Prompting initiations in school

[Guest guest]

My son is in a neurotypical preschool and loves the kids in his

class. At home in our peer modeling sessions, he is very verbal and

outgoing. He asks the kids to play with him etc... In school, he is

passive (a trait he got from his father who was always shy) and we

are working on ways to increase his initiations with peers. We

initially had a card with the letter of his best buddy's first name

on it. He knew he had initiate talk with his friend 3 times in a

class. The letter was used as a visual prompt when needed. Now, he

says, " Now I get a sticker! " after he talks to his peer. We are

looking to change this prompt obviously since that type of response

is not appropriate. We will be telling him that he has to play with

someone in every activity and remind him to ask a peer to play so

that he has to initiate with his own words rather than parrot a

prescribed prompt or a script. I was hoping for other ideas from you

all on how to get a child to self initiate

interactions/comments/actions/etc... Thanks in advance!

[Guest guest]

Our older son is in a typical preschool also. It took a while for us

to figure out why he wasn't initiating, and once we did he started to

make real progress.

Basically the typical kids were always scanning the room, look at who

was playing what and then folllowing up on appropriate

opportunities. My son would be playing with whatever toy, and rarely

look up to see what other kids where there or what they were

playing. So at home and in his social skills class we practiced how

to recognize opportunities to join in. We taught him if he was

playing by himself he needed to look around often to see what the

other kids were doing. In class his aide would remind him to look

around At first she also would help him spot good opportunites to

join in as well. She faded her prompts to gestures from across the

room so the other kis wouldn't notice.

It worked well becasue the other kids ultimately became the prompts

for him to join in.

> My son is in a neurotypical preschool and loves the kids in his

> class. At home in our peer modeling sessions, he is very verbal

and

> outgoing. He asks the kids to play with him etc... In school, he

is

> passive (a trait he got from his father who was always shy) and we

> are working on ways to increase his initiations with peers. We

> initially had a card with the letter of his best buddy's first name

> on it. He knew he had initiate talk with his friend 3 times in a

> class. The letter was used as a visual prompt when needed. Now,

he

> says, " Now I get a sticker! " after he talks to his peer. We are

> looking to change this prompt obviously since that type of response

> is not appropriate. We will be telling him that he has to play

with

> someone in every activity and remind him to ask a peer to play so

> that he has to initiate with his own words rather than parrot a

> prescribed prompt or a script. I was hoping for other ideas from

you

> all on how to get a child to self initiate

> interactions/comments/actions/etc... Thanks in advance!