Teaching A Process To The Autistic Child...
In my opinion, the best way to teach a process to an autistic child is via the concept of "the critical path". Those of you who have taken management classes will know right away what this means. For the rest of you, however, I will explain this concept using a simple example - the baking of a cake.
Before we get started, I need to first define "the critical path". The critical path is the longest sequence of dependent tasks for which if you change one step/task in the sequence, in any manner, the duration of the task is no longer optimized.
The critical path provides the optimal solution for completing a task based on specific constraints (i.e., precedents, or things that must "come first", etc.) that must be taken into consideration. This is the more "technical" definition.
Obviously, with children, we are not as concerned with "optimizing/minimizing task duration" as we are with "proper sequence". So, for example, you can not "eat cake" without first "making cake". The focus here is to determine the actual sequence of "things that need to be done" for the task to be properly completed. Again, this example will be with "baking a cake", but the same concept can be applied to any task... getting dressed, brushing teeth, cleaning up, learning situations, etc. For anything where a process is involved and, as such, by definition there needs to be a fairly specific sequence of event, the concept of the critical path can be used.
I encourage parents not to get "discouraged"... this is actually quite simple to understand. It is simply that to explain this concept in depth requires a lot of work on my part since I want to provide what parents need for "any process", and as such, I took an example that was a little more complex (i.e., baking a cake) rather than one that was much simpler (i.e., brushing teeth) in order to better explain the entire concept as it relates to "flexible parts", etc. But, truly, this is much simpler than it looks! :o)
In management, this gets very involved. I have provide "many of the steps" to completing one task - to give parents an idea of how complicated a simple task can actually be when broken down into its parts - and given that this is what is necessary for the autistic child, I wanted to provide a very concrete example of "how complicated" something can actually be for the autistic child even though a "normal person" takes the completion of these simple tasks for granted because in the "normal person", the parts are so much more easily integrated into the "whole". Note that I provided a "partial list" of things that need to be done. If I had wanted to, I could have made this list considerably longer but space constraints in terms of presenting this on paper necessitated I limit the example somewhat. Providing all the steps would have just made all this too overwhelming.
My goal here is simply to provide for parents the simple concept of breaking processes down into their respective tasks for the autistic child. I wanted to provide an idea of the things one could eventually take into consideration... and to give readers an idea of how one can expand or build on this concept as the child grows. The bottom line to all this is really simply teaching "proper sequencing" to complete a task... and to teach a sequence of tasks, the whole or process must first be broken down into its components or individual parts.
Again, don't get overwhelmed by all these steps... they just help you understand the overall process... we will then look at this in terms of our example, "baking a cake".
Steps:
For each task, determine the following: 1. Task Name/Description, 2. Precedents (what are those things that have to be done first, before this task can be done?), 3. Concurrent/Current (what other tasks in the process can be done WHILE this one is also being done?), 4. Dependents (what tasks can not be completed until this particular task is finished?), 5. Duration (how long will this task take?), 6. Planned Start Date/Time, 7. Planned End Date/Time, 8. Early Start Date/Time, 9. Late Start Date/Time, 10. Early Finish Date/Time, 11. Late Finish Date/Time, 12. Float (how much time did I save or lose in days or hours because I started a task early or late?).
In management, within each activity, each task must then be analyzed for further constraints, such as human resources, etc. We are not going to get into all of that here. For those of you who really want to learn more about this subject the link below provides some good information in terms of basic definitions, etc. There are hundreds of sites like this one for those of you who want to really get into the nuts and bolts of critical path processing... and there are also, obviously, a lot of software programs for management purposes.
http://www.demon.co.uk/mindtool/critpath.html
I have not found (or really had the time to look for) a good child's program that teaches this concept. Therefore, if any parent knows of a software package to do this, please let me know and I'll add it to this section. What we are really looking for is software that would teach autistic children "proper sequencing" of multiple steps. :o) Software that allows for some flexibility in sequencing would, in my opinion, be the most valuable of all in order to show the autistic child that there can be more than one right answer.
Ideally, a combination of "exact sequence" exercises followed by sequencing exercises allowing for some flexibility in terms of non critical tasks would be optimal... allowing the child to first work through the sequencing basics in terms of examples showing how "things need to follow a certain order" and then allowing the child to "move non critical things around" to help increase flexibility in autistic children. Jump Start's Advanced Second Grade Program (made by Knowledge Adventure, 800-545-7677, http://www.knowledgeadventure.com) in its section on "Discover Science" has some useful sequencing activities in it. It asks children to sequence things alphabetically, numerically and based on processes too (i.e. a frog egg growing into a full frog). It is definitely a good start in teaching this to children - although I personally would like to see something much more geared to the autistic specifically in terms of teaching sequencing of very specific every day tasks too.
To bake a cake, there are certain steps that need to be done. These include:
1. Taking out your cookbook 2. Taking out your ingredients 3. Turning the oven on 4. Taking out a bowl in which to make the cake 5. Mixing your ingredients 6. Taking out a pan in which to bake the cake 7. Pouring the batter into the pan 8. Putting the pan into the oven 9. Turning on the timer 10. Taking a break/doing something else while the cake bakes 11. Listen for the timer 12. Turn the timer off 13. Check the cake to make sure it is "done" 14. If "done", remove the cake from the oven and let it cool. If "not done", go back to step "put pan into the oven and continue all steps from there" 15. Once cooled, remove from pan and set on cake platter 16. Decorate cake 17. Take plate and utensils out, 18. Put cake piece on plate and set on table, 19. Sit down and eat cake.
I have listed the tasks for the critical path ... but, as you can see, you could move "some steps" around and still complete the task... yet, others are pretty well "set in stone" in terms of their order. For example, you do not want to turn the oven timer on until the cake is in the oven... or turn it off until the cake is ready to be checked or is "done".
Now, to determine the critical path, you have to determine the ONE sequence that absolutely must be followed for this task to be completed. To verify that you have the TRUE "critical path" then simply try to "move one step around"... if you do that, you should no longer be able to complete the task. I did not do a TRUE critical path here...but this one is "close enough" for you to understand the concept and for what we are trying to accomplish with autistic children. To do a true critical path would have involved including a lot more steps, time factors, human resource factors, etc. ... and there are always steps that can be "move around" to various places and if I did all the various "combinations" of "where things can actually get done, you would have so many arrows that it would become overwhelming. So, I provided what I felt you needed to understand the concept in the graph below. :o)
The red solid arrows show the "critical path"... each task number is included in the appropriate critical path "node". Thus, critical sequencing is shown by these arrows... one step can not go forward until the previous step is done (again, I may not be 100% accurate here, but, it is pretty close - it has been over 15 years since I took this management class - and the book is long gone :o) ).
So, in this simple example, what are the critical steps, and in what order do they need to be done?
Some steps are critical (such as turning on an oven), but can be done at different places throughout the process... so they are critical to getting the task completed, but "where they happen" in the "critical path chain" can be a little flexible. When a "flexible" task becomes a "critical path item", that arrow turns from a dash to a solid red arrow to indicate that if this step is not done at this time, we can no longer move forward in the process. For example, step 3, turning on the oven can be done at any time, but it becomes critical just prior to step 10, taking a break... if step 3 is not done at the very latest, prior to step 10, then the process can no longer move forward smoothly... the task will not be "completable" without this - now critical - step.
This simple example can be used to teach autistic children almost any process. The idea is simply to break the task down into its parts... down to the lowest levels. So, for example, to teach a child to dress himself, teach him first to remove his pajamas, then to take his clothes out of the dresser (showing him not only where to get his pants, his shirts, his underwear, his socks, etc., but also how to open the dresser drawers by himself and close them once the clothes have been removed). Then teach the child what clothes "goes on first", "what goes on second", etc.
For each piece of clothing, show the child "how you put it on"... for example, to put on underwear, shorts or pants, explain that "the left foot goes into the left foot/leg hole and right foot goes into the right foot/leg hole", to put on a shirt, explain that the right arm goes into the right arm hole, left arm goes into the left arm hole and head goes into the head or middle hole", etc. You will probably need to show the child the "front and back" of clothing too... perhaps using the "tag" as a reference point.
Flexibility can then be taught by showing the child it's ok to move certain tasks around... like putting the left arm in before the right arm (or vice versa) or putting the head in first when putting on a shirt, etc. Teaching the child the concept of "OR" should greatly help increase a parent's ability to teach flexibility in tasks since if the child understands "OR" then the parent can simply say: "or, how about doing it this way... will this work, too?". There are many ways to teach the concept of "or"... giving food choices is the most obvious. :o) The idea with the concept of "OR" though is to teach that "more than one answer will work" and is "correct". That, in my opinion, will surely help children increase the autistic child's flexibility in many many facets of life. :o)
Another thing I would mention has to do with the use of colors in teaching an autistic child. Autistic adults have mentioned the fact that they often perceived objects as colors. Given this fact, I think that parents should go out of their way to make use of colors whenever possible. Please make sure you read my section on Teaching Colors. For example, in teaching a process, tell the child to "put on his red shirt", as you go through the process with him... or to take out "his blue socks from the brown dresser". Using colors may indeed be a powerful tool for parents in teaching the autistic and getting more cooperation in the completion of tasks. For more on this, see the section on Teaching Language.
Again, these are simple examples, but they apply to absolutely everything that requires a "process"... and that includes the "teaching situation"... "social interaction", etc. - all aspects/tools down to the most minute detail should be thoroughly defined or labeled, tasks identified and sequenced, etc. If a child is experiencing difficulty with something in particular, I encourage parents not to get upset but rather look at that "stumbling block" as an opportunity to find something you may not have properly labeled or defined for the autistic child... and then, go from there! :o)