(Image description: A partial screenshot of a blog post. The title reads “How I reduced screaming and verbal stimming in my child with autism”, and below that is a colour photograph of a hand holding a rectangular plastic “clicker” device.)
[snip]
I don’t agree with everything this lady did, especially the correction of verbal stimming, but I think the basis of this is fairly good practice with any child. You reward good behaviors and correct unwanted behaviors, which can be done through time-outs, taking away something of value to the child, or simply ignoring them. People don’t like hearing about methods that sound like dog training, but, as a dog trainer, I’ve seen firsthand that the minds of dogs and children are pretty darn similar, and they can usually be taught in similar manners. In my child development class, we talked about how some speech therapists will utilize positive reinforcements to encourage speech in autistic children, basically training them to talk. They started out rewarding any noise, and then slowly specified to rewarding words, and then rewarding sentences. The clicker seems awful, but it’s actually a good tool to phase out food as a reward, while still giving a reward. This may have been a really old method, but it worked. I don’t think this is an attempt to “cure” a child, but to effectively teach them more appropriate behaviors, like communication. Personally, I would think it’s really important to teach effective communication, for the sake of the child. Obviously, the child needs something, they’re trying to communicate something, but can’t do so in a way that their caregivers can understand. Is it so wrong to teach children how to express themselves so that they can fulfill their wants and needs?
I’m going to go ahead and be blunt here.
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knitting in the dark 