Teaching Autistic Children

Autism is a brain development disorder, in which a person follows unusual patterns in his interpretation of the world. Autistic people fail to perceive their surroundings in the expected way. They often show failure in using the language of words. This psychological condition manifests itself in the childhood only, mostly even before a child is three years old. An autistic child may even get restless in the classroom and seem to be puzzled, without realizing that the lecture is indeed a lesson for him/her.

 

Autism kids are trained separately, because they need special care and attention. They need to be handled with care, and hence, training them becomes a challenging task for the instructors. However, teaching autistic children is not an impossible thing to do, especially if you employ certain special training techniques that would help them understand the world better and realize that they are also a part of it. By perusing the tips given in the following lines, teaching autistic children would be easier for you.

 

Some autistic children are considered as visual learners - they grasp things easily, through appropriate visuals. On the other hand, some can learn effectively from auditory lessons. As a teacher, it becomes your duty to determine the learning style best suitable for an autistic child. For the purpose, you need to experiment with the different techniques, in order to figure out which would be best suitable for him/her.

 

Determining the most appropriate learning style is not sufficient for teaching children with autism. You need to give more inputs, to ensure that they follow whatever is taught to them, in their chosen method of learning. For instance, if the children are visual learners, ensure that the visuals are not eye-disturbing - they may get offensive due to strong lighting or bright colors. On the other hand, if they have sensitivity to audio, ensure that the 'sound' used to teach lessons is pleasing to their ears - you can lower your voice, while teaching them.

Autistic children might be unable to adapt anything that is out of the routine. Forcing them to do something that they are not habitual of might prove to be traumatic for them. Hence, do not change anything in the timetable that has been set for them. You need to follow this, until they follow the lessons well. Let them know what task follows next - this would give them a sense of control and hence, satisfaction in what they learn.

Instead of always spoon feeding autistic children with the correct answers, provide them options that they can choose from. This method can be adapted when you conduct tests. This would give them the chance to interpret things and arrive at the correct answer. So, apart from subjective, give them objective questions as well, say with four options for each. By doing so, an interactive teaching environment would be created.