I made these signs
for my 7 yr old. He tends to over feel in
situations and his para's tone of voice can send him into defiance
mode. I created these as a visual to help cut back on the emotion when
trying to direct him to do something. The teacher laminated them and
they lay one on his desk when needed. They work so well that the teacher
started using them with other kids in his class. I know they are
working when my son comes home and says mom I didn't get any stop signs
today and I had 3 way to goes. Success!
The signs include a stop sign, a way to go sign, and specific signs for staying in his seat and keeping his hands to himself.
Please
feel free to use them. The original freeware vector signs were created
by Vectoriano. I just adjusted them to fit our needs. These are intended
for non profit or personal use only.
One thing that I've learned that is very
important for Aspies is their inner plan. Mess up their plan for the day
and all hell breaks loose. But.... the problem is that most people
don't know their plan and it doesn't get voiced, so as an innocent
bystander you are completely flabbergasted when a huge meltdown ensues
because an inner plan got messed up. One time my husband explained a
situation to a psychiatrist friend of ours of how upset he was when I
changed the plan on him one day and
because I changed the plan I made him lose his hat. The thing that
struck me about the conversation is that the psychiatrist looked at him
and calmly said did you tell your wife your plan? If not, how could she
know she was breaking it. The same issues with the plan happen with our
son. If I pick him up after school and we have a last minute errand to
run sometimes a meltdown ensues because that's not how he planned the
evening to go.
Here is an interesting article on teaching Plan flexibility. Very useful for any Nero-typical working with an Aspie.
http://special-ism.com/my-plan-vs-your-plan-seven-tips-for-parents-to-promote-a-shift-in-your-childs-rigid-thinking/
The new school year
brings much excitement but for special needs kids and their parents it
can bring much anxiety. One thing we have learned to help our son fight
anxiety at school is to have scheduled movement breaks through out the
day. As we approach the new school year I decided to make my son's
teacher a movement break backpack. I created a sheet that shows all the
items in the back pack and what they are used for. In addition I created
a dice game to facilitate the movement breaks. That way anyone, even if
they are not trained in sensory therapy can help my son.
Here is a link to a customizable excel file for the Backpack contents. Please feel free to use it.
Sensory/Movement Break Backpack Excel File
This is a fairly big file - 38mb
Sensory/Movement Break Backpack Printable pdf
Movement Break Dice Game
Here
is the dice game I created for the backpack. I took 3 alphabet
blocks that my son had when he was a baby and created a pictures for all the sides and glued them on to the
blocks. You roll the 3 dice in the middle of the room the 1st dice
tells you how to move to an area, the second dice tells you what to do
once you get there and the third tell you how many times to do it and
then you go back to the middle of the room and start over.
Sensory/Movement Break Dice Game Printable pdf
The original idea for the dice comes from YourTherapySource.com. Here is her video on how it kind of works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8koLkOXuXQ&list=UUXc-pJwTicMicc0QXybWRgQ
Note:
This is not professional advice - I'm just a Mom trying to help her son
make it in this world. A lot of the items in this backpack are geared
toward Proprioceptive and Vestibular activities.
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