Social Behaviours of Children with Autism: Dealing with Challenges 2

Picking up from where we left off the last post in the series -' Dealing with Challenges 1' - we are going to look at the strategies and approaches that can be employed for the next case scenarios illustrated previously in the 'Challenges in Communication' post.

Scenario 2:
John has many episodes of temper tantrums and meltdowns resulted from various instances such as losing in a game and sudden changes in the games' objectives or rules when playing with his peers. As a result of these episodic meltdowns, John's classmates are at times apprehensive of including him in their activities.

Strategies and Approaches:
1) John has difficulty expressing his frustration through words. Teaching him about emotions and providing him the language skills necessary to talk about his feelings may be helpful. Parents and caregivers can help him label his emotions and make him aware of them whenever they catch him in certain moods. For example, when he is showing that he is angry or upset, the adults can tell him in a matter of fact tone, "John, you are feeling upset right now. You did not get the ice cream you wanted and now you are feeling upset". Even when he is feeling happy or excited about something, the adults can help him label those emotions. It's not just those lousy moods that need labeling but the great ones as well so that the child can discriminate between different emotions, facilitating understanding of the different stages of emotions experienced. 

The child must also have enough understanding of what each emotion means, feels like and look like. Sometimes, although they may act out of anger or frustration, they do not realize that it is anger. To them it's just a feeling that they act upon. It may also be due to imitation - they see someone act out of anger and they do the same when they feel that they are in similar situation. They are not taught to label the emotion that they observe. Thus exposing the child to visual representations of the various emotions may help them understand how people feeling different emotions look like and thus facilitate empathy which is essential in social interaction with others ("It is not a good look when i get angry and shout at people. They will feel scared of me").

Make use of picture cards or flashcards that target the understanding of emotions to develop good understanding of emotions and their functions.

2) Get the child to label his own emotions. We can do this step by step with combination of suggestion one above -

• "John, you are feeling angry. You are angry because you lost the game to your sister."
• "John, tell me how are you feeling right now?"
• "Yes you are feeling angry. Why are you feeling angry?"
• "Yes, you are feeling angry because you lost the game to your sister."

Over time, as the child is more adept at describing his own emotions, we would leave out the initial prompts and ask him based on observation of his behaviour within a situation, "You are not talking nicely, John. How are you feeling?"

Check out "Let's Talk Emotions: Helping Children with Social Cognitive Deficits" by Teresa A. Cardon. It is a great resource book to have as it is a collection of easy-to-use activities for children ages 4-18, providing a wide variety of experiences for the children to learn about identifying and responding to their own feelings as well as the feelings of others - 

• "How does your sister feel when you shout at her?"
• "What happens when your sister feel sad/scared after you shout at her?"

3) Provide solutions to the problems. Once John is informed of the emotion that he is experiencing, there has to be a solution to the problem that caused the emotion in the first place. Since acting out should not be a choice and is taken out of the equation, other healthier alternatives have to be offered in order to address the emotion felt at that situation. So, we tell John, "John, you are feeling upset now. You are feeling upset because you did not get the ice cream that you wanted" and then what next? We should not expect John to calm down right after that information. Thus, we have to provide solutions. depending on the situation the child is in, solutions can differ as the adults may offer different alternatives based on the circumstances.

• Describe the emotion (Angry).
• Explain cause of emotion (lost game).
• Inform approprite behaviour (calm down/ stop swearing).
• Pull child out from setting (somewhere quiet away from the antecedents).
• Provide solutions/alternatives for child to choose from (quit game and do something else or try again?)

Make the above steps as clear and systematic as possible so that it appears concrete and easy to follow to the child. As the steps becomes a system you and your child adhere to, it becomes easier for your child to adopt the steps on his own as he gradually picks up the skill of getting himself out of a situation after he is able to identify and label his emotions.

However, this will need practice within the home or teaching setting that is more safe and less obtrusive for the child to master these skills. We could manipulate a setting at home to create a situation that lead to the unfolding of the above steps, creating opportunities for the child to learn the skills. Alternatively, we can role play with the child and go through the above steps. Incidental learning will be helpful as there will be time when the child will get upset over certain matters at home. These will be wonderful times to practice the steps.

Check out "Incredible 5-Point Scale  Assisting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Understanding Social Interactions and Controlling Their Emotional Responses" by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis - "This book shows how to break down a given behavior and, with the student's active participation, develop a scale that identifies the problem and suggests alternatives, positive behaviors at each level of the scale".

4) Using situational stories and games to teach about emotions and reasoning. Create stories with pictures to illustrate a setting and circumstance. Then ask the child for opinion regarding the story. Relate the story to the child to help understanding from a first person level.

• "How does Jane feel because her toy is broken?"
• "What is she doing because she is feeling sad?"
• "What do you think she should do?" (Povide prompts when needed. Do you think she should ask her dad for help?)
• "What would you do if your toy is broken?"

This can also be done through role playing games or pretend play. For example,

•  Mummy is the chef of a new restaurant set up.
• Mummy scalded her hand while cooking.
• How does mummy feel?
• What should mummy do?
• Can you help mummy?
• What would you do if your hand got scalded? ETC

Need some ideas for what games to play with your child to teach about emotions? The "Guess How I Feel Game" provides 50 situations, each shown with vivid photographs for players to develop skills in self-expression and empathy. Understand that communication is a two way street and so is the expression of emotions. The child has to understand that his expression of emotion has effects on the emotions of others around him and that consequences, good or bad, are the results of these emotions evoked.

And that's all for now but please come back for more posts in this series as we continue to explore more strategies and approaches to the other two challenging scenarios brought up.

Do you have any suggestions or questions that you would like to share with the other readers? Please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. 

www.triumphantkids.com

Suggested Readings:
Incredible 5-Point Scale  Assisting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Understanding Social Interactions and Controlling Their Emotional Responses - Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis

Let's Talk Emotions: Helping Children with Social Cognitive Deficits Including AS, HFA, and NVLD, Learn to Understand and Express Empathy and Emotions - Teresa A. Cardon

Suggested Resources:

Guess How I Feel Game

Understandng Emotions: Flashcards for Visual Learners