Take a look at the following common difficulties and helpful strategies to support your child:

Hand to eye coordination

Problems you may notice:

• Handwriting difficulties
• Difficulties with dressing and fastening clothes
• Using tools, utensils and cutlery

Helpful strategies to support:

• Practice multi-sensory letter formation, e.g. sandpaper letters, sky writing, rice trays
• Use pencil grips, writing lines, stencils
• Wear loose-fit easy on/off clothing and Velcro fastenings
• Break down tasks into small sections to be mastered one by one

Muscle movements

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty walking in a straight line, bumps into people and things
• Difficulties running, hopping, jumping, catching/kicking balls

Helpful strategies to support:

• Use balance or wobble boards, walking on the line and hand to hand throwing using bean bags or water-filled balloons

Attention/concentration

Problems you may notice:

• Reacts to all stimuli without discrimination
• Attention span is poor
• Distracted in open-plan environments
• Flits between activities
• Disturbs others

Helpful strategies to support:

• Allow child to choose activities which meet their own interests
• Avoid disturbing them when on task
• Avoid fluorescent lights or fluttering ceiling decoration
• Keep wall displays to a minimum
• Promote a ‘no-disturbance’ culture showing respect for everyone’s work space

Conceptualisation

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty understanding concepts such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘in front of’

Helpful strategies to support:

• Play games using items and command cards, such as ‘cow in front of barn’ with the correct picture on the back of the card

Personal organisation

Problems you may notice:

• Generally poorly organised

Helpful strategies to support:

• Use timetables, daily diaries and instructions for specific activities in sequenced picture cards

Communication

Problems you may notice:

• Unable to remember and/or follow instructions

Helpful strategies to support:

• Get the attention of the child before giving instructions
• Use simple language with visual prompts
• Provide time to process information
• Use activities, demonstrations and pictures

Speech, language and communication

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty in explaining needs or answering a question
• Difficulty in retelling an incident

Helpful strategies to support:

• Provide visual supports to help recollection of personal experiences (e.g. photos)
• Use closed questions rather than open ended questions

Social skills

Problems you may notice:

• No concept of personal belongings
• Difficulty keeping friends
• Difficulty judging how to behave in company

Helpful strategies to support:

• Role play to develop understanding of the concepts of private and public
• Have consistent explicit classroom/home rules
• Use social stories to explain the social rules and expected behaviours

Creativity/imagination

Problems you may notice:

• Artwork and story telling is immature
• Difficulty with time sequencing, e.g. ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘future’

Helpful strategies to support:

• Use role play and drama to explore different outcomes and scenarios
• Timelines can help fix events in child’s mind
• Teach from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’ by making concepts relevant to a child’s own experiences

Social skills and flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty coping with sudden changes, leading to anxiety

Helpful strategies to support:

• Give advance notice of any changes
• Use visual timetables
• Give clear rules and consequences

Flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty in using a learnt skills out of the learnt situation

Helpful strategies to support:

• Teach each skill in all the possible contexts and in different ways

Sensory perception and flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

• Resistance to certain activities or situations
• Finds it difficult to concentrate

Helpful strategies to support:

• Prepare for the change
• Introduce sensation gradually
• Provide other options if the student cannot overcome the sensory difficulty
• Introduce new sensory experiences using the child’s interests, e.g. messy play making aliens to get used to slimy texture
• Give a distraction free learning environment
• Reduce the social demands while learning
• Permit time out if child is becoming over-stimulated

Social skills, flexible thinking and communication

Problems you may notice:

• Difficulty in developing play skills and following game rules

Helpful strategies to support:

• Identify and focus on teaching necessary play skills such as turn-taking and negotiating
• Introduce a circle of friends of buddy system to help the child in building relationships <br>