playing more isolated, looking down at the object , analyzing it and then putting back to a child fully engaged and interested in what I was doing and especially allowing me to get into his play. He felt that I became interested and then bumped into letting me in As the parents were in the session room, besides being delighted by his response because he laughed, he was very happy because he was understood and valued. Because that's how I see him felt.

So the next day his mother gave me feedback that she did exactly what I did with him at home and he gave the same engagement response. She even added a new element, she started doing: "Triangleeeee . .

. forward" and he accept! He thought it was funny!

He changed the movement back and forth with his mother. It was very cool. Because another very beautiful thing she told me later was that she got rid of her anxiety of having to play with the blocks to build something She got into play the way he did.

And this brought connection between them. It strengthened the bond between them and promoted communication. So summarizing this example today for you: What are the steps we can take to get engaged to play with autistic child?

First of all: observe what he is doing analyse how he created the play, look his relationship with the object without intervening yet, just observe. Second: Take a look at yourself. What is your expectation about the toy?

Can you play with it in a way diferent than the classic or expected way? Can you play differently? Step 3: To enter into his play you need to enter with affective elements that are usually the ones I used in the example: voice intonation, facial expression, following the child's rhythm, actually using your body, your own resources to arouse child´s interest to play with you.

And here comes the fourth step that is during all that is happening you find the ideal moment to create expectation in the child to make the silence for him to enter, to make room for him. And that may be the hardest step, because maintaining flow of interaction with the child, engagement, is really the biggest challenge in autistic children. But what a joy it is to achieve this and move on to the next step that is connection with him, when he feels that you were interested in what he discovered, that you valued him and that you are in the mood to play with him on the way he created.

Then you may be asking me: "But is he going to play like this forever? Is it allways on his way? " No!

We will be able to follow our proposals. We'll get him to play the way we want him too, to build castles, houses and bridges with the blocks. But first of all, in the first place, he needs to be engaged with us, he needs to share play.

Agree? Let's try this path? Tell me what you think about?

Enjoy and subscribe here on my channel because I have a lot to share with you. Thank you all who are watching me. A kiss from Dr!

And the red triangleee. . .

behind! And. .

. the yellow behind And the green. .

. behind! Reeeed.

. . behind!