Teaching Hygiene: A FUN Approach With a Focus On Social Understanding

For many reasons, the area of hygiene can be very difficult for individuals with ASD. Hygiene, or lack thereof, can have significant impact on quality of life. This session will provide a practical yet FUN approach to use when addressing these important hygiene needs. While improving social understanding will be the emphasis, other common skill areas that can impact hygiene performance will be discussed. Additionally, easy-to-use activities and strategies that target the underlying causes of hygiene difficulties will be provided. This session will be loosely based on the publication Hygiene and Related Behaviors for Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum and Related Disorders: A Fun Curriculum with a Focus on Social Understanding (Mahler, 2009). The book was a 2011 Mom's Choice Awards Gold Medal Recipient.

For many reasons, the area of hygiene can be very difficult for individuals with ASD. Hygiene, or lack thereof, can have significant impact on an individual’s quality of life. Good hygiene skills affect one’s ability to fulfill both personal and professional goals and aspirations. Hygiene performance is complex and influenced by many underlying skill areas such as Executive Functioning, Sensory Processing and Social Understanding. Many of these skill areas tend to be very difficult for individuals with ASD. Thus, these core difficulties may lead to poor hygiene and related behaviors. This session will both expand participants’ understanding of the underlying skill areas involved in hygiene performance as well as provide participants with concrete activities/strategies to use when addressing hygiene issues.

This session will consist of 3 main parts (with an optional 4^th part depending on length of session provided):

Part One: Hygiene Skill Development---Theory and the Underlying skill difficulties that commonly affect individuals with ASD

This session will begin with a discussion on the importance of teaching hygiene to individuals with ASD. Often times it is not enough to simply tell an individual HOW to have good hygiene---rather we need to explain WHY good hygiene is important. Furthermore, there are many skill difficulties commonly experienced by individuals with ASD that have a major impact on hygiene performance (for example Sensory Processing Differences, Executive Functioning Difficulties and Poor Social Understanding). Each of these skill difficulties will be discussed in detail, continually linking the influence that the given skill difficulty can have on hygiene performance.  When faced with a hygiene difficulty, the audience will be encouraged to dissect hygiene performance and determine the underlying skill difficulties that may be contributing to poor hygiene performance.  Once they determine the root(s) of the hygiene ‘issues’, they will be provided with many practical solutions aimed at addressing each hygiene difficulty.

Part Two:Supporting Specific Hygiene Areas---Practical Activities For Developing each Hygiene Area

This session will provide many easy and FUN activities to address the following hygiene areas:

• General Hygiene
• Oral Hygiene
• Picking
• Farting and Burping
• General Bathroom Behavior and using a Public Restroom

Within each Hygiene Area, examples (videos, if enough time) of the activities in real-life use will be discussed/shown. Participants will leave the session armed with many teaching activities that they can use immediately.

Part Three: Questions

The third part of this session will allow time for questions pertaining to the information provided.

Part 4: OPTIONAL (depending on length of session provided): Audience Problem Solving

Optional:In the past, this short problem solving time has proved very valuable to participants. It is an opportunity for audience members to ask about a specific hygiene difficulty they or their children/students/clients/etc. are experiencing. Mediated by the presenter, the other audience members are encouraged to offer solutions/adaptations they have found successful in their own experiences. For example, at a past session, a mother asked for ideas to help her daughter with pubic hair management---the daughter wanted to be on the swim team and needed a way to remove the hair along the bikini line. The daughter refused to shave with a straight razor because of the way it felt. She would not use Nair because of the ‘repulsive’ smell. Additionally, the daughter did not understand why she needed to groom her pubic hair for public swimming opportunities. Two other audience members had the same past experience and offered specific strategies to the mother (i.e. a specific brand of an electric trimmer from CVS & a product similar to Nair that is scent-free). The presenter also provided strategies for improving the social understanding around the topic of pubic hair management. Audience problem solving provides an opportunity for particpants to ask about topics that might otherwise seem embarrassing or off-limits in other environments.

Objectives for the entire session are as follows--Learners will:

1. Describe at least 2 of the underlying skill areas that commonly impact the hygiene performance of individuals with ASD.
2. Explain how these skill areas influence hygiene performance.
3. Identify at least 3 specific activities or strategies to use to improve hygiene performance.