Tips On Organizing With Your Autistic Child

Children are significantly more likely to excel in school and in life when they have good organizational skills. This is particularly true for autistic children. Learning organizational skills helps develop other things such as concentration, focus, and motor skills. Helping children on the autism spectrum learn to be organized can be more challenging because they are easily distracted, require visual cues and often times have limited motor skills.

Autistic kids are typically visual learners, which means they generally learn and perform better when provided with visual instructions and prompts. Below are four tips on how you can help your child be organized, develop skills and make smooth transitions between activities using visual instructions and prompts.

These tips vary depending on your child’s age and abilities. You can use this as a reference guide and adjust as needed.

#1 – Create a bin system for your child’s supplies and toys. Separate the types of toys and supplies into individual bins. Take photographs of each type of toy or supply contained within and tape the photograph to the front of each corresponding bin.

For example: Place a photograph of plush toys to your child’s bin that contains plush toys. Do the same with markers, Lego’s, crayons, and so on. Even if the bins are clear (transparent), it will be easier for your child to be organized if s/he has a visual cue as to where their toys or supplies belong. Bins with easy to remove lids or no lids usually work best.

#2 – Display your kid’s toys, supplies and clothing. It is easier for all children, especially autistic children, to stay organized and function if they can see their belongings. Drawers do not usually work well for children on the autism spectrum. If you must use drawers, tape a photograph on the front of each drawer that corresponds to what is kept in the drawer. If possible do not combine items into one drawer. Hang as many of their clothes as possible or fold them and place them on shelves, preferably in cubbies. Place jeans in one cubby, sweaters in another and so on. Socks, underwear and pajamas are best placed in transparent bins with photographs taped to the front.

#3 – Set up daily routines and stick to them as much as possible. Creating regular daily routines can make transitioning from one activity to another less upsetting. Children in the autism spectrum often thrive when they have daily routines and usually react poorly to changes in routines. Once a solid routine is created small changes can be introduced slowly and can help your child develop coping strategies to deal with transitions. It is best to introduce changes in routines in very small steps. Gradually, your child will be able to use strategies like social stories and self talk to work through the anxiety they experience when making transitions.

One helpful organizing routine — Give your child a 10-minute heads-up before supper each day and then ask them set an egg timer for 10 minutes. Teach them that when the timer goes off, they are to pick up all of their supplies and toys and place them in the appropriate bins.

This daily exercise establishes a routine, lets your child know what to expect, gives them a 10-minute lead-time and then provides them a distinct audio clue when it’s time to pick up and get organized. It is important to ask your children to set the egg timer, not you. It gets them more involved in the process and they will be more likely to follow through.

An addition to this routine could be that when the egg timer goes off and it’s time to pick up and get organized, you play a specific song that your child then recognizes as the “pick-up and get organized” song. This can make it playful, fun, fun, soothing and also can help keep them on task and get the work done faster.

#4 – Make your child’s schedule into a picture schedule. Autistic children do really well with a visual version on their schedule. Set it up so that when your child finishes a task they can move the corresponding picture to the “done” side of the schedule. In other words, you are creating an interactive schedule that your child can “control.” Another idea is to organize their picture schedule by first, next, and last. This will give them a specific order to the tasks and then again, they can move the picture to the “completed” side.

Use visual aids to help your child get and stay organized and keep it simple. Of course all of these tips are only to be used as guidelines and ideas. Each child in the autistic spectrum reacts a little differently, has different needs and is functioning at varying levels. Consider modifying and adjusting these ideas as you see fit based on your child’s needs, abilities and age.

Organizing your home and your life will have a positive impact on both you and your child.

Heidi is a professional organizer specializing in organizing paperwork , creator of The Fast-Filing Method home filing system, & publisher of Life Made Simple e-Magazine. She energizes her readers’ lives by teaching effective systems to help you accomplish more in less time! Visit ClearSimpleLiving.com to get a complimentary subscription & a FREE Home Organization Kit.