By Tahirih Bushey
M.A.C.C.C. Speech and Language Pathologist

 

 

Lost Boys (Or Girls)

Many young children with ASD move around a house like aimless wanderers, not exactly going anyplace or doing anything. Other children seem to get stuck in a couple places in the house sifting through a pile of toys, dangling a string and watching it, dropping balls or other objects over and over, or putting toys into a line.

One reason to teach a “Route Game” is to help your child learn to use the space in your house more purposefully for play and in more interesting and social ways. Below is a clip of a little route game at our clinic--where there are two stops on the route--the blanket where there is swinging and then the toy where there is assembling a toy.

A Route To Travel

Choose some possible places in the house which will become “The Route”.

Maybe your route will start on the sofa (location 1), then move to under the dining room table (location 2), then move to a Jumping Place like a stool or the hearth (location 3), and then on to the stairs (location 4), then to the rocking chair (location 5), and end at the kitchen sink (location 6).

Visual Supports

You may want to assemble a picture of each of these places for your “Itinerary,” showing your child the list of places that you will be playing together on this particular day's route. An example of this is in the sidebar.

A route can be designated in other ways too — like putting blue painter's tape on the floor leading from one location to the next.

Maybe you will put a Post It® note on each spot with a number to designate the location and collect the Post it notes as you do the route.

Creating Little Games

You then will need a simple game to play in each location.

On the couch, for example, you might play a squish game where you will squish your child between two couch pillows.

Then you and your child are off to the dining room table where you might collect a puzzle piece on top of the table and go under the table to put the piece in the puzzle.

Next you go to jump off the jumping place and then go to the staircase to go up the steps one by one. Count out the number of steps going up and the number of steps going down.

Go next to the rocking chair and sing a rocking and stopping game with your child as he or she rocks (and stops) with the words.

Then you go to the kitchen sink where your child climbs up on a chair and pours a pitcher of water into a cup.

The route has been completed — or at least round one.Make the route simple but interesting to your child and go hand in hand from place to place at the beginning.

Games at each location can change, becoming more complex as your child learns the idea of moving from place to place on a route.

Use Your Visual Supports

Use visuals if your child needs this. Taking the time to make the pictures for a picture schedule is worth the effort if it helps your child understand what the whole course is going to look like.

Visual supports with Game Routes are a good way to teach your child to follow a visual schedule.

The pictures can be of either the locations as in the side bar here, or of the games that will be played at each location.

Variations on the Game

Turn a route into an obstacle course by placing chairs in the way along the route...

“Oh No! We have to go over the chair!”

...blankets along the route...

“We will go under the blanket!”

...couch pillows to weave your way around...a small slide to climb and then go down (if you have one)... a long two by four that your child walks on... a tunnel to go through, and so on.

The route is now filled with obstacles to move over, under, around or through.

See  This Blog Post for more information on Route Games.