Today we want to talk to you about the last WEBINAR held, where we discussed a topic as interesting as it is complex: Strategies to develop imitation in children with autism and communication difficulties.

There is little knowledge about how to address this aspect. Doubts are common about how to get started with these skills and how to lead our children to acquire these skills that are the gateway to learning and communication.

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We tell you some strategies to stimulate imitation in your little ones. Keep reading!

Strategies or resources to stimulate imitation

The importance of contact with our children

There are children who are much more physical than others, but it is important for them to be able to establish that physical, emotional and social dynamic with you, with their family, from home we have to teach them and make them feel that we are there, that we protect them and that Through non-verbal language they feel that we love them and accompany them. It doesn't have to be a static, hand-to-hand dynamic, there are many ways to establish contact through dancing, chasing, laughing in bed...

We play with objects

We say objects not to say toys but there are always favorite ones, they are preferences for touch, color, volume or temperature... many times using an object to interact and start our first imitations is essential.

We can work on all aspects of joint attention with the same object. This will encourage all imitation strategies from us towards him/her and hopefully from him/her towards us.

As we always say, observing what they do with their eyes, what they intend with objects, how they use them and being mirrors rather than models, is the only way to integrate them into their world so that they later gain confidence and come to ours.

Change the dynamics when we play

We cannot always be sitting or always standing, we have to vary all the games or body dynamics to expand their resources and that will make them focus their attention much more.

We must also change materials because all these changes will make you adapt, plan and re-plan your performance with each new material or with each new arrangement.

Sometimes we think that imitation is just copying but there is a very narrow-based work of sharing, I copy the people I admire, the people I trust, I copy for pleasure because I like it and because I have seen it a billion times so I integrate it by observation.

Hop

What child doesn't like to jump? Jumping is one of the most important activities for children, as well as running, swinging, swimming... all these physical activities produce emotional, cognitive maturity and learning.

Why do children moving integrate learning? Because through these movements and these skills, children mature emotionally and achieve sphincter control to leave the diaper, to assume responsibilities, to want to do things like mom and dad, to improve language development, in articulation... So If you want maturity and more learning, mobilize your little ones daily to strengthen the entire integration of learning.

Water

Another essential is water, it will take me a lifetime to investigate what relationship children with autism in many cases have and water. I fervently recommend the use of aquatic activities, water at home and outside of it.

I would almost say the bath as a therapeutic prescription! Just like sports, if you see that the child fits in with some type of ball sport, trampolines, dancing... or you will be surprised when you introduce these transversal dynamics and when you integrate them within the home, they can give rise to many opportunities for imitation and learning. As I say, we always imitate their model first and then propose our own once the child has integrated us into their game.

Food

And of course, many children have a great preference for meal time, whatever the meal we have to take advantage of it to motivate them towards imitation, as an excuse or as a direct preparation of that favorite food to work on all these aspects of learning. When we do activities in the kitchen he has to imitate everything we do in an incidental way without realizing it and totally from a functional perspective, so the best learning is the one that is done in daily life and produces an immediate, functional and autonomous.

The object

If we have a child who has a favorite object, we cannot not pay attention to it, we have to integrate it, we have to expand it by trying to find others to diversify that whole game. All these possibilities that they offer us when the child is clinging to something, if we achieve that instead of one object he is clinging to three we will have two more possibilities to work on learning aspects of interaction and communication.

Let's play? Talk later?

There is a game that I like to recommend: talking with objects , playing through a microphone, through a glass, through a comb. The effect is impressive at the microphone moment because the vocalization is projected and amplified through sound and resonance. It reproduces many moments of verbal imitation and greatly encourages communication.

Music

Music can mobilize the development of your children in a global way. This is because we reach language from another brain hemisphere that is normally not affected in children with autism or communication difficulties. We need to strengthen all these pathways so that they assume the functions of those that are affected by their disorders, disabilities or deficiencies. It's time to learn to play the guitar, dust off any instrument you know how to play, and take out all the microphones you have around the house.

It is important that you recover enjoyment with your children and put aside therapeutic objectives, because the only objective you have as a family is to make your children happy.

Thank you very much to everyone who was present at the WEBINAR, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out here!