Читать книгу Launching Your Autistic Youth to Successful Adulthood - Katharina Manassis - Страница 23

Judy’s mother helps her daughter get a pool membership, finds out the hours for swimming, arranges transportation to the pool, and verifies that Judy really enjoys swimming on a regular basis. However, a couple of weeks go by and Judy has not left the house to go to the pool. When confronted, the girl replies, “But you told me to do the vacuuming yesterday, and you got me a haircut the day before that.”

Cindy’s mother asks, “What days this week would be good for swimming?” Days are agreed upon, and she offers Cindy reminders on those days. Eventually, the activity becomes routine.

Judy’s mother has done all she can to scaffold the activity and plan it with her daughter’s participation. However, some youth with ASD have difficulty planning ahead for a week, or fitting multiple tasks into one day. Therefore, they may need help creating regular routines for activities and some parental support to ensure that routines are followed. This is exactly the approach used by Cindy’s mother.

One further potential difficulty related to ASD is excessive adherence to routines once they are established. In this case, Cindy might insist that Tuesdays and Thursdays are swimming days and refuse to do anything else on those days. This could be problematic for her mother when trying to schedule doctor’s appointments, haircuts, or other activities which might need to occur on those days. Still, it is probably best to stick to the swimming routine for several weeks before introducing occasional switches in the day of the week. By doing so, Cindy is challenged to become more flexible, but in a gradual way unlikely to overwhelm her.