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Lexie Macintyre asked:




Increasing an autistic child’s comprehension of activities and daily tasks that need to be performed daily or even occasionally is one of the most essential needs to build skills such as organization, self help tasks, how to follow directions, and build correct social behavior. As a result this method of autistic teaching of skills helps the child become more independent and increases his or her self confidence. Many of the strategies are simple and straightforward. Here are a few “low tech” support strategies you can use to help your child comprehend and build such skills.

Schedules

It is very helpful to provide your child with a daily, visual schedule. This will help organization skills and develop independence and confidence. A schedule can be made with a 3-ring binder type layout, a clipboard, a whiteboard, or even a poster board that you create together. It should detail what is happening and when and what is next in the schedule. Pictures and words combined make the best schedule so that your child can learn to correlate the words and images to form a connection between the whole word and the picture of the activity.

Picture Communication Symbols

Picture Communication Symbols consist of over 10,000 simple line drawings designed to represent words and short phrases to support children and adults with communication challenges. PCS, which was developed by Mayer-Johnson and is available on their website, is used to improve comprehension skills and encouraged appropriate behavior in autistic teaching of children. You can find them for sale on their site but you can also find some free printable versions on the internet too. If you print out the symbols be sure to use a color printer or color them yourself and laminate for durability.

International “No” Symbol

The international “No” symbol is the red circle with a line drawn through it. It is a very abstract concept of “no” for an autistic child. You can use the “No” symbol to convey several visual behavior management cards. For example, you can use the symbol as a card to place on a door that the child should not go out of. You can also place it over an activity on the child’s schedule to convey that the activity is not occurring that day or you can keep a “No” symbol card handy to display to your child whenever he or she begins to behave or act inappropriately.

Steps Directions

Certain tasks require a number of steps to be completed. For example, washing hands, getting ready for bed, getting ready for school, cleaning up after play, and brushing teeth. Using the task of “washing hands” as an example you can create a card that has images and words for:

Turn water on

Put soap in hand

Rub soap all over hands

Rinse hands

Turn off water

Dry hands

Make images with text for each of these and paste these on a card. Laminate it for durability.

There are many simple yet effective strategies you can use to help your child develop comprehension skills and improve behavior.

Rachel Evans asked:




Autism visual schedules are an important part of a structured environment for a child with autism spectrum disorder. This is because the visual schedule informs the child which activities will be occurring at a certain period of time, and in which order throughout the day that those activities will be occurring.

Visual schedules are beneficial for children on the autism spectrum as they:

- Help children who struggle with language comprehension to understand the expectations of them throughout the day.

- Focus on the challenge that many autistic children face with time organization and sequential memory.

- Help to minimize the anxiety levels of autistic children as structure is provided so that the children may organize and anticipate their daily and weekly activities, therefore reducing the possibility of behavioral symptoms. The use of pictorial schedules helps demonstrate the order of individual activities within a specific time frame. For example, it may demonstrate that lunchtime is coming, but work time comes first. Any changes to a schedule can also be illustrated through this tool.

- Help autistic children to transition independently among the various events and environments by instructing them where they will be headed next. Autism visual schedules can be applied to any event or place.

The format of the schedules is based on a strategy of “first-then”. An example of this approach is “First you wash your hands, then you eat your lunch”. This format demonstrates the expectation of what is to come first, and what is to follow. Each can be modified as required. Modifications are made in terms of the completion of each task, and the ability of the child to function with the provided details. It also includes the child’s ability to transition among tasks smoothly and with minimal interruption.

This is achieved through the format’s encouragement to move from one task to the next. That one thing comes first, and then another follows it.

These types of schedules also help children with their social interactions as they can work social moments into their daily routines. For example, “first you arrive, then you greet your teacher and classmates”.

Parents and teachers are finding that the autism visual schedules also contribute to the child’s motivation level even when faced with less desirable tasks, as it shows that there will be a progression to a task that is more preferred later on.

When visual schedules are used, they must be taught directly to the children, and then used on a consistent basis. They aren’t crutches from which the children will gradually work their way free. They are tools that should be considered to be assistive technology on an ongoing level, and the longer the child uses this tool, the better it will help him or her function. This is true even beyond childhood and into adult life.

When developing a schedule, a set layout should be established and consistently applied. They should move either from left to right, or top to bottom. There should also be a method that allows the child to manipulate the schedule to indicate the completion of an activity; for example, allowing the child to cross off the activity with a dry erase marker. The schedule should present at least two items at any given time so that the child can begin to comprehend that events do not happen in isolation. They occur in sequence one after the other.

Autism visual schedules can be designed to fit the unique needs and understanding level of the child, and therefore provide a tailored experience for each person. Through symbols, images, the right number of activities per presentation, and consistency of use, this method can provide substantial support and understanding to an autistic child.

Dave Vower asked:




Many people complain that they are not getting enough time to allow for weight training and so they are not able to make a perfect weight training schedule. One of the most profound things about weight training for muscle gain is that often the best gains are made with the shortest workouts. We are all looking for a weight training schedule which allows us to handle all of our day-to-day activities together with weight lifting exercises. With the busy works in Office and home, it is really very difficult to find time for body building.

You require a well designed plan to come out of such a situation. I knew many people prepared excellent weight training schedule and after few days desperately tell me that they were not able to follow the weight training schedule. This happens due to the lack of home work and perfect planning.

The two important factors to be decided are when to go to a gym and how much time you will spend in a day. If you are undergoing weight lifting training in your home, then also you can prepare a weight lifting schedule and follow it majestically. Also it is important to decide how many days you will do workouts in a week as well. The weight lifting training requirements and the duration need to be decided after discussing with an expert trainer. These depend on your objective of your weight lifting training like the size of the muscles to be developed, the areas in which muscles to be built and also your present physique.

Once if you decide these three items, then you can go for finer details about the weight training schedule. You can make a list of workouts you have to do and the time allotted to each one of them. This will help you to maintain a discipline in weight lifting training program, which strictly follows the weight training schedule.