This post is a part of a seies on play. If you haven’t yet, check out Part One and Two! Today I’ve explored some more common challenges to play and strategies to help:
Restricted Interests
A child may be displaying a restricted interest in play for various reasons. Restricted and repetitive behaviors are a component of autism spectrum disorder, so it is extremely common for these children to have restricted interests during play. In children without ASD, restricted interests may be due to motor planning issues (see section below), an age appropriate passion (that can sometimes seem borderline obsessive) or role modelling from primary caregivers.
It can sometimes feel like an impossible task to get a child to engage with something outside of their primary interest. It’s important to remember that a lot can be learned by having a passion, hobby, fascination or preoccupation. Sometimes they may fade, expand or change into other interests, but other times they remain and become a life long dedication either in an individual’s leisure time, or if they are lucky enough, in paid employment. When supporting a child with restricted interests, the goal is not to eradicate or diminish the value of their interest, but to expand on and extend their skills and engagement in a variety of experiences. My concern with supporting a child with restricted interests is that they often miss opportunities to increase or diversify their ideas. By being overly preoccupied with what they are interested in doing, they may miss out on exposure to peer modelling, learning different play styles or social skill development. If you have a child with restricted interests that is causing you concern with their play, try the following:
- Think about how you can incorporate your child’s passion into a variety of activities, experiences and play opportunities. Be creative and help your child to think outside the box. If they love trains, you could gather some boxes and tape and encourage them to make their own. Does the train have a restaurant for the passengers and train driver to eat at? What food will be served at the restaurant? Who will the passengers be? Do they have different interests and personalities and traits? How is the train going to move? Maybe you could attach it to a bike or trike and your child could be the train driver! Just because your child loves to push trains around a wooden track, doesn’t mean that’s all they can be doing!
- Explore why your child is attracted to this particular topic. Do they love Elsa because of her shiny dress and magic powers? Are they obsessed with Batman because he is strong, powerful and defeats “bad guys”? Do they enjoy the predictability of pushing a car along a road? Do the colours and textures of dinosaurs intrigue them? If you can get some ideas about what about their interest really inspires them, you can look for similar themes or attributes in other topics and help your child identify similarities that may increase their interest range.
- Make a time to explore new things. Sometimes your child may need the restricted interest to be finished and put away before being willing to engage in a new activity. Make sure your child knows that the interest will be available for them later (you’re not banishing it forever). Using a visual schedule, first/then visual, finish box or having a special place to put the interest can help children who may not understand the verbal direction of “later”. If your child has an interest that they can (and do) replicate with absolutely anything, and refuse to engage or expand on the interest regardless of what you’ve tried, you may need to introduce a “finish” or “not available” visual or cue to support them to move onto a different idea or topic. Again, this is not to stop a child having a strong interest, but when it impacts on overall functioning and engagement, they may need additional encouragement to try something different from their interest.
Difficulties with Motor Planning
Motor planning is when you think about, plan, initiate and complete a non habitual motor action. The sport scientist in me loves talking about motor planning, so I will try to keep this on the succinct side! Because motor planning issues affect individuals differently, it can be hard to know exactly what to look for. I put in some “Looks like” examples below to help. Issues with motor planning can be due to any of the “steps” to executing a motor action:
- Inability to come up with an idea of a motor action (ideation). Looks like: a child not having original ideas, not knowing what to do without a model or supports, always copying the actions of others.
- Not being able to plan or sequence the steps needed to complete the action. Looks like: a child who starts an action then struggles to complete it, doing things in an unusual or irrational order,
- Difficulty starting the action (initiation). Looks like: a child who will look at what they want to do but needs a “push” to get going, once started is able to keep going independently.
- Trouble with the actions needed to successfully complete the action (execution). Looks like: a child who knows what they want to do and how, but can’t do it due to trouble with balance, fine motor, gross motor, coordination etc.
Or the challenge could be some combination of them all. I’ve sorted the list below into the different motor planning areas for ease of reading:
- Ideation:
- Give choices. Start with a choice of two actions. If you find your child always choosing the last thing you say, use visuals or objects to indicate the choices and present them simultaneously. Using visuals or objects is great for children with communication difficulties.
- Slow down the play: children with apparent ideation issues can be more than capable of coming up with an idea of their own, but may take longer than usual to express it. By an adult or peer ‘rushing’ in and leading the play by suggesting ideas, these children will often just go with the flow of what has been suggested. This creates habits where they look to others for ideas rather than refining their own ideation process.
- Planning/Sequencing
- Use a visual step by step guide to show the actions required. Once your child is able to follow the step by step guide, have each step individually, and ask your child to sequence it before executing the actions.
- Model actions step by step. Depending on the type of play, I would use both forward and backward chaining. Forward chaining is where you support a child to do each step in the chronological order, completing more steps each time. For pretend play (such as doll play) or gross motor play (such as climbing), this technique works great as you can add to the length of the play each time, and the action will be completed regardless of number of steps. Backward chaining is where you encourage your child to complete the last step to an action, then the second last and last steps, then the third last, second last and last steps, and so on until they complete the whole action independently. This technique is great for activities such as construction as the final action will be a successful completion.
- Initiation:
- Modify your prompts: if you haven’t heard of a prompt hierarchy before, here’s the quick overview: there’s a range of prompts we use to support a child to be successful and they go from most invasive to least invasive. The more invasive, the less independence for the child being prompted. If you child has difficulty getting started, and you tend to initiate for them, have a think about what level of prompting do you use. Do you use a physical prompt? Modelling? Gestures? Verbal prompts? Visuals? The end goal is for your child to initiate independently, so use the less invasive prompt necessary, and working towards fading it.
- Execution:
- Modify the activity: if your child is struggling to complete a motor action (maybe they lack the strength to connect blocks or can’t coordinate both hands to work in unison to catch a ball) think about how you can make the activity achievable for them whilst still challenging their skills. We call this the “Just Right” challenge or “The Zone of Proximal Development” in education terms. Can you change what is being used to allow your child to experience success? For example using balloons instead of a ball, or Duplo instead of Lego.
- Figure out what skills your child is having difficulty with and encourage play that works on it. If your child has poor upper body strength, take them to a park that has plenty of opportunities for hanging and pulling. If they struggle with hand eye coordination, pull out some scarves and practice “juggling”.
Happy playing!