“Please Don’t Touch”
Teachers, residential staff, and parents often ask for strategies to help decrease the need for constantly monitoring individuals who get into drawers, cabinets, closets, and desks, often breaking or tearing up items. Sometimes we feel as if all we ever say to a person is, “Don’t touch” or “Leave that alone.” Today’s podcast introduces a strategy that might be effective in teaching an alternative into reaching and grabbing behavior.
Listen Now:
or
The first step in a strategy to decrease the need for constant supervision is to remove the temptation and opportunity for grabbing items around the classroom and home. The podcast “Constant Monitoring” addresses that issue. Once you have secured all valuable or harmful items out of harms way, you can begin teaching a “Hands Off” policy.
The process you use to teach this new policy depends on the functioning level of your friend with autism. Here is one way to approach the issue. Sit at the kitchen table with your friend, and put one item in the middle of the table. Say, “This glass can break. We keep our hands down. No touching. Hands off. Stay away, please. OK?” You can use visual prompts for “hands off.” If your friend is able to acknowledge that he understood what you said, wait until he does so. Then put another object on the table and repeat the process. Do this several times a day with a number of different objects e.g. remote control, cell phone, food, nick-nacks, photo album, laptop, etc.
Once it seems that he understands the “Hands off” policy, leave one of the objects on a cabinet or table. Sit casually reading the paper. If your friend approaches the object as if to touch it, say firmly, “Hands off,” using the visual cue if necessary. If he pulls his hands back, tell him “Thank you. We keep our hands off. Good job.” If it will help speed up his progress, give your friend a reward – a token or a treat or a handshake. You can start leaving more and more items out as he learns to control his impulsive behavior. To avoid future disasters, it is probably best to keep dangerous, expensive, or irreplaceable items out of reach, even if your friend learns to control his impulsive reaching and touching.
Teaching this systematic “Hands Off” policy can take some time, but the effort really pays off in the long run because your friend will no longer require vigilant, 24/7 monitoring of every move he makes. Life will be much more pleasant for all involved.
Note to FAQautism.com listeners and readers: I am Cathy Knoll, a board certified music therapist and long-time friend of many folks with autism. At FAQautism.com we are committed to providing free, practical, everyday tips for making life better for people with autism. You can click on a button to send me an email with your thoughts or challenging situations or innovative solutions. Check out our website for a wealth of ideas and a glimpse into the world of autism. www.FAQautism.com
Automatically generated related posts:
- Safe Haven Some parents asked for strategies to help decrease the need...
- Onto the Floor If anything is on her desk or table at school,...
- Swallowing Soap Some compulsive or repetitive behaviors displayed by individuals with autism...
- Dangerous Actions 2 First things first. When individuals with autism do something that...
- Constant Monitoring “It seems like we are never able to relax,” commented...