Last week was a busy week for Skip happenings, the week ending with a workshop for parents and educators learning about ways to play with a child on the autistic spectrum. The facilitators Neil Stuart and Tanya Catterall from Autism NZ brought to us an insightful, practical workshop balanced with the research-based techniques and the parent voice experience of managing and initiating play for children with autism.
Among the strategies mentioned was the need to look for patterns in a child's behaviour and work with those to initiate a game. Using repetitive patterns, predictable patterns and routines in games allow children on the autism spectrum to engage more easily as they enjoy familiarity and structure, it makes them feel safe. It may be that at a certain time of the day your child is more likely to get bored or into mischief. Use this time to do something together that your child enjoys. Managing this time can be tricky if you have other children as well, but finding games that can be played together makes it easier.
The workshop was on the same day that Whanganui was celebrating May Day Disability Awareness as well. It made us realise that as a community we were conscious of supporting families living day-to-day with a child or other family member coping with a disability and that these families are an accepted part of what our community looks like.
Thinking about parenting children with disabilities it is also NZ Sign Language week and for both parents and children who are deaf there are difficulties in communication that can make the day-to-day interactions with others a bit more challenging. In the Way to Play workshop parents were encouraged to use non-verbal communication with their children such as hand signals to invite children to play, facial expressions and over-the-top gestures that create interest for the children resulting in playfulness and fun together.
We know that our body language is an important part of communicating; creating opportunities to practise using these non-verbal skills is a great way to interact with children and gives us different ways to engage with them. As a grandparent now I find that a nod or a gesture is used more often to invite our granddaughter to play or to do what needs to be done. Maybe its experience, but we realise that children do not need lots of verbal instructions to go about their routines and their play.
