What do children in daycare centers and kindergartens need from their caregivers?, when they
- don't want to participate, don't want to get involved, don't want to be shown anything?
- are not interested in the existing play materials or processes?
- insist on a limited repertoire of sensory and movement actions that they are familiar with and feel safe with?
- quickly feel stressed as soon as someone wants to play with them?
Because the more a child avoids new experiences, the less it learns and the more insecure it will continue to feel and the more it will cling to its familiar habits and avoid new experiences. And so they quickly end up in a vicious circle, and we with them.
Conditions for learning to play and learn
To help a child who has become trapped in such a vicious circle or impasse, it is important to go back to basics and encourage the development of early movement skills so that the child can familiarize themselves with the full range of movements they need to gain and learn new experiences.
Reduce words and verbal explanations
For children with learning difficulties, autistic-like behaviors or a diagnosis of autism, it is often a challenge to understand the social elements in a learning situation. The child often does not understand what other people mean, what their intentions are or what they are trying to get them to do. Even if the child understands what others say or explain, they may not be able to put it into practice. With less social interaction and, above all, less information through words and talking, many children can concentrate better on learning and cognitive tasks because they don't have to process as much information.
A safe and supportive environment
Children with autistic-like behaviors need a safe and supportive environment where they do not feel they have to behave defensively because of demands they find confusing, degrading or overwhelming. If we want this child to be able to learn, we must first and foremost address the need for avoidance and other minimize developmentally restrictive behaviors related to his challenges, - through planning and understanding, not through explaining, admonishing, „teaching“ or time-out rooms.
Power grip, reach and core stability
When the child feels that they are supported by realistic, friendly and meaningful expectations in an environment that takes into account their individual sensorimotor profile and in which they feel safe, they can begin to participate in activities at their current developmental level. For many children with learning difficulties and/or autistic-like behaviors, these are not letters, colors or shapes, nor words, fine motor activities or worksheets, but action activities at the level of early play and learning, with a focus on the powerful use of hands (strength grip), arms (reach) and upper body (trunk stability) in particular.
Promote the development of general understanding
When children use their own hands to carry out a wide range of activities with objects, they gain experience that enables them to get to know both the external world of objects and their own bodies. Understanding howow to understand the world and how to learn to „Called “general comprehension", it is the same for all children, regardless of impairments or disabilities, culture or nationality, and develops before learning to speak or understand language.
Supporting learning from experience
Early play and learning requires an active interest in doing things with one's own hands and gaining experience with all the senses, while interacting with the world of things. By handling things and objects themselves, children gain countless new experiences and at the same time get to know their own body, how it works and what they can do with it. This also includes the ability to memorize a sequence of actions and movements with the hands and in space in order to repeat or extend them.
Children with learning difficulties or autistic-like behaviors often have an imbalance between their understanding and their motor and social-emotional development. This imbalance has a profound impact on all areas of their development and learning. Therefore, as caregivers, we need to behave in this way and set up the environment with appropriate materials, that it promotes learning from experience as in early play, without the child having to come up with defensive behavior that hinders its development and learning.
The main activities in Early Play include
- Grasping/taking things with the hands
- Putting things into/putting things into different containers, inserting or attaching, and
- in an operating environment that is approximately arm's length
- with enough components (e.g. approx. 8 - 12 blocks) to be able to stick with and practise for a while using rhythm & repetition and theme & variations
- using both hands and both halves of the body
The basic materials for early play and learning are primarily
- Container various shapes and sizes, e.g. boxes, bowls, buckets, muffin trays, bowls, plug-in boxes, screw-top containers, crates and boxes, zippered bags, 8-12 flower pots with coasters, ...
- Sets of ‚loose parts‘ (at least 8 sets of 8-12 components/set), which can be placed in the various containers.
Larger objects with some weight are helpful here, as they enable larger movements and therefore more physical experience, e.g. both hands for gripping and holding, than fine motor skills with small objects. In addition, stability and predictability are very important at the beginning, i.e. objects that remain stable, can be easily grasped or lined up (e.g. wooden blocks) or fit exactly into an opening (things that roll or move by themselves (e.g. balls, cars), are wobbly or invite fumbling or tipping/pouring are usually not conducive to early play and learning).
