Control of the Toys

Help Your Child Shift Attention Between You & Toy

Children with autism often want to control the toys or other materials once they are engaged with something. Then, all their mental energy goes to that toy. You, their play-partner, are ignored! This makes it hard for you to build your child's communication and interaction skills. The goal is to create an activity where you are an integral part of your child's play and your child finds it easy or at least worth the effort to shift attention back and forth between you and the toy or the activity.

Become the Source of Good Things

Imagine your child wants to play an inset puzzle. You can sit beside your child and play with the puzzle. But your child is likely to ignore you. Worse, you may be perceived as human interference. He or she may get very agitated if you even touch the puzzle pieces.

But if you have all the puzzle pieces and you find a creative way to give them to your child, then you are not interfering. Instead, you are providing what is needed in a most interesting manner.

Providing Toys in a Creative Way

Certain tools can help you provide toys to your child in an interesting way. Here are a few tools that work well to put a little distance between your child and a desired toy so that you can send the toy in a cool way to your child. You can see toys being provided creatively in some of the clips below.

• • toy trucks

  • pieces of rain gutter

  • slides

  • tubes

  • closed clear plastic bags

  • closed doors

Naturally shifting attention

This strategy naturally teaches your child to shift attention back and forth between the toys and you. He or she has to pay attention to you because you have the next important toy! Your child shifts attention naturally to you in order to keep the activity going. Now you are interacting with your child in a positive, playful way.

Make Talking One Step in the Routine

Imagine your child wants to play with Pooh Bear characters. As the toy provider, you send these characters down a four foot piece of gutter.

Now you have a perfect opportunity for introducing verbal communication into the game. You can say things like "You want Pooh Bear, not Tigger yet!" "You looked at Pooh Bear!" "Bye-Bye, Pooh Bear, here he comes!" while you slide the bear down the gutter.

Like a gutter, a dump truck offers an interesting way to distribute items to your child. Here you can say, "Load 'em up, Send 'em over!"

Watch the Push Truck Game below to see how this strategy can work. Think about how to add language to the game based on what you are sending over in the truck.

When Your Child Protests

Just so you know, these strategies cannot always be done easily, gracefully, or without causing protest. Make a firm rule that you are the Toy Provider. Don't give them over even if your child protests and clearly wants to manage all the toys. If your child protests too much, put the toys away and try again another time.

Conversations Occur When There is a Need

If you have a collection of items that your child likes to choose from, you may want to make this collection visible but up on a shelf where it can't be independently retrieved. Put items in a bottle with a tightly shut lid. Even a clear plastic bag or clear plastic bottle will work because this allows your child to see the desired item but not get it. I like zip lock bags. At least some kids don't know how to get in them. You may need to clutch one end of the bag, though!

Say your child wants a cookie. If you just hand over the cookie, there is no opportunity to discuss... anything! But put two different kinds of cookies in a clear bag, you create an opportunity for discussion before your child eats!

You could say "You want a pink cookie..." (pointing to pink cookie) "Or a brown cookie?" (pointing to partly eaten cookie). You can say "Maybe Daddy ate a bite. No, no, no, Daddy, don't eat brown cookie."

You can look again at the two cookies and say, "Pink cookie looks yummy! First get a plate." You can take your child over to where plates are kept and say "We need a plate, then eat pink cookie." When there are no plates in the cupboard, you might say "Where is a plate? and set off looking for plate in the dishwasher. My point is, you can stretch many interactions into long conversations if there is still a need from your child's perspective--getting the cookie. Now this might be way too much language for your child. Or you may be able to make this whole adventure last twice as long. Use good judgment or your child may lose interest or get discouraged. But without the intervening clear bag your conversation around the cookie would be much shorter.

Video Clips that Demonstrate Strategies for Controlling the Materials