Teaching autistic children

Learning techniques

This article with provide you with the some useful advice regarding teaching children who suffer from autism. Even though teaching can be a real challenge, the final results speak on their own. A feeling of pride, success and joy that the child that you have though has after reciting the learned song or solving some equation can’t be described.

Methods and techniques of general teaching don’t count if you are trying to teach an autistic child. There are three main learning styles that educators use while teaching, and they are visual, auditory and kinesthetic, but which one is the most appropriate for a particular child, it depends upon the learner’s ability to understand and accept some skills. If one is good in accepting new knowledge by observing, then the right learning method for him is visual. In practice, usually a combination of two methods is used, but it is a little different with autistic children. If an autistic child becomes restless and starts to lose interest in the subject, a teacher must find out the cause for such behavior and change the method.

Tips for teaching autistic child

It is important to emphasize that these small tips are not rules that can be applied to every autistic child, because each case of autism is different. First, a teacher has to determine which learning style is the best for that autistic child and it may not be as easy as it sounds. For example, if you are reading a story about some animal and the autistic child is a visual learner, you can bring a toy animal to focus his attention to the animal. As we have mentioned below, it is very common in teaching to combine these two methods, but this can’t be done with autistic children, because they don’t have the capability to process both. Use only one teaching technique at time and if you see that a child is visual sensitive, make sure that you remove all sorts of artificial light, and use natural light from a window. If the child is sensitive to loud, sudden sounds, you should take care so that a bell in that classroom is more quiet, and lower your voice. As autistic children have issues with generalization, a teacher should try to show something from several points of stand. If autistic children are fond of something in particular, a teacher should try and implement that in the process of teaching, so that a child accepts new facts more quickly.

These tips present just a small part of such a big area called autism. Because of the unknown in autism, it is advisable to have an expert near an autistic child, because in that way, an expert is participating in the child’s education and he/she knows best the least painful way to teach your child something. After discovering the best technique that provides your child a way to learn and accept facts, then for that child the sky is the limit.