Having an autistic child often means struggling with communication. Attention is one of the important things when it comes to helping to improve your child's communication skills. This is something that was focused on during speech therapy with Blake back when he was a preschooler. Attention comes first as a starring point as you can't "teach" communication to a child who can't pay attention.
We had a few sessions of Attention Autism with a speech therapist before we relocated which was going well. We also started introducing PECs ( picture exchange communication) and visuals with the speech therapists support. Blake now has all this support in place at the specialist school he goes to. One of his favourite things is "bucket time" that they do during circle time. This is an activity as part of Attention Autism.
What is Attention Autism?
Attention Autism is a learning approach that aims to develop natural and spontaneous communication skills in Autistic children through the use of visually based and highly motivating activities. This approach was created by speech and language therapist Gina Davies. It is popular and widely used in schools although can be done at home too.
What are the Attention Autism stages?
Stage 1- The bucket
Stage 2 - The attention builder
Stage 3 - The interactive game
Stage 4 - Independent working
Twinkl has a great post on Attention Autism detailing how each of the stages work in more detail incase you want to have a go at home. There are some handy resources too to help you out.
What bucket do we use?
We use the green bin in the photo above. You can get them in a variety of colours, we got Blake's off ebay but I have seen them on Amazon and I'm sure alot of other places also do similar ones. We opted for one of these as we liked it has a lid and is a good size.
What types of bucket fillers can you use?
Anything that will get your child's attention. Blake's favourites are bubbles, balloons, poppets, wind up toys, party blowers, light up balls, spinning tops, light up gloves and more.
What type of interactive activities are best?
The Autism Page has a great post on 17 attention builder activities to give you some inspiration. I definitely recommend reading Jade's blog as she shares such useful information about autism, therapies, paperwork, PECs and more.
