Tips: Grandchildren

You can make a deep and life changing impact on your grandchildren by being supportive to their parents and them whether you live nearby or far away. Support, affirmation and love will help to get your family through the challenges of raising a child with autism.

Research shows that early, frequent and loving involvement of family members is one of the best ways to help children with ASD.  Grandparents can give their families respect, acceptance, love and happy memories. Here are some suggestions about how you can regularly stay in touch, communicate and play an important role in your grandchildren’s lives.

1. Learn as much as possible about autism. Information about how children with autism see the world, how they communicate and act, will help you to understand and connect with your grandchild. Autism Speaks is a great site with answers to questions you may have and it provides lots of family resources.
2. If you go online together, it’s important to remember that children with autism may need more time to process information. Be kind and flexible because they may find it difficult to adapt to this format of being together. You may need to use gestures or other ways to communicate besides words. Use positive reinforcement. Praise good behavior – and do not take things personally if their responses are blunt.
3. There are many free online video chat services available such as Zoom, FaceTime, Skype and Google Hangout. Set up a regular scheduled timeline that works best for everyone to chat online.
4. Ask the parents about your grandchild’s specific interests, favorite activities and the best means of communicating with them. Search for materials about those interests that you can share when you talk together.

Here are some activities you might share:

• Cook a quick (30 minutes or less) favorite family recipe together. NOTE: Send a parent a list of ingredients in advance so the child has everything ready for your visit.
• Color or paint together using the same paint sets or coloring books you have sent to them, in advance.
• Work together on craft sets you have provided. Origami, felt work, ornaments and greeting cards are some projects you can share. Needlework like crochet, knitting, cross stitch and needlepoint starter kits are also available to send to them.
• Music lessons. If you play an instrument, help your grandchild to develop an appreciation for music. There are beginner’s music books for piano, guitar, violin, clarinet and saxophone.
• Read a favorite book to your grandchild online or record your reading and send it to them. Find picture books for younger children and, if possible, send your grandchild the same book so they can follow along with you as you read to them.
• If video contact is not possible, engage with email or phone calls on a regular basis. Send greeting cards, letters or care packages and always enclose your picture or a picture of you and your grandchild sitting together reading, talking, eating, laughing.

While these suggestions are ways you might more easily engage with your grandchild with autism, they may also be effective to stay in touch with your typical grandchildren. They, too, need your loving support!

Because children with autism require more attention, therapies and support, the needs of their brothers and sisters are frequently overlooked. Siblings share many of the same concerns their parents have regarding social isolation, the need for information and they worry about the caregiving expectations their parents have for them in the future. Sometimes, they feel resentment, embarrassment and under great pressure to achieve. They are frequently in the waiting room when “family centered” counseling and services are offered and are overlooked by support agencies.

Here are some ways you can help them:

• Plan to spend special time with siblings and be a good listener. If you provide a safe, comfortable environment, they may express their concerns to you.
• When siblings argue, try to remember that typically developing children deserve a life where they, like other children, sometimes misbehave get angry and fight. Try not to intervene with statements like “Leave your brother alone. You are bigger, you are stronger, you should know better. It is your job to compromise.” They are already more likely to feel guilty about their sibling’s developmental needs and most siblings have disagreements from time to time.
• Siblings deserve to have their own personal safety given as much as their brother or sister who has special needs. f they are in vulnerable situations due to aggressive or challenging behaviors, try to provide as much respite time as possible for them. Try to plan activities that will keep them apart and enable you to give your full attention to only one of them at a time.
• Offer to care for your grandchild with autism so that parents can spend personal time away with their sibling(s). It will convey the message that parents are supportive of all of their children and afford them the opportunity to communicate about their concerns.
• Important to Remember: One child’s special needs should not overshadow another’s achievements and milestones. Celebrate and reinforce the accomplishments of all of your grandchildren.

You may find more information about sibling support groups by calling your local children’s hospital or go online to these sites: http://www.siblingsupport.org/ and http://siblingleadership.org

Grandparents can teach self-care, housekeeping, traffic safety and essentials in interacting
with the community. Below is a list of life skills topics.

• Morning routine – brushing teeth, brushing hair, washing hands
• Getting dressed independently
• Potty training
• Evening routine – brushing teeth, taking bath/ shower/ washing hair
• Setting the table
• Clearing the table
• Simple food preparation and cooking
• Feeding and Serving oneself
• Cutting food and using utensils to eat
• Picking up toys, books
• Sorting laundry, washing it, drying it and putting it away
• Making a shopping list (written or pictures)
• Shopping, staying by your side and following the shopping list
• Finding the items and putting them in the basket
• Paying for the items and budgeting
• Putting the purchases in their proper place at home
• Teaching to use indoor voice (quiet tones) indoors
• Teaching turn taking
• Teaching about when and how to ask for help
• Locating public restrooms
• Teaching swimming and water safety
• Giving directions when walking/driving to the park or the store
• Teaching how to cross streets safely
• Teaching about stop signs, crosswalks
• Practicing riding public transportation
• Practicing driving skill

Morning Routine – Brushing Teeth, Brushing Hair, Washing Hands

Check with the child’s parents what the morning routine is. If there is one, follow the same routine, make picture-schedules if needed. Older children may be comfortable with written schedules. If you are the first one establishing a routine, discuss with the parents about how this routine should proceed and what they want to be part of the routine. Then the child will have the same routine at home and at your house. Once the routine is learned well, you can make changes.

Getting Dressed Independently

Your grandchild has to learn to dress and undress independently. For best results, find out how the parents teach the dressing. If you are the first to teach independent dressing and undressing, let the parents know how you do it. It helps if the child has consistent expectations, so they have to memorize only one sequence. If the teaching is laborious or not sticking, you can make up a picture schedule of what comes first, second and third – this will make the process smoother and the same schedule can be used at the parents’ house. What you will discover is that this process requires great patience on your part and is tedious, as the child zones out or gets distracted by something. You’ll have to stand there, keep telling them to focus and point their eyes at what they are doing. Eventually, you will be able to tell the child that it is time to get dressed, and they will do it. This is a test of your endurance that can pay off handsomely in the end.

Potty Training

There are videos that show potty training to the children. Cartoon types are best. The hard part is keeping the child on the toilet, or the potty. You still want to teach. Make sure that the system is the same at your home as it is at the parents’ house. Keep them busy with their favorite books or electronic gadgets while you are waiting for something to happen. Make sure that your attempts coincide with the child’s voiding habits. Generally children will go to the same place in the house when they are filling their diapers. IMPORTANT! When the child successfully goes in the toilet or potty, do not make a lot of noise, it scares them and makes training harder. Simply say quietly, “Good job”, wipe the child and show the child the production and let them flush. By then, they are expert toilet flushers.

Wiping themselves comes later, and is also a challenge. Flushable wet wipes can be most helpful. Again, check with the parents so the same system can be used at home.

Evening Routine – Brushing Teeth, Taking Bath/ Shower/ Washing Hair

Evening routine could be put into a picture schedule, and again should be the same as is followed at parents’ home. Brushing teeth can be taught in front of a mirror. It is best to have the child count to ten as they are moving the toothbrush back and forth along the left back teeth; ten for the right back teeth, etc. If you use the same system all the time and everywhere, there is a better chance that the child will do it like that when you are not around.

Because of the children’s many sensitivities, bath time might be a wonderful event or it can be a trial. Sometimes, the child may have been OK with taking a bath, and suddenly it’s not OK and no one knows what triggered the change. Washing hair could also become a problem after it was previously OK. You don’t want to make bath time a contest, but the child still has to wash. If they do not want to sit in the tub, you simply soap them up while they stand in the tub and rinse off with a bowl. The aversion will go away.

Eventually, you will teach them to soap themselves by naming body parts as they count, five times back and forth for the arms, five times for the front of the neck, five times for the back of the neck etc. This will teach your grandchild the names of body parts, and the counting will help them focus on what they are doing.

Setting The Table

It is important for the grandchildren to learn to set the table and to participate in family life. Like with all the other skills. You might need a picture schedule, and consult with the parents about the sequence. Make sure that the sequence is the same or very similar.

Clearing The Table

Some people use dishwashers, and some people wash dishes by hand. It would be helpful it the child learned to clear the table and rinse off the dishes, in any event. This way, when they are living independently, the sequence will be in place, and they will not end up with food caked on their dishes. Again, check with the parents about the sequences you want to establish, and have the child do it in both households.