For many children with autism, the ability to occupy time by themselves does not always come naturally. In this lesson, Independent play, we show how to guide your child to choose and activity, stay on task for an appropriate duration, play with toys according to their function, and to clean up when finished.
The ability for children to appropriately occupy time alone is an important developmental milestone that is useful to your child, his family, and to school staff on a daily basis.
Parallel play teaches the child how to play and behave appropriately when playing alongside, or in close physical proximity to, a peer. Parallel play does not require the child to directly interact with the peer; rather, it can be considered a sort of “middle step” between independent play and interactive play.
Parallel play helps the child begin to tolerate the presence of a peer in his/her play area, as well as skills associated with more than one child playing in the same area: examples include asking for a turn, sharing when requested to do so, visually observing peer’s actions, cleaning up toys when finished.
Use the downloadable PDFs below to get the most from this lesson:
This interactive play lesson teaches the child how to successfully interact while playing with an age-appropriate, typically developing peer. In contrast to the Parallel play lesson, the child and peer will play with the same activity and be directly engaging for the duration of the lesson.
Use the downloadable PDFs below to get the most from this lesson:
The focus of this lesson is to teach the abstract play skill of imagining and pretending. This is taught by intentionally using objects as something other than what they are, by taking on a character other than oneself, or acting out an imaginary scenario/role.
Use the downloadable PDFs below to get the most from this lesson:
