Relating with young, nonverbal children! Every child has a prefer interaction style. This is the interaction style that they feel “safe” and comfortable with. What interaction style does your child respond the best to? What does he feel the safest with? What will best facilitate “engagement”? Often their sensory preferences will dictate how interaction should be given. Do they respond best to an upbeat animated style, or a slow and calm style? If they are sensory defensive they often get overwhelmed by excited, loud, animated people, and respond best to slow, calm, and quiet interaction. If they are sensory seekers, they tend to like more upbeat, quick paced, animated interaction, which alerts them. The three main tools for interacting are your hands, voice, and physical presence (body posture and facial expressions). How to they respond to touch? Do they seek out and respond best to physical contact, or pull back and avoid any touch? What type of touch do they respond best to? Soft, light touch, or rough and deep pressure touch? How can you use your touch to calm and sooth them when upset, and to excite them when under-aroused? Do they pull away from touch or draw into your attention when touched? Do you initiate touch or invite it and let them control it? Touch is the most intimate human contact we can provide. It is important to know how to give it. Your voice also has prime importance. How you use words, the length of sentences, speed of speech, tone and volume of voice all have major importance. Many children on the spectrum have auditory processing problems and strong auditory sensitivities. Many respond better to soft, slow, quiet voices. Others need loud, exciting voices to keep them stimulated. Many respond well to sing song, chanting type speech, and enjoy rhythmic vocal patterns. Other children like only short phrases, spoken in slow, quiet voices, and become totally overwhelmed with fast paced, excitable types of voice patterns. Next, your physical presence and facial expressions play a major role. What is the child’s need for “physical space?” Do they have a large physical space, and feel uncomfortable if you get to close to them? Or, do they like to cling, crash, hug, or climb on you? Do they get overwhelmed with animated facial expressions and exaggerated gestures, or do they perk up and attend to animated interaction styles. These preferences can seem inconsistent depending upon the state of their nervous system. When the child is calm and organized they may respond well to touch, loud voices, and animated interaction. However, when their nervous systems are stressed and drained, they may pull away from such intensity and want more space, quieter voices, and limited touch. We need to match the level of interaction to the state of the child’s nervous system. Overall, once you identify their sensory preferences you can identify how to combine your touch, words, and facial expressions to help your child feel safe, accepted, and engaged with you. Teach people around your child how to “relate” with them in a way that they feel safe and engaged with. Below is a link you will find a questionnaire for identifying the types of interaction styles, sensory preferences, and your child’s social and emotional comfort zones that will help foster stronger emotion sharing. https://drive.google/file/d/0B1DaJtXzRn91NzExMGQxYjEtYmVjOS00Y2ZmLThjMTQtNzlkMTI1YTNiZTJm/edit?usp=sharing
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 21:52:10 +0000
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