February 1, 2024

Self-Care Skills for Children with Autism

Self-care skills such as brushing teeth, washing hands, and dressing are important for children to learn as they affect their everyday lives.

Self-care skills such as brushing teeth, washing hands, and dressing are important for children to learn as they affect their everyday lives. For children diagnosed with Autism, they often experience delays in learning these skills and may need a different way of teaching to acquire them. Using some behavior analytic techniques, these skills can be taught in an appropriate way suitable for your child to be successful.

Is your child ready to perform self-care skills?

  • Component skills: In order to ensure success with the desired self-care skill, make sure that your child can perform the basic skills necessary for the task. For example, for the skill of brushing teeth, this may include: pincer grasps, holding a toothbrush, moving a toothbrush in a back and forth motion, spitting out toothpaste, squeezing toothpaste tube, gargling water.
  • Attending: Can your child pay attention and tolerate the duration of the skill?
  • Complexity of composite skill: Can your child put together the component skills to perform parts of the desired task?

If your child is unable to perform the component skills, attend to the desired self-care task, or combine component skills, work on building up this repertoire before moving forward. Providing help and lots of positive reinforcement with these tasks will make learning the desired skill easier!

Now that your child is ready, how can you teach your child to perform self-care skills?

  • Chaining: This strategy involves breaking down the steps of the skill into multiple pieces. Once the steps are broken up, teaching can occur by linking steps together.
  • The steps can be linked together from the beginning of the skill. For example, brushing teeth can begin with allowing the child to put toothpaste on the tooth brush and run the tooth brush under the water. The rest of the steps of the skill can be prompted by an adult. As the child becomes more independent with the first few steps, more steps can be added for him or her to perform independently as a chain.
  • Steps can also be linked from the end of the skill. For example, for hand washing, you can have the child wipe his or her hands independently on the towel. As the child becomes more independent with that skills, you can also introduce turning off the water to the chain of steps. All the steps prior to those mentioned steps can be prompted by an adult.
  • Social Stories: These stories outline the appropriate way to engage in the desired task. Each page can describe the steps and how to complete the skill. They can be in the form of videos, audio, or written (with pictures). Each child may respond better to one form over another.

What supports can you use with these strategies?

  • Visuals: You can provide visuals of each step of the task posted in the location that the skill will occur in. For example, with hand washing, some pictures can include turning on the sink, hands under the soap dispenser, or rubbing hands with soap. Modeling the skill before the child engages in the skill may also help the child learn by imitating your actions.
  • Physical prompts: You can physically guide your child with your hands on top of theirs to allow them to get used to the motion of the task. Then, you can reduce your physical prompts (e.g., move your hands to their elbows or moving farther away and pointing to the correct step) until they can complete the skill independently.
  • Vocal prompts: You can vocally instruct the child to perform each step as they are performing the skill. Then, you can fade your prompts until they can do the skill independently.

Working on the component skills independently until the child can easily and reliably perform them can greatly increase their success with putting those steps together. A combination of different supports listed above can provide a way for you to teach your child how to engage in complex self-care skills. Providing and fading your physical and vocal prompts can take some practice. It may be beneficial to work with a BCBA to ensure the success of your approach and the acquisition of these skills.

Download our Guide for Families

We know that choosing a local ABA facility can be a hard decision. We’ve created an informational guide to help you understand more about the questions you should be asking while meeting with different providers.

Although we talk about our services here, our highest goal is for you to feel comfortable and knowledgeable about picking a provider that is the best fit for your needs. You are making a decision that will impact the entire trajectory of your child’s life!
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Success looks different for every child... But we bet we have a story that matches your child's needs. Like James, who started with us as non-speaking and lacking the ability to initiate and maintain social interactions. Today, he can speak complete sentences, clearly state his needs, and navigate social interactions with his friends!

Our infant daughter was in physical therapy with Anna Zahn for about five months.  Anna was consistent, patient, and wonderful with our daughter.  Anna was also clear in her communications with us as parents which helped us understand our daughter's progress and needs, as well as how we could help our daughter at home.  While we are proud that our daughter graduated PT, we will miss Anna's warmth and kindness.

Emily

I love this place! Chista is an amazing person, so sweet and kind and very professional in her work. All staff are very kind with children. I feel happy to find this place for my daughter. Thank you!!!

Maria Di Rita

I cannot say enough nice things about the staff! My son worked with Khadija as his ABA therapist and is finishing up this week with his OT, Sabrina. They were really instrumental in helping us navigate a new diagnosis. Both were so easy to approach with questions. From Leeann at the front desk to the RBTs (Alex, Rabbia, Molly, and many others), we always felt so welcomed. It seems like the staff genuinely enjoy their jobs, consistently offering feedback and suggestions on how to help my son.

Jennifer Peyer

We have been working with the amazing team at NSPT for many years. They have been essential in understanding and supporting our child. I recommend their services to anyone looking for their specific type of support.Posted to

Monica Terése Carranza

They are so sweet and kinds persons with professionalism and really worried about the kids and how help they to get new skills and moving forward with knowledge.

Alejandra M.

NSPT is fantastic! All of the staff are wonderful, accomodating, and make you feel welcome and comfortable. Alan is fantastic - he has helped our family tremendously and has such patience and purpose in everything he does.

Alex Ehrhardt

North Shore Pediatric Therapy has been amazing.  They have done a great job adjusting to the specific needs of my autistic child.

Matt Nakanishi

My 12 yr old son has a lovely support team in Robert (Social Work) and Lindsay (OT)! He gains so much from his sessions & I gain so much from the communication and brainstorming! Thanks!

Jennie Meyer

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