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Posted ByAutistic and proud on December 09, 1999 at 22:16:57:
: Can you elaborate more on activity schedules for us? Gaylen mentioned she used a velcro board and let Curty pick his activities. How do you make these?
Any way that works for your kid ... :-)
The idea, basically, is to create something visual that shows what's going to happen next and the order of events. This helps makes things comprehensible and predictable. It helps create a "map" of what's happening so that the child (or adult) knows where they are and things don't seem chaotic or frightening. Even if you think things are very calm and safe, they may not seem so to an autistic child - one very verbal child I knew was terrified of going swimming when he started school until he was reassured that after the class went to the swimming pool, they *would* be coming back to school and going home at the end of the day. If you have no innate social understanding of the world, you can't take these things for granted: it seems equally possible that you might "go swimming" and *never* come back.
It can be fixed in advance (but remember that what you fix can be something like a symbol for "lunch" followed by a symbol for "play", so it doesn't mean you have to be rigid !) or you can work on helping your child to choose activities to put in their schedule (or you can have a schedule with both fixed parts - e.g. school, speech therapy - and slots where they can choose).
It can be in any form. Visual schedules are most often used with children who have limited or no language, but they are actually indispensible at all levels of the spectrum. You most often see schedules with a row of picture symbols with words underneath, but you can have a schedule which is a written timetable or checklist (I got myself through school and university on these) for a highly verbal child or adult, or a schedule with photos or even a shelf of objects to represent activities for a child who has trouble understanding pictures.
It's usual to set up the schedule so that the symbol (or word or photo or object) can be taken down or crossed out (or whatever) when that activity is done. Obviously, you also need to decide on the order the symbols are going to run in (left to right, top to bottom, etc), whether you want to have a big schedule on the wall or a little one your child can carry round with them, etc.
At the school I work at, in the class for the youngest children, at each transition point each child is prompted to go to the schedule board and take down the symbol that's next on their individual schedule. They can then hold it and carry it with them to where the next activity takes place, and put it in an envelope with a matching symbol on the wall by that activity (so the symbol for "water play" is put in the envelope on the wall by the water play area).
It really helps with transitions and has an amazing calming effect on many children who are anxious or frustrated. It's often the first way in which kids begin to understand ideas like "you can't do this right now, but you can do it later" or "first we're going to do this, then we're going to do that" (even things like "you have to put your shoes on *before* we can go to the park")
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