Simple Steps Autism

Bedtime
Up and down all night, a very common bedtime problem! The only successful way to eliminate this problem is to consistently bring your child back into their own bedroom with the minimum of eye contact and social interaction. If your child gets up 30 times you need to do this 30 times. However, if you feel that you can’t do this that night give in on the first go and then you are ready to go for the next night and be successful!

Appropriate Behaviour
Remember to reinforce ALL appropriate behaviour. It’s easy to only react to the inappropriate behaviour as opposed to the lovely behaviours, which have gone before it.  Your child will quickly come to realise what way to behave in order to get attention from Mum or Dad.

Eating
Implementing a successful feeding programme requires time, commitment and patience.

Toileting
Don’t have a back up supply of nappies/diapers, using these intermittently during toilet training only confuses your child.

Toileting
Move all toilet related materials into the bathroom, including wet wipes, powder etc… All toileting activities should be done in the bathroom ONLY, this includes cleaning up any accidents.

Bedtime
Keep the bedtime routine short and sweet! This is period of winding down not for your child to squeeze as much activity as possible into this night-time routine. Remember these chains of behaviours can become established fairly rapidly and before you know it it’s 3am and your child is just getting to sleep. Again consistency is the key – follow the same sequence every night!

Eating
Don’t despair – 45% of typically developing children experience some form of mealtime problems.

Token Boards
When introducing a token board DO NOT remove tokens for inappropriate behaviour. One incidence of inappropriate behaviour should not undermine all of the good behaviour that has preceded it throughout the day.

Toileting
Buy loads of pants, your child may need to be changed quite a lot of times throughout the day when beginning your toilet training.

Bedtime
Establish your bedtime routine whenever you can commit to a few days where lack of sleep will not impact on your or your child’s day-to-day life. Best to begin during holidays etc…

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Eating
Simple exposure to new foods is very effective. Only put a small amount (bite-sized) amount of food on your child’s plate. Try to do this about 30 minutes prior to meal times as your child is more likely to be hungry at this stage.

Verbal prompts
When a preferred activity is coming to an end ensure that you give your child verbal warnings. These can be paired with visual aids such as countdown cards. Tell your child that they have five minutes left while showing the number five on your card and do this at 3 minutes and again at 1 minute. This can help reduce inappropriate transitioning behaviour. 

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Token Reinforcement
If using a token reinforcement system ensure that there is an exchange whenever your child receives all of their tokens. The tokens themselves have no intrinsic value but it is the exchange for a valued reinforcer when the board is completed that is the reinforcer.

Collecting Data
If collecting ABC data ensure that you only record what you see – don’t make inferences as to what you think may have happened. 

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