Saturday, November 6, 2010

No more "MORE"!

The word "more" is often the very first sign parents will teach their young children who have autism, at the suggestion of a professional or sign-language resource.


Although teaching a typically-developing baby to sign "more" may be an easy way to teach your baby to request additional items, and is very easy to prompt, it does not have longevity. Signing "more" very quickly becomes over-generalized, especially for children with autism. Your child will discover that, at first, her sign for "more" was very quickly reinforced in a controlled setting (i.e. you provided fishy crackers one by one to increase the likelihood your child would sign "more" to obtain another cracker). However, it has really only taught your child that signing "more" gets her more of something. It does not tell her what the item is called or how to communicate which item she wants. For example, if you ask your child to choose between orange juice or milk your child may look at the items and sign "more" or your child may stand in front of a shelf of toys that are out-of-reach and sign "more". The tricky part is you may not know what it is she wants and therefore cannot quickly reward her for communicating with sign. If this happens too many times, your child may give up on communicating through sign because too much time passes between the sign and receiving the item. It is much more effective to just teach the individual sign for items that your child will want more of. When your child eats a fishy cracker and would like another fishy cracker, simply teach her to sign "fish" or "cracker". This teaches her that signing "fish" gets her more fishy crackers and it clearly expresses to you what it is she wants.
 

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