Emotions for an ASD child

Almost all children struggle with recognizing emotions in others, but for a child with autism, this skill is even more complex. Their inability to read body language or facial expression well lends to even more complications throughout their life, which is why it’s important to teach this skill early. Learning how to recognize emotions impacts all areas of a person's life, from school, to work, to making friends and strengthening family bonds.

One great thing about teaching a child emotions is that they have to look at faces to achieve it. Something that people with autism struggle to do. An applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapist can teach this in a variety of ways, one way is to show pictures faces that are sad, happy, worried, angry, etc. They ask the child which face is which and have the child point or tell the therapist.

Therapists can also teach this through expressing the emotions to the child and having them identify it. They express the emotion in an overt way, by grinning and clapping and asking what the child thinks the therapist feels.

The more the child practices identifying emotions in an artificial setting, the more likely they can recognize emotions in an everyday setting. Once a child can label and identify emotions, they can move on to learning how to deal with the emotions in themselves and others.

ABA is a great tool that helps children to learn a range of complex abilities that will help them with life skills across a range of areas, from school, to home to friends. Learning emotions is just one tool of many.

Techniques for Sensory Issues

The other week I discussed reasons for why a child would act out. We then went through techniques an Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapist uses when a child elopes.

But what about techniques for sensory issues?

Sensory integration is the process of normalizing sensation and making it easier for your autistic child to cope with them.

Occupational Therapy

Alongside ABA your child may benefit from Occupational Therapy if you find they have a lot of physical issues. OT in simple terms helps people do what they want to do in everyday life, be it taking off a t-shirt or using a pen. Sometimes these issues are accompanying sensory problems, like the feel of fabric, or not knowing you are squeezing too hard. An OT’s job is to identify the sensory issues and guide your child through them until they can physically handle the task. They’re a perfect addition to ABA.

Applied Behavioral Analysis Therapy

An ABA therapist identifies why your child is having an issue and either teaches them something new, or reduces it. When a child can’t handle, or process sensory information because of autism they may have extreme reactions to it, such as self harm, violence, or meltdowns. It’s important to identify when your child is behaving this way because they simply don’t want to do something or don’t know how to communicate, and when they truly cannot process what is going on around them.

This is no easy task.

We cannot personally dive inside their minds, so we can only observe, watch and wait until we know the answer. Which is what your ABA therapist or analyst will do before they introduce an intervention.

Communication Skills

Sometimes, our children have a meltdown when there are bright lights or loud noises because they don’t know how to ask to leave the situation. In this case, the therapist would prompt the question of leaving and the stimulation would stop. For e.g.

Therapist, “Say, turn the light off.”

Child says, “Turn the light off.”

Therapist turns the light off.

This way your child learns that communication is a wonderful way to remove uncomfortable stimulation.

Reducing Stimuli

In other cases we can tell when a certain situation will be triggering in advanced, and know that our child has to go through it and get out the other side; like grocery shopping or school. In these cases tools are used, such as noise blocking headphones and weighted vests. These keep the child grounded and block out sounds, thus reducing the sensory stimuli to begin with.

Sensory Integration

Other times our child has to get through a stimulatory process, but there is no way to reduce it. Like brushing hair, or clipping nails. Either way they have to brush their hair and clip their nails, for health and cleanliness reasons. In this circumstance the child can’t ask to leave the situation and we can’t reduce it, so what does the therapist do?

Sensory integration is teaching the child how to handle sensory input, with breathing techniques, and practice. Just like when we as adults have irrational fears and have learnt how to face them—like public speaking, or roller coaster rides—our children have to learn how to face their fears and remain calm too.

It will be heart wrenching to watch at first as they scream and cry, but guiding them through it slowly, and teaching them how to step over their fears is something all parents should teach their children no matter whether they have autism or not.

The only difference here is that autistic children will often scream and tantrum rather than whine or talk about it, because they either have no other way to communicate or little understanding of the consequences of the tantrum in a social setting. All they know is, if I scream I won’t have to do this.

An Example of Sensory Integration

A child was petrified of nail clippers; he wouldn’t even let you cut your own nails. He would scream, cry, and have meltdowns every time someone used a pair. We would have to hide them and his nails never got clipped. This had the added down-side of learning to use his nails as weapons to cut open people’s skin, when he got mad. We couldn’t reduce the stimuli, and we had to clip his nails, so the therapist slowly introduced the stimulus to him.

At first she showed him videos and clippers.

Next she cut her own nails and the nails of others.

Then she placed the clippers on his skin.

And finally she cut one finger nail.

This took more than a month, and on every step he screamed at the top of his lungs like he felt petrified. He cried and fought and sobbed his eyes out, until he didn’t. Until he barely even noticed what you were doing. As a parent at first though, it was traumatic to watch every new stage brought with it a wrenching feeling in the parent’s gut.

But by the end? Even though he still screamed and cried, he would ask the therapist to do it! He had grown courage, and the ability to see his fear as irrational, despite still feeling it. He had learned something that takes even adults a long time to learn; fear will not kill me. A life lesson that will serve him. So although listening to his fear was uncomfortable for many parents, seeing how this process empowered him makes it all worth it.

Why your child is acting a certain way

Every child, anywhere, regardless of autism, acts a certain way for a reason. We don’t do things out of nowhere. Honing down those reasons are the key to helping a child overcome a behavior that won’t serve them in their adult years.

Let’s look at some common reasons people engage in certain behaviors so you notice what makes your child act the way they do!

Sensory

Sometimes we do things because it feels good to do them. Even though soda is bad for us, when we drink it the taste feels worth it, or the energy it gives us feels good. Sometimes we know we shouldn’t do something but we do it anyway because it makes us feel something we crave.

For an autistic child they may involve themselves in sensory stimulation, like flapping, rubbing their hands on things and spitting. This behavior is self soothing; they do it because it feels good! You may see it occur more when the child is frustrated, bored or even excited.

Escape

If you could escape from a painful situation without consequence, instead of facing it head on, would you? Most of us would!

Autistic children are known to bolt (they call it eloping now, officially) they run from situations, they hide under tables and do anything they can to escape doing something. Sometimes that something could be as simple as putting their plate in the sink. It’s not always because of doom and gloom circumstances.

A client of ours loves to use this behavior, he has several places in the house he knows is hard for adults to get to and as soon as you ask him to do something unpleasant (like chores) off he runs to hide under the bed.

There are other ways to escape situations like violence and yelling.

Children do this when they don’t want to engage in something. Maybe that something is boring, scary, annoying or too hard for them.

Attention

Yup, people do things for attention. This is a difficult one for some people to understand because it has such negative connotations wrapped around it. It shouldn’t, ‘attention seeking’ is just communicating that you want someone’s attention in the wrong way.

This is probably my middle child’s favorite reason to act out. He is a show star, he is loving, cute and by golly if he can be center of attention he will find a way! His autism (low empathy) means he often pushes children, hits them or bullies them so he can take their attention from them. It’s not about the child being a ‘bad kid’, this is just a child that doesn’t know how to say, “Hey I want a connection with you right now but I don’t know how to do it.”

Children do this when they want social interaction, or they want you to connect with them.

Tangibles

A few of our clients are obsessed with electronics. When it comes to trying to take them away the term ‘out of my cold dead hands,’ comes to mind. Sometimes children act out because they want something, plain and simple. They just don’t know how to communicate that want or they are terrified if you take it away they will never see it again.

This is the way that an ABA therapist looks at your child’s behavior, and a great thing to do for yourself as a parent. Sometimes putting meaning to situations helps us cope, and also gives us insight into how we can help our child in that moment.