3 tips for Families of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities During the Pandemic and Beyond

Families of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities During the Pandemic and Beyond

By Padmaja Sarathy, author of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Seven steps of Support

Tips 1. Engage your child in motivating activities to sustain attention and active involvement.

• Weather: Go outside to check the temperature. Get your child to observe the temperature changes. Help make temperature comparisons, higher or lower readings. Also, involve reading the detailed daily weather forecast on the phone/laptop.
• Language and Literacy: Read stories together daily. Use role and have fun pretending to be different story characters, facial expressions of emotions- happy/ sad/ surprised/ scared, etc. Build your child’s vocabulary associated with personal grooming, cooking and (identifying various food items, cooking utensils, measurement tools, wash cycles, cleaning supplies, mirror, comb, brush, etc.)
• Create a personal life story: Help your child to create a timeline of events with photos and text about herself/himself (or a story associated with the Covid-19 crisis). Provide index cards with text to go in the story. Your child can put it in the right order and pair it with the corresponding photos
• Math: Play games using dice and dominoes. Get your child to identify the higher and lower number, add, subtract, multiply and divide through rolling two dice
• Math-Measurement: Weight a couple of items using the kitchen scale or just hold it in their hand and make a guess. Have your child determine which one is heavier and which is lighter.
• Nature and Science: Go for a Nature Walk, find leaves, twigs, seeds, tree bark, etc. Have your child touch and manipulate a leaf. Place it on a tree picture/model. Grow A Garden: Plant seeds (coriander, mustard, flower seeds). Plant seedlings in paper cups and watch it grow.

Tip 2 Enable

• Use concrete objects, pictures, photos to assist in getting your child’s attention and to engage with the task. It will also help with later recall.
• Provide tactile and visual (picture icons) supports that correspond to your child’s needs. Continue to use the technology supports to promote your chid’s communication and physical access in engaging with the activities.
• Use activities that connect with real-life application (e.g. natural walk, growing things, weather and calendar activities, personal story, etc.).

Make sure your child is actively involved and participating in the activity and that you are not physically prompting and manipulating your child’s movements.

Tip 3. Encourage your child’s self-dependence through performing a variety of tasks with minimal prompting and assistance from you.

• Allow your child to make choices (e.g. selecting clothes to wear, games to play, the kind of sandwich topping, what he wants to do first, math or language activity, etc. )
• Involve your child in personal grooming activities. Do not expect perfection.
• Facilitate social interactions with family and friends through video conferences. Get your child to assist you with cooking and cleaning activities.