0:05

Welcome to the neuro nurture podcast, dedicated to equipping and supporting families, navigating the world of autism and neurodiversity. I am your host, Kirsten Sullivan, who is on a mission to help autism families go from surviving to thriving. Welcome to the show. Hey everyone. And welcome back to the NeuroNurture podcast episode. Today is all about eight steps that you can implement when you have received your child's autism diagnosis. Now, it doesn't matter if you've received a diagnosis or one day ago, or you are 10 years into this journey, it's never, ever too late to start implementing different supports and tools. And that is what I want to give to you today. Eight steps that you can start implementing. Now, I just want to say that receiving a diagnosis for your child can be really tough. You can feel really, really isolated and it can be really lonely at times, really confusing. And I want you to know that you're not alone, that I am here to support you and guide you and help you. And I hope that you find this podcast informative and helpful. And I hope you can take something away from it. And if you are 10 years down the line, if you have walked this journey, you know, what is all about, and perhaps some things you have not implemented yet, and perhaps you might want to start implementing some of these steps that I will recommend. It is never too late to implement something new. So let's get into it. The first step is creating a team, creating a very solid support system around you. And your child in order to meet your child's needs and to meet you where you are at. It is very crucial to have a support system and a team around you that supports your wishes and your needs and your wants. Now, I see this quite often where a lot of families and, and, and their kids are Oftentimes they have the support system around them that is not quite working. You know, they have all the professionals, but it's not working because they are not receiving the best care for them. Doesn't mean to say that the strategies implemented are wrong. It just means that they might need a few tweaks here and there in order to support the family's needs because every family and child is a very different. So that's just a little side note. And, you know, people on your team will come and go depending on your child's needs and where you are at. So in the beginning, your team might consist of only your mother or a sibling, and then it might develop into a speech therapist maybe behavioral therapist, maybe an OT, maybe a psychologist later on, maybe a counselor. So, Depending on what your child's needs are, when and your needs are, it will change. You are the only constant on your child's team. So you're wanting to make sure that everyone around you is on the same page and you wholeheartedly believe in every single member of your team. 100%. The next step that I want to get into is creating and implementing a visual schedule. Now you've probably heard me say this quite a few times before, and I harp on this a lot, but creating and implementing a visual schedule is crucial. Visual schedules are Reduce unwanted behavior. It increased predictability. It increased independence. It increases communication styles. It, it also decreases this anxiety of not knowing what is coming next. So that is the second step is implementing a visual schedule into your child's daily life. And just this expectation of realizing. What is coming next will decrease your child's challenging behavior. If your child has challenging behavior drastically, the next. Third step that I want to implement and that I want to get across to you is to build in sensory breaks. Now this is quite often overlooked and quite often it is only used in OT or if your child is in therapy. And it's not really implemented in the home environment or the school environment for that matter, but it is very, very crucial to implement constant sensory breaks into your child's daily routine. Now, this also looks very different for every child, but you're wanting to proactively set up sensory breaks for your child throughout the day in order for them to feel regulated and feel very. Good within themselves, these sensory breaks and these sensory activities that your child is engaging in, regardless of whether you're implementing them or not, it's making them feel good. They are feeling really regulated when they are engaging in these breaks. Now, it obviously depends on your child's entry profile, but I once had a client who their child would absolutely just be in the water, splashing in the water. Throwing the water everywhere all day, every day, whether it was the sink or the bath or outside. And this was a way that that child was getting that sensory input. So something that I implemented water sensory breaks within that child's daily routine. And what we saw from this is that this child absolutely thrived on these breaks and they were able to engage in as much water play as possible in a contained environment where the water was not going all over the floor. The parents weren't getting annoyed anymore, and it actually reduced the challenging behavior that this child was engaging in because they were regulated throughout the day. The next thing that I want to get across to you is to create a visual rich environment. Now, I know I go on about this a lot as well, but we know that your child's strengths lie in visual processing. And when we know where our child's strengths lies, we want to use that to our advantage as much as possible. Now, what I mean when I say a visual rich environment, the first thing that I would implement is something like a timer. This is a visual reminder and a visual aid that will help your child know how much time is left with a current activity and what they can do when the timer runs out. Now this is visually showing them how much time is left and when they can access whatever they want. Now, I don't refer to sensory. Support here. Sensory tools and sensory objects should never, ever, ever be withheld from a child. So this includes headphones, fidget toys, everything that regulates them should not be on their first, then, next board. I'm talking about if you don't have time to go to the park. At this very second, when your child really wants to go to the park, you can have it on here saying that when the time runs out, then we will go to the park. So they can visually see what is coming next and how long they have to wait. Cause quite often when we tell our child five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. They didn't understand that. And that creates a lot of confusion, a lot of conflict, and they're not understanding the why behind it. So the next thing that I want to implement is to learn how to analyze your child's behavior. Now this can be quite tricky at first. But I want you to get a journal or a notebook and to really start analyzing and jotting down different things that your child is engaging in throughout their day. So this can look like, what is the why behind the behavior? Now there are quite a few functions to behavior. I don't like referring to the first one as attention seeking. I prefer connection seeking. The second one is access to objects. Play items, whatever they're wanting access to. The next one is sensory. Is it sensory stimulation that they are craving? Is that why they're engaging in this challenging behavior? Now, for instance, let's say a child is biting, right? This could be, it could be a sensory behavior. Now, something that I would do then is redirect and reinforce. So something like a Chewy can really help a child in redirecting their behavior from maybe biting you on the arm and redirecting them to something like this, that they can bite and that is safe. So you're wanting to redirect to a more appropriate behavior that you know, will still give them that same input. So it is still giving them that sensory input that they are wanting. It's still making them feel good, but it is not harmful to anyone else. So the next step that I want to introduce, and we are already on, is it our fifth step? I'm not sure. I think it's our fifth step. And that is to get a way for your child to communicate, implementing a certain communication style. Now, the beauty of this is that there are so many communication styles out there and you can really choose a communication style that is best supported to work with your family and your child's needs. Now, there are a lot out there. There's sign language, there's body language, there's AAC devices, there's visuals. So you can really decide which style works best for your child. And obviously this has to be modeled and really, it's a skill that your child has to learn over time, but they will get the hang of it. And this communication style is so crucial in order to also decreasing that challenging behavior. Now I want you to picture if your mouth was taped shut and you had no way to communicate your needs, what are you going to do? You're going to hit, you're going to kick, you're going to scream. You're going to shout. We're going to do whatever we have to, in order to communicate and show what we are wanting and how we are feeling. And the thing is, if we don't know how we are feeling and we don't know how to deal with these really, really big emotions, and we didn't have a way to communicate, then we are going to be dealt. Challenging behavior. So it is very, very crucial in order to establish a communication style within your home. So the next one that I want to introduce is to know your child's triggers. Now you have the ability to modify your environment within the home. And initially we might have to remove a lot of triggers before we can start implementing them at a later stage. When your child has learned the rules. new skills, and then we can slowly start implementing the triggers and introducing triggers again into your child's daily routine. Now, these triggers that I'm talking about can vary from sensory overwhelm to really bright lights or sounds, or it can be anything that your child's just alarm bells go off. And this is a huge trigger for them. Now, We have that ability at that point in time, your child doesn't have that ability in order to know the coping strategies in order to really combat and deal with it triggers effectively. It's a skill that your child has to learn. So you might have to remove some of these triggers. And then introduce them at a later stage, because we know that life doesn't work. Like we can just remove all the triggers from your child's life that they don't like. Inevitably one day we have to expose your child to the triggers that they do not like, but that comes with time. It comes with patience and practice, coping skills, reinforcement, modeling, co regulation. So. Eventually your child will get there, but for the meantime, maybe we have to just rain back on those triggers. So I also want to get into the last one, and that is a reward system. Now, before you come at me for this is bribery, or this is not working for my child, I want you to rethink a reward system, and it might not be the typical way that. You might have been exposed to what a reward system is. Now, every single human being on this planet is rewarded for something in some way we are engaging in behavior because we know that we are getting some sort of a reward out of it. Now, it doesn't mean to say that this is something tangible. It is everything, everything that we do, human behavior is based on the outcome of what we know or what we think we might get out of a situation. So it's not telling your child, if you keep quiet, then you can get sweets. That is bribery and that does not work for any child because we're not working on their intrinsic motivation. We are not teaching them anything. And let's face it. Bribery only lasts for a certain amount of years before it doesn't. So we need to get your child's buy in and whatever reward system that looks like, that will also be very different for every family. Depending on your child's intrinsic motivation, but we need to tap into that and we need to see what is highly motivating for your child, because we need that buy in from them, especially in the younger years. We want a reward system in place for your child to know and for your child to be aware and to really sculpt their behavior in a way that is appropriate. Because later on, when they go to school, when they are going out in the real world, We're wanting to have already mastered all of those skills. And a big piece of that is having a solid reward system in place for them. It can look like choices as well, providing them choices. So you giving them the autonomy. So they are in control, but you are contriving the situation. You setting up the situation in order for them to choose the choices that you have laid out. So those are the eight steps that you can implement immediately. And it's really crucial to also get these steps across to, if they're in school, they're a school teacher, if they're in therapy, whatever therapy they're in. If they are seeing a psychologist or a counselor or an OT or a speech therapist to also implement these steps. In their sessions, because we're wanting that consistency throughout your child's routine and, and throughout their day without the consistency, we're not going to see any progress. And as we coming towards the end of this podcast, I also just want to emphasize your needs and how important it is to meet your needs. A lot of the times. Self care goes way out the window and all of our focus is on our kids. And this is completely understandable, but we can't pull from an empty cup. And in order for you to be there for your child, to help them in the best way possible, you also need to be filling your cup continuously. So take five minutes here and there. I call them little glimmers of your day. I know going for a nice hour walk might not be the best thing to do. It might not be feasible at all. And I completely understand that, but just taking five minutes If it's not five minutes, taking one minute here and there, just to send to your nervous system again, so this wraps up today's podcast. I hope that you enjoyed it and I hope you learned something new. And if you're wanting to reach out to me, get in touch. If you're not following me on Instagram already, it's at NeuroNurture underscore. I also have a website, NeuroNurture. co. za that you can check out. You have been listening to the NeuroNurture podcast. Remember to subscribe. And if you have enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review. This will help other autism families find podcasts like this to help them navigate the world of autism and neurodiversity. Until then, take care and celebrate neurodiversity in all its forms.