Looking for some Early Years advice?

Hi there, 

I work with ASD in pre school settings and find that floortimeDIR really helps bring on Speech and Lanuage and once there is a trust built up and can start to include other peers instead of yourself to open up the play skills with other children.  Unfort playing solo is preferred in many cases, but if you get down to their level and copy their style of play for a while you will help build on the connection which you need first and foremost. Selecting a different choice of toy to rule out the obsessions of trains and things that spin an help.  However clear the play area before the child comes into the setting as not to upset before you start off.  Holding back a toy asking them to use their words, is a good reinforcer, the this action is also a cirle of communication between you and the child.  So remember if not using words yet this is still showing sharing techniques, turn taking and working on commincation.

I've been in a similar situation myself. I worked closely with a 2 year old autistic child for a short while. He also didnt like to speak, or interact with other children. He wouldnt even play alot of the time.

I was a new worker when i was introduced to this little boy as well, so th first thing i needed to do was build a relationship with him, which to my surprise was easier than i had originally thought as he took a liking to me. I found out his interests were cars, anything that went 'round and round' like wheels, bead toys, abacus etc. and looking at pictures. After working closely with him on a 1:1 basis, he began to make small utterances which was amazing since he'd been mute the whole time until this point.

sitting down with him in a quieter/less busy area helped too. After talking to his parents, they brought in some photos of family he is very familiar with -as we requested, and we worked on a scrapbook together. He gradually started making more sounds and then started saying words when he looked through the photos! It was amazing to see his little face light up when looking at pictures of his family.

We slowly encouraged other children to play closer to him and he actually became comfortable with this very quickly and would even take an interest in oter children's play, he would watch, point and smile at them. which was a massive step forward.

As for activites, anything to do with cars or thing sthat spin he would want to engage with, sometimes it was hard to encourage him to do this when other children were at the table, so we made smaller groups, sometimes even just one child would join us, and we would do the activity in very small groups this way. But of course we can't stop other children from wanting to be involved, so if it got too much for him, we could take him to the quiet area where we could work with him 1:1 and invite other children too to slowly help promote inclusion. This helped, but was a slower process.

I hope this helps a little. I only worked with this little boy over a few months so unfortunately i dont have alot of ideas/experiences to share. but I hope this has helped even the slightest bit :)

Have you got the early years ed pych involved? thats the first thing i would do, they done this for my son, she came in and advised them to put him on school action plus immiedately, of course i was naive then diddnt have a clue what was going on.

I would also get a visual timetable, and go through this with the child, i would get a set of pecs, i would also if the child has speech and laungage problems when asking the child a question would say which one would you like? the orange juice or the blackcurrant juice pointing at both and let the child choose one by point at it try and do that as much as poss.

I would also try and keep the child out of very busy noisy envoirments, my child was in the nursey joined to school and they took the nursery children into the school lunch hall for dinner my child could not cope with this so they kept him in class on his own with one of the workers.

I would also prepare for fire alams when necc, i would encourage friendships as much as poss, would try to use some sensory stuff too, like sand, shaving foam ect.

What I would also do is talk to the parents tell them your concerns as a parent you tend to get left in the dark and very little information given if that makes sense, its not untill the last few years i actually realised what a bad time my sons nursery had with him.

One last thing, always make sure you tell the child about things that are changing, you can do this with a visual timetable by putting a suprise pec in, i think the important thing is to be on the ball with communication with the child, hope this helps.