Play time with our special friends

Children are fond of games. They are fond of having fun and doing things that would come to them as fun. Experts say that play is an integral part of the learning process of children and that it develops their social skills. This happens because of the interaction that they have with playmates. Playtime also develops their problem solving skills because of the number of different challenges that they face when at play time. Playing therefore is a very important part of a child's development, development in his motor, communication, logic, social and emotional skills development.

A child that has been exposed to an adequate amount of play time develops a well-rounded personality and has a balanced psyche. Because of playing a child can interact with children his age and respond with the appropriate actions. A child with autism would benefit in this activity because he will have the chance to develop his communication skills and his interactivity with other children. The only problem that presents itself to be obvious is the shifting interest, shortness of attention and the poor social skills that a child with autism has. Strategies have been developed to counter this problem and the ideas of these strategies are founded on the core foundations of autistic child's play strategy of introduction, interaction, insertion and reinforcements.

Introduction is the first part of this strategy, this is important because a child with autism doesn't really know the basic interaction procedures. Because he has lived and played on his for a lot of time the importance of interactive play is alien to him. He doesn't find any need to be included in children's gatherings because he has no social skills to back him up. The introduction of the idea that playing with other children is good creates an imprint in his psyche that it is necessary. To introduce an autistic child to play he would need a lot of coaxing and examples but once he has the grasp of the idea he seek it on his own. This usually takes time because an idea that is fairly new takes time to be processed and accepted in children with autism again patience at this stage of the process is badly needed.

Interaction is the next step in this process. Once the child has been used to the idea that playing with other children is good, he would immediately try it out but the key in this part of the process is laying down guidelines or boundaries for the child for the activity to be successful. Again in this part of the process the child is guided closely because his social skills are still underdeveloped. And the latter part of this step is complete insertion of a child with autism to a group of children for play time. In this part of the strategy minimal supervision is recommended, this is to evaluate the progress that the child has in reference to his social skills, whether he is dealing with his play mates appropriately or not.

And finally reinforcement training, in this end part of the strategy the child is now in full control of his actions with little or no supervision at all. This is done to let the child explore his options and develop a repertoire of responses to play time stimuli. Reinforcing the child to play is merely leading him back to his previous activity with encouragements and praises.