The ability to communicate one’s wants and needs is an essential life skill. Have you ever tried to communicate something to another person and they just don’t seem to understand? How did that make you feel? You were probably frustrated, gave up, or got angry.

For a child with autism or other developmental disabilities, requesting things appropriately can be extremely difficult. Through working with individuals with autism and their families, one learns that the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately does not happen by accident. Individuals with autism need direct intervention, particularly including a behavioural approach to language. Manding is a term used to describe an individual making a request. This comes out of a field called applied behaviour analysis (ABA) and the work of BF Skinner. It’s best to start with behavioural intervention sooner rather than later, but the good news is it’s never too late to start.

The demands of manding

Before you focus on helping your child learn to identify colours or shapes, he must learn to communicate his wants and needs. This means that in the beginning, most of the time spent helping your child should be focused on practicing appropriate ways to communicate. This should be happening hundreds of times a day. Generally speaking, your child should be appropriately requesting or manding at least once a minute during the intervention. These requests can be prompted by you or occur independently. The key component here is that your child practices the skill often and throughout the day. It may take 1500 times for your child to learn how to request a particular item.

Choosing a system of communication

If your child has not yet started speaking or most people cannot understand your child when they speak, you must decide on a system of communication. Research has shown that choosing a system of communication, using pictures or sign language, facilitates children learning to communicate verbally. By choosing pictures or sign language, you are able to prompt your child how to request something using words.

Before your start

Before starting, restrict access to things so that your child must communicate appropriately with you before getting what he wants. Make sure that everyone in the house is prepared to require your child to use words to get what he wants. If you are using sign language or pictures, you will need to decide upon 5-10 words to target initially. You want to select words your child can use many times throughout the day. For example, you would choose drink over bathroom.

How to get going

Now you are ready to start. You’ve set up the environment and decided upon how your child will communicate (verbal, pictures, or signs). If your child indicates he want something by pointing to it or looking it, say “What do you want?” and then immediately prompt him to request it using words. Only give your child a small amount or brief access to the item. This is so they will need to practice requesting it over and over again.

For example, if your child wants water, give him a cup with a small amount of water. After he is finished, if he still wants more, require him to use words to request again (e.g. “Say water”, physically prompt to give you the picture or sign). If it is a video, allow your child to watch for 30 seconds and then pause it, requiring him to request it again. To track your child’s progress you may want to use two hand tally counters to measure the number of times he requests things with prompts and independently.

By directly intervening in this manner, you can set your child up to successfully and appropriately communicate his wants and needs.

Karen Umstead is the Executive Director of Beautiful Minds of Princeton L.L. She will be conducting a webinar on Behaviour Intervention on Sunday, February 22nd at 8pm. For more details, click here.

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