The Many Benefits of Play for Your Child With Autism

There are many benefits associated with play. Here are some examples of gains your child with autism may achieve through play -

• It encourages two way communication. As play is a shared experience between at least two people, a child is motivated to establish or to respond to interaction with his peer or another adult.  For example, when blowing bubbles, the adult withold from blowing the bubbles until the child initiates desire to see more bubbles by saying "bubbles" or by tapping the adult and looking intently at him or the bubbles.
• Play helps build meaningful relationships. Play allows a child to have a common goal with the person he is playing with. Also, play gives the adults the opportunities to find ways and methods to draw the child into a shared world so that they can teach him skills through common interests.
  
• It teaches language skills. Doctor Stanley Greenspan, the founder of Floortime Therapy, urged parents and professionals to reap the benefits of the value in playing with their children with special needs. The Floortime Therapy focuses on observing the autistic child's playing patterns and how we can follow the child's lead so as to try and draw him into a shared world with the adult who is then able to impart more complex language skills in a calm and assuring environment provided to the child. Doctor Greenspan explained that emotions are the gateway to intelligence development. As play is a tool to help understand the child's behaviour and therefore, emotion, the adult will have better success in teaching complex langauge and communication skills to the autistic child through play.
• It motivates joint attention. Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. The focus can be done through following a gaze or by pointing and gestures. As joint attention is shared focus, it also means that there is the intention of sharing with each other, be it in a form of object (a toy), activity (a game) or an idea (let's find a way to get that cookie in the jar!).  When someone lacks joint attention, meanings of objects and events could be lost due to the lack of focus on the surroundings. When something does not mean much to a person, the motivation to carry out an activity based on the context of that surrounding will be absent. Thus it is crucial to teach and develop joint attention skills for children with autism as it will aid greatly in their social growth. Other benefits of joint attention intervention include improvements in language and communication skills.
  
• Play motivates children with autism to express their emotion in a comfortable and less stressful environment. Children are able to learn to express their emotions in an environment that they feel safe and around people that they can trust. Play also enable to child to be reinforced in a more natural manner such as feeling of joy and happiness when engaged in an activity with another adult. Play therefore build meaningful relationship with people whom the child can feel comfortable relating to.
  
• Play motivates problem solving. Children are more willing to find ways to achieve states of positive emotion such as joy and happiness when they constantly experience the plesasures of play. Thus, they will find solutions to problems that deter them from gaining such states of happiness. For example, a child who is excited by the moving train on the track will try to engage the attention os the adult who is holding onto the train.

What are some of the benefits of play that you can think of? What are some games you play with your child to teach the many functional skills and knowledge in life?

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