The word “environment,” has been a top subject in the news for decades. We know about natural environments like forests and rivers, and urban environments with streets and buildings. These are tangible, visible environments. But tangible objects are not the only features of an environment.
External factors
Included in every environment are external factors influencing the life and activities of plants, animals and people. These factors are elements that cannot be seen, and include things like knowledge, resources and skills. For a child with autism, the most important environment is this “invisible” environment.
What is the invisible environment of a child with autism?
This environment is made up of all the interactions and consequences that the child experiences each day. The impact of this environment on the future growth and development of the child is enormous. A supportive environment with access to knowledge, resources and skills can help both the child and the family learn important skills. A chaotic environment will help neither the child nor the parents, and may cause damage. Children with autism may display various challenging and dysfunctional behaviors. Everyday life can be hard for them due to the communication deficits and sensory issues that are part of the autism condition.
Teaching a child with autism is a challenging task that requires teams of specialists from multiple disciplines, yet most of us do not have access to such teams due to financial and bureaucratic obstacles. So how can parents help their children with autism and provide a supportive learning environment?
This is actually fun to do. I found that one way to help my son with autism calm down was to reward him for breathing. You heard that right: I reward my child for breathing. I’ll show you how this works as part of a calm-down technique.
You can try it too, and when your friends are sitting around talking about the latest lame brain parenting ideas, you can tell them about this one. And, before slap their foreheads and moan that this idea has to be the ultimate candidate for the Lame Brain Parenting Hall of Fame, tell them the reason.
On the surface, the idea of rewarding a kid for breathing seems preposterous. But let’s look at how important breathing is. Descriptions of breathing tell us a great deal about the emotional state of a person, for example: panicky breaths, labored breathing, gasping for air, or holding one’s breath with suspense. A sigh can be a sigh of relief, a sigh of grief, or a sigh of resignation.
And what do people who attend meditation and yoga classes learn to do? They learn to control and regulate their breathing to achieve a calm emotional state and reduce stress.
Kids with autism often agitated
Now, let’s look at our kids with autism. Our kids experience neurological and sensory feelings that we do not experience and that we can neither comprehend nor relate to. We know our kids experience sound, light, and movement in a different way, and that these sensory issues can create problems for them. We also know our kids with autism can be quickly overwhelmed by the combination of sensory issues and performance demands, with the result that they become angry and agitated.
Parents of children on the autism spectrum by necessity become keen observers of their child’s behavior.
We are ever vigilant, watching for signs of an impending meltdown, or to appreciate those wonderful, elusive flashes of understanding or emotional connection.
Our beautiful kids have shining moments of great behavior when they are happy and all is right in their confusing world.
Wouldn’t you like to have more of those moments, and have those moments last longer?
Study what the child is already doing
An easy and effective way to get more of those shining moments is to start with something that the child is already doing (even if it is only fleetingly) and increase the strength of that behavior. By behavior, I mean a physical movement that the child is doing (as opposed to “good,” “bad” or other emotional descriptions of what is happening). If your child is shrieking and running around, he is not “driving you crazy,” he is demonstrating a behavior, i.e., the physical movements of moving his feet and moving his vocal chords.
Dr. Martin Kozloff, in his excellent book: Educating Children with Learning and Behavior Problems suggests that you take five minutes and observe your child, recording every movement of every body part. This will give you objective information of what actual physical movements your child is making. Once you have a catalog of the child’s movements, you can decide which ones could be the basis of new, “good” behaviors. We have created a download for you to use in recording your child’s movements that has additional instructions.
During vacations and holidays, moms and dads have a lot more unstructured time with their children with autism. During this time, we may engage in a lot of wishful thinking. “I wish he would play with legos. I wish she could go on a play date. I wish he did something other than running around and screaming.”
Let’s change this pattern of wishing
During my son’s younger years, I made the mistake of thinking about the behaviors I wanted him to do, as opposed to thinking about what he was actually doing. I kept thinking of behaviors in terms that were too big and too complicated. I wanted him to play games, interact with kids his age, and have fun—according to my understanding of what should be fun for him.
This was wrong. This kind of thinking kept me focused on the deficits in his skill levels, and took away the many opportunities that were actually popping up every day to build up his skill levels. Instead, I should have been looking for the tiny micro-movements he was already performing that had the potential to be shaped into bigger functional skills. What do I mean?
First, Move to a pattern of observing
Well, if you look at the picture of this beautiful piece of pottery, please remember that it started with a soggy lump of clay. In order to make a beautiful pot, you start out with the clay, knead it, form a base, build up the sides, shape it, finish it, and bake it in an oven. It’s quite a process, with many steps. With our kids with autism, we have to take the same step-by-step approach.
Look at your child, and look for the smallest possible movements he is making with his body that could serve as the foundation for further behaviors. Does your child make eye contact with anything or anyone, even accidentally? If so, tag and treat all instances of eye contact, no matter how fleeting.
Does he touch anything? If so, tag and treat all instances of him touching functional objects (toys, books, household items). After he is touching these items, switch to tagging and treating every time he picks up an item, then when he holds an item, moves an item from one place to another, or plays with or uses the item.
Many of us as children played with sticks and homemade toy boats in streams or rivulets at the beach. How did we get those tippy little boats to sail downstream? We placed them in the middle of the stream where the water was deepest and flowed most strongly. Now, think about our kids with autism. We use positive reinforcement to increase functional skills, but how much reinforcement? I learned the answer from my son: a river of reinforcement.
Create a river that flows
Positive reinforcement is best when it is like a stream that can propel a twig or toy boat. The twig follows the stream just fine when the flow is deep and strong, but what happens when the stream dries up? There is no forward movement. The toy boat gets stuck and keels over. If we want the boat to move, the water has to be deep and flowing.
A strong flow supports learning
Let’s say a young girl is learning to pick up blocks and place them on a mat (with the eventual goal of stacking blocks and following block patterns). The tag point is Block On Mat. As soon as she places the block on the mat you would tag and treat. As she picks up speed with this skill, you can tag, tag, tag quickly for each block as it hits the mat. You can tag her literally almost every few seconds. Think of what she is experiencing: a flow of success and reinforcement that is supporting her every action. The flow gives her confidence, success, affirmation, and some very nice treats. She won’t falter, she’ll keep sailing along.
Today’s blog post comes to us courtesy of the Indiana Resource Center for Autism. The author is Rozella Stewart, an Education Special at Indiana University, now retired. In this outstanding article, she explains how to develop motivation in students with autism by focusing on their individual interests and strengths, how to structure a supportive environment, and the importance of delivering successful experiences.
The Challenge
Motivating individuals who have autism spectrum disorder is an essential but often difficult challenge. It is essential because, by definition, they have restricted repertoires of interests and skills needed for community living and coping. Without planned, positive experiences, these individuals often become increasingly victimized by their autism as they age. With successful experiences, each can become a victor who lives, works, and plays in the community. It is difficult, at least in part, because people who have autism are particularly vulnerable to key factors which impact motivation.
An individual’s motivation is strongly influenced by: learning history; learning styles; internal and external incentives to engage in tasks; expectations of success or failure with a particular task; meaningfulness and purposefulness of the task from the perspective of the learner; and task-surrounding environmental variables which affect attention and achievement. In general, tasks and activities which learners associate with past success tend to stimulate interest. Success begets success! Challenges which trigger memories of past anxieties and failures tend to stimulate avoidance reactions and self-preservation responses. Although occasional failure is often seen as a challenge by learners who are highly motivated to learn through problem solving, repeated failure fosters feelings of futility and frustration in fragile learners who lack self-confidence and may lack competencies for task-related problem solving. When diligently applied, proactive strategies often prove successful in eventually eliciting positive, productive responses and pride in personal accomplishment. The following are just a few success-oriented strategies that support motivation for individuals who have autism spectrum disorder:
Know the individual
Maintain a current list of the individual’s strengths and interests. Include preoccupations and fascinations that may be considered “bizarre” or strange. Use these strengths and interests as the foundation for gradually expanding the individual’s repertoire of skills and interests.
Note tasks or activities which create frustration and heightened anxiety for the individual. Attention to these factors can result in avoiding episodes which perpetuate insecurity, erode confidence, foster distrust in the environment, and generally result in avoidance behaviors.
Pay attention to processing and pacing issues which may be linked to cognitive and/or motor difficulties inherent to the individual’s autism. Give the individual time to respond. Vary types of cues given when movement disturbances are suspected.
Many autism parents, and I am among them, have beloved children who are severely challenged. Our kids often struggle with language, basic tasks, and difficult or disruptive behaviors. To make it worse, they do these behaviors all the time—they are not occasional events. What can you do?
The Challenge
Because these behaviors are so relentless, it can seem that our kids never do anything positive or productive. I used to go crazy at autism meetings with my big question, “How can I get my kid to stop Behavior X?” only to be told, “You have to reinforce other behaviors.” Inwardly I would fume, “My kid has no other behaviors!”
But … I was wrong. After a while, I noticed that my son occasionally had a flash of a clever or funny behavior. These were always short and almost never repeated, but they were there. It takes time and a persistent eye to spot these elusive moments, but it can be done. Here’s one way to spot them.
10 Pennies in Your Pocket
Put 10 pennies in your pocket, then go watch your child. Every time he or she does something–anything–that is positive, take a penny and throw it into a dish. You may see a flash of eye contact, a moment of connection, a careful glance at an item, or a clever action of some sort. If you can manage it, keep a notepad next to the dish and jot down what your child did. At the end of the day, count the pennies in the dish.
How many positive things did your child do today? The first day you may have only one penny, but the next day you many have two or even three in the dish. After a few days, you may have many more pennies in the dish. Congratulations! You are now a skilled observer of the potentially positive behaviors your child already has, plus, you are probably happier about what your child is doing.
Part 3: Precise Reinforcement and Success versus Random Reinforcement and Confusion
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed how the click, or “tag,” is ONE specific sound that relates to ONE specific physical movement. This precise information to the child, “Hey, taking two steps in the same direction is great!” tells him that taking two steps in the same direction is a good thing to do more often. In Part 2, we discussed how the precise timing of the click helps the parent/instructor think about planning the small steps that lead up to the bigger behavior. My goal was to teach Safe Walking, and my son worked up from taking Two Steps/Same Direction, to taking Three Steps/Same Direction, and eventually Walking Beside Me, and Stopping At Corners. For reference, please see the chart I’ve been running in this series of articles.
Benefits of Precise Reinforcement
Part 3 of this series discusses how the precise reinforcement delivers success to the child, and avoids the problems of random reinforcement and confusion. The quick click of the tagger, followed up by a treat (strips of fruit roll-up), gave extraordinarily precise information to my son. The click marked the precise moment his second or third footstep hit the ground in the same direction. If he bolted or spun around, no click and no treat. Being a smart kid who likes fruit roll-ups, he quickly figured out he would get more by taking steps in the same direction.
Billy
Problems of Random Reinforcement
Because of the precise, consistent sound of the click and consistent reinforcement for that one targeted behavior, my son knew what to do. There was no confusion because there was no delay in information and reinforcement. Contrast this to what often happens when a child is being urged to walk in a straight line or stay with a group: “Hey Billy, come back here, stay with the group. We’re walking to the playground. Yes, that’s it. You can swing at the playground. No, come this way, we’re going to the left not the right. Just go straight ahead to the swings.” This verbal barrage provides lots of confusing sounds, some instructions, a reprimand, a small amount of praise, and lots of non-pertinent information. Billy experiences too many words, too much emotion, and a lot of confusion and failure. This experience does not build a foundation for continued learning.
Zack
Let’s try it with TAGteach
Let’s look at how a different instructor uses a tagger to work with Zack; he starts out by watching Zack’s feet. Zack would experience the following: when he takes Two Steps/Same Direction: he hears a click and gets a tic-tac. Wow! That was easy and he got a nice treat. He takes Two Steps/Same Direction again, and experiences more success and reinforcement. Now he’s got it, he continues taking Two Steps/Same Direction, and before he knows it, he’s standing in front of his favorite swing. Zack experiences success and reinforcement, and really knows to listen for that click—because it means good things are coming. Now the foundation is set for more learning. He’s ready to learn to take Three Steps/Same Direction, then Four Steps/Same Direction, then Walk With Group.
What’s the bottom line?
Precise reinforcement delivers success to the student: he learned something, he did something correctly, and he will do that good thing again. Success breeds success, confidence and attentiveness. Random reinforcement mixed in with confusing instructions, corrections and reprimands delivers confusion and failure to the student. Which student do you think is experiencing success and confidence, Billy or Zack?
What is TAGteach?
TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. TAGteach is a teaching and communication method based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).
TAGteach enables extremely precise positive reinforcement of behavior by using an acoustical signal to “mark” the behavior – at the precise moment the child performs the behavior! The acoustical signal is a short, sharp sound made by a handheld device (the “tagger”). When the child performs the correct action, the parent/instructor immediately presses the button on the tagger and hands over a treat (candy, treat, token, praise, social recognition, or money) as a reinforcer.
With TAGteach, it is easy to reinforce behaviors precisely and quickly. The immediate, accurate feedback and positive reinforcement result in the child performing the correct action more often, and for longer periods of time. With immediate feedback and learning tasks broken down into small steps, children can learn many new skills with TAGteach — at their own pace.
Tink is a beautiful little girl with special needs who lives in the U.K. At age two, she had trouble touching things, a common form of sensory defensiveness, that led to problems with touching food and feeding herself. Her dad, Seany, found a gentle, incremental way to increase her ability to touch things, so that she can now feed herself.
Please note (1) the importance to Tink of having a “choice” as to what to do and when, and (2) that her dad used reinforcers that were pleasing to her. Also note: For American readers, “biscuit” means “cookie” and “crisps” means “potato chips.”
“Capturing” a behavior means “marking” a behavior with a tagger at the exact moment the child performs the behavior, and following up with a reinforcer; it does not mean “abducting” the child! Here is their story:
“Tink has gone from touching and stroking eyebrows to touching food and feeding herself. When professionals tried to teach her this, Tink stopped touching things and didn’t want to be touched. She had built up a negative association with this, as well as with other things, because of the hand-over-hand techniques that were used. Hand-over-hand techniques took away her choice. Building up behaviors by using choice is really important with my daughter. From simply teaching her to touch I had a behavior to build on.
Tink liked her dad’s eyebrows, so that’s where they started
By teaching one small touch I built up to the behavior chain of Tink feeding herself. When I started off with the eyebrows, I simply captured it by sitting next to her and tagging her every time she touched my eyebrows. I used her drink for reinforcement at first: so, every time she touched them, I tagged and gave her a bit of her drink. When she started to touch my eyebrows consistently, I introduced a cue for “touch” by adding the cue as soon as she touched; then I tagged and reinforced her again with her drink. I did this a number of times. Then I asked her to touch, and she did exactly that and touched my eyebrows. I reinforced this over the period of about two days where I would just sit next to her and ask her to touch.
From touching eyebrows to touching hand – in small steps
Then I started to ask her to touch my hand by placing my hand over my eyebrows. As soon as she touched my hand I tagged and reinforced; I used a stroke on her arm with a soft toy for the reward, as she likes the feel of something soft brushing against her arm or face. Every time I asked her to touch I moved my hand further and further from my face until, eventually, I was holding my hand up in front of her and she was consistently touching my hand. I carried on asking her and tagging her for touching my hand over a number of days, so wherever I moved my hand she would touch it.
From touching hand to touching objects – in small steps
Then I started to hold up objects in front of her face and asked her to touch them. The first couple of times she tried to touch my hand, so I didn’t tag her and just waited, all the while holding up the object (a plastic coin). Eventually she reached out and touched it, so I tagged and reinforced — this time with a little bit of a biscuit. I carried on asking her to touch objects held in front of her for quite some time over probably a couple of weeks. It helped just capturing her actions of touching other things by observing and tagging her when she was about to touch a toy or something on the floor.
From touching objects to holding objects – in small steps
The next time I sat down and did some work with her, my object was to get her to hold the plastic coin. I started off by asking her to touch the coin, which we did a number of times. I tagged each touch, then reinforced with a bit of biscuit. After a short time, I observed that she started to place her finger around the coin, which I thought was a good thing to use to my advantage. So, next time I tagged her a little later than just the touch, and waited until her hands were around the coin. I did this a few more times. Then, as well as asking for “touch” I added a cue to “hold” as soon as she had her hand around the coin. Within about 3 goes of this, she was successfully holding the coin herself. For a while I did the same as before, and just through observing her I captured her picking things up, and continued reinforcing the behavior and pairing with the “hold” cue.
From touching objects to touching food
Then one day I was giving her a biscuit, and she wanted me to put it in her mouth; so, instead I held out the biscuit and simply said “touch.” She did exactly that, reached out her hand for the biscuit and placed her hand around it! I tagged her when her hand was on it and broke a bit of the biscuit off and rewarded her. I went to repeat it and asked for a hold, but this time she reached out her hand, grabbed the biscuit and put it straight in her mouth! She’s quick and it caught me by surprise. I just had time to tag her as the biscuit went into her mouth, so had to give a verbal reward of “Yes, good girl.”
From touching food to eating food
I tried this again and put a biscuit on a plate on the floor and asked for touch again; she did exactly the same as the last time, and then did the same again a number of times. Now she eats quite well using her hands. Right after that I simply put food on a plate so she could pick it up and she would automatically feed herself. She’s successfully feeding herself from hand to mouth for quite some time now and will even take your crisps or fries if you’re not careful (lol!). She had been able to do this before, but as soon as the professional workers started to use hand-over-hand guiding techniques she reacted negatively and stopped doing it. This is how I built it up again.”
Review of Tag Points for Each Stage
Touch eyebrows
Touch hand
Touch hand (held in different positions)
Touch coin
Touch toys
Hold coin
Touch biscuit (cookie)
Hold biscuit (cookie)
Eat biscuit
Eat biscuit/food from plate
Helps herself to food from her parents’ plates
Brilliant Example of Shaping A Behavior
This TAGteach tale is a textbook example of brilliant behavior shaping. Tink’s dad started at the “point of success,” i.e., a behavior that she was already doing. He looked at an action that might not seem very productive (Tink’s touching eyebrows) and reinforced it. Then he gently reinforced similar touching behaviors, expanded the range of those behaviors (from face to hand to toys to food) and reached his goal of Tink feeding herself. Tink experienced success and reinforcement at every step, and experienced no coercion. This shaping process gave her the choice of what, when and how long to touch different items. Also, I was interested to see that the early stages took some time, but by respecting Tink’s progress, the last part of the procedure went very quickly! Tink surprised her dad by grabbing the biscuit and feeding herself. Outstanding work by Tink’s dad, and a great step forward for Tink! Thank you for sharing.
What is TAGteach
TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. TAGteach is a teaching and communication method based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).
TAGteach enables extremely precise positive reinforcement of behavior by using an acoustical signal to “mark” the behavior – at the precise moment the child performs the behavior! The acoustical signal is a short, sharp sound made by a handheld device (the “tagger”). When the child performs the correct action, the parent/instructor immediately presses the button on the tagger and hands over a treat (candy, treat, token, praise, social recognition, or money) as a reinforcer.
With TAGteach, it is easy to reinforce behaviors precisely and quickly. The immediate, accurate feedback and positive reinforcement result in the child performing the correct action more often, and for longer periods of time. With immediate feedback and learning tasks broken down into small steps, children can learn many new skills with TAGteach — at their own pace.
Learn More About Shaping
Click on the image for more information or to register for this webinar to learn more about three exceptionally powerful teaching tools: capturing, shaping and immediate reinforcement.
Part 2: Precise timing and planning versus sloppy timing and planning
Part 1 of this series described the benefits of using One Sound for One Movement to teach a skill to a child with autism, versus a babble of sounds for many movements. Part 2 will focus on the all-important issues of timing and planning, and how they relate to teaching Safe Walking. See the table below for reference.
Why is timing important?
While many people know that a positive consequence following a behavior will result in that behavior occurring more often, fewer people appreciate the importance of timing. A precisely timed reinforcer that is presented exactly at the actual moment the child is doing the desired movement, or immediately after the desired movement, will result in the child learning the behavior much faster. Why? Because the experience of success and reinforcement is so closely tied to the desired behavior. It’s easy for the child to figure out, “Hey, that thing I just did is really great, because I keep experiencing nice rewards.”
Kids with autism live in real time, the “now”
Our kids with autism live in the moment, not the past and not the future. To work effectively with our kids, we have to live in the moment, be in the moment with them and observe them closely. The split second the child does the desired action, press the tagger and hand over a treat. Also, our kids with autism often move very fast. My son can easily do several movements in the course of a second or two. I have to be quick and precise to mark exactly which movement that I would like to see him do more often.
For my son, this was incredibly precise information, and he learned quickly to take Two Steps/Same Direction. You cannot “mark” a specific behavior so quickly and precisely with any other method. Try it and see for yourself. Compare the tagger with using words or directly handing over a treat when your child has done something nice.
Recently I tried to use words to praise my son for something he had done. It took me four seconds to get over to him, praise him for what he had done and hand him a treat: four long, late seconds. In those four seconds, he performed at least five or six subsequent physical movements. How could he possibly know which of those many movements was the right one? Words are slow and sloppy. For this kind of teaching, a click is definitely worth more than a thousand words.
Precise Planning and Precise Timing go Hand In Hand
As you can see from the description above, I had a precise plan of action in mind to teach Safe Walking. The first goal was to teach my son to take Two Steps/Same Direction. Once he achieved that, we moved on to Three Steps/Same Direction. To tag and treat this behavior, once again, I watched his feet. Now I looked for what happened at the time of the third step. His movements were: Right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot (in same direction as previous two steps?). If yes, I tagged and treated, if not, I watched and waited.
He achieved the goal of taking Three Steps/Same Direction fairly quickly, and we moved on to Four Steps/Same Direction, Five Steps/Same Direction, and so forth until we got to Ten Steps/Same Direction. At this point he was walking nicely in the same direction, so I changed my reinforcement plan: I intermittently tagged and treated for Three Steps/Same Direction, Five Steps/Same Direction and so forth.
Each Step – Part of a Behavior Chain
In other words, I had a specific behavior plan all laid out. My next steps, which are laid out in great detail in the book Chaos to Calm, were to teach Walk Beside Me, Feet on Ground, and Wait. The goal was that my son would walk beside me, stop at corners, wait for the WALK signal, and cross streets safely. Each of these actions was a precise physical movement that I could tag and treat, and eventually build into a behavior chain.
In five months, my son changed from being a chaotic bolter to going with me, safely and pleasantly, on five mile hikes in the woods. He also was able to go on family shopping trips and walk nicely with us through the stores and wait in the check-out line with no agitation. He achieved this, literally and figuratively, one step at a time. Randomly taking my son out for walks and urging him to stay with me or be quiet and calm in the store would not have achieved this goal.
Because TAGteach allows us to be so precise and to break tasks down into such small steps, it is easy to understand what comes next and how to break that next step down into achievable increments. The click, or “tag”, requires us to think about what our child needs to learn, to break those goals down into very small steps, and to reinforce those tiny little movements that will lead to the big outcome.The click is worth more than a thousand words. The precise timing and planning which you can do with TAGteach becomes self-evident to parents after a few tries.
Next Post
The next post on this Topic, Part 3, will address how the precise reinforcement offered to the child via TAGteach, and the powerful experience of success this provides, helps the child learn new skills readily and joyfully.
TAGteach
TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. TAGteach is a teaching and communication method based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).
TAGteach enables extremely precise positive reinforcement of behavior by using an acoustical signal to “mark” the behavior – at the precise moment the child performs the behavior! The acoustical signal is a short, sharp sound made by a handheld device (the “tagger”). When the child performs the correct action, the parent/instructor immediately presses the button on the tagger and hands over a treat (candy, treat, token, praise, social recognition, or money) as a reinforcer.
With TAGteach, it is easy to reinforce behaviors precisely and quickly. The immediate, accurate feedback and positive reinforcement result in the child performing the correct action more often, and for longer periods of time. With immediate feedback and learning tasks broken down into small steps, children can learn many new skills with TAGteach — at their own pace.
Check out the TAGteach International