Rock Your Play

Most professionals and parents automatically assume they can help children learn to be sociable and communicative by sitting down and playing with them. But for children on the spectrum, playing might not come easily or naturally. Through video examples, this presentation presents information on what to do when a child doesn’t know how to play and which play activities will encourage a child to interact and communicate with both adults and peers. There is mounting evidence in the research literature that early intervention for children with ASD can result in significant improvements in their social and communication skills. Child-centred, naturalistic approaches rely heavily on using play as a context where an adult can help develop the child’s interaction and language skills. Besides being a milieu for language learning, new and different ways of playing create more opportunities for communication learning.

 The trouble, however, is that the parent or the professional often doesn’t take into account the child’s ability to successfully participate in the play. Since children with ASD have significant challenges in the area of play, well-intentioned adults might be putting too much demand on the child’s cognitive resources by focussing on two sets of new skills at one time – play and communication. In addition, very few professionals target play, even though play skills have been shown to have a beneficial effect on the child’s language and joint attention.

This presentation will draw from the literature on typical and atypical play and language development to help the audience evaluate how to decide when to work on the child’s play skills, communication skills or both. Through video examples, the audience will learn strategies to promote play and communication. These strategies, based on the ones parents learn in the Hanen Centre’s More Than Words© and TalkAbility™ parent programs, are applied in the following four types of play contexts:

• People Play
• Toy Play
• Pretend Play
• Peer Play

People Play

Long before children play with toys, they play with people without toys, in games like peek-a-boo and chase. These kinds of physical games are ideal starting places for children who might have difficulties interacting with people and toys at the same time because in these games the child learns to pay attention to people. Drawing from the literature on best practices, the audience will learn how to structure these activities to provide repetition and predictability, key components of a successful teaching program for children with ASD.

Based on the content of the More Than Words program, the audience will learn an easy way to remember how to structure the games to maximize the child’s potential to learn. Each letter of the acronym R.O.C.K., used in the More Than Words program, reminds parents and professionals what to do: the “R” tells them to repeat the words and actions many times; the “O” reminds the mature player to offer the child an opportunity to do or say something; the “C” stands for cues the adult can give the child to help him take a turn, such as waiting or hand-over-hand help; and the “K” reminds everyone to keep the play fun, an essential component of play.

There is a continuum of people games and the audience will learn the games aren’t limited to very young children. For example, a game of “chase” can turn into a game of “tag, providing an ideal context to promote peer interaction.

Toy Play

Research in the area of play has shown that children with ASD spend a lot of time in exploratory play and have challenges with functional play. They have a relative strength in constructive play or building things. This presentation will show the value of exploratory play and its relationship to language development. At the same time, the audience will learn techniques for helping children learn how to play with toys the way that the manufacturer intended and how to use the child’s mastery of toy play to promote interaction and communication.

Pretend Play

The literalness of children on the autism spectrum often prevents them from imagining that one object can stand for another, for example, they can’t understand how a banana can be a telephone if you hold it up to your ear. The audience will learn how to work on all aspects of pretend play, with special emphasis on helping the child become more flexible in his play.

Peer Play

Even when a child on the spectrum has a large repertoire of people games, toys and pretend play, making friends and playing with his peers continue to be challenging. With information drawn from the Hanen Centre’s TalkAbility program, the audience will learn how to encourage peer interaction in children who don’t seem interested in playing with other children, children who play with others but rarely interact or talk with them and children who interact, but need help in accepting other children’s play ideas.

This presentation is based on a new Hanen guidebook that I am currently writing for the Hanen Centre and has never been presented before.