We’re over halfway through September now and several weeks into the fall semester. As family routines have changed and kids have returned to school, this is a great time for a mental health check-in with your kiddo.
Getting children to talk about their feelings and what may be causing them stress or anxiety can be tough in the best of circumstances. An autism diagnosis can add much more complexity to this important task of ensuring your child is supported and can thrive.
Kids with autism often lack communication skills that make having a conversation with them difficult. They can also lack the vital social skill of recognizing and understanding emotions in themselves and others. The good news is they can learn and so can you!
How to help a child with autism learn about their emotions
Children with autism feel emotions like everyone else. Maybe even more so because of the challenges they have to navigate. The differences are their ability to make sense of their emotions and how they communicate and respond to what they’re feeling.
Here are a few ways to help bridge this gap in understanding and to get your child to tell you more about how they’re feeling:
- Read books together that emphasize emotions and what emotions look like on a person’s face, like pictures of someone smiling versus someone frowning.
- Play board games and use other visual prompts that can help your child better understand the feelings and emotions they see as they play.
- Point out examples of emotions as you and your child come across during them during the day, especially when your child is experiencing them. For example, let them know when they’re smiling and ask them if their happy.
- Talk to them about the other ways our bodies respond to different emotions and feelings. For example, the feeling of butterflies in our stomach when we’re nervous or excited.
- Ask your child to draw how they’re feeling. You can give them an example by drawing how you feel and explain it to them in simple terms.
- Use a visual aid to create a scale, like a picture of ladder or staircase, to help your child understand and communicate how intense their feelings are. The bottom of the scale is the normal state of feeling fine. Then, moving up, emotions intensify with the top being the extreme. Be sure to provide examples of what could cause each level of emotion to help your child learn what an appropriate response is to a situation.
How to recognize and manage emotions in a child with autism
Parents know their children better than anyone else. That’s not to say you know everything at all times about them, because children are constantly growing and experiencing new things on a daily basis. As their environment changes, they’re emotional reactions can, too.
One helpful method for rooting out what your child is feeling and why they’re feeling it is the ABC method that’s used in ABA therapy, the gold standard when it comes to early autism intervention.
The ABC method is short for Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence. When your child shows an emotion or demonstrates a behavior, ask yourself what happened right before your child acts out. Whatever it was that happened right before was the antecedent to the behavior. What follows the behavior is the consequence or outcome of their behavior.
Using the ABC method, you can discover more and more about your child. When you understand the antecedents to certain emotions and behaviors, you can take steps to prevent challenging behaviors from occurring. And just as important, you can provide consequences, like praise and other rewards, to encourage your child to express appropriate feelings and behaviors in the future.
Ask an ABA therapist for help
Understanding how a child with autism is feeling and getting them to communicate with you isn’t always easy. Patience and perseverance are a must. Sometimes, getting help from experts is, too.
ABA therapists are the big-hearted professionals that can help. They provide the know-how and the compassion that children with autism need to develop and learn all the important skills for reaching their full potential and living a happy life with family and friends.
With the help of an ABA therapist, children with autism can learn how to communicate, take care of themselves, participate in group activities, ride a bike, and learn in school – all the things that will bring a smile to their face and to yours.
To find the very best ABA therapists in your area, visit BHCOE.org and click the yellow Find an ABA Therapy Provider button at the top of the page to start a search.
We’re proud to say The Behavior Exchange has earned the highest accreditation possible as a Behavioral Health Center of Excellence® (BHCOE). Our fun and colorful hives in North Texas and Colorado are ready to welcome your family. Get in touch today!
