What ASD Youth Must Learn Before They Become Adults!

The successful and ultimate intervention goal for many ASD friends is

Ultimately, it seems like it will be about being able to live socially and independently.

What developmental factors are involved in successfully achieving goals?

There is a lot of research being done to understand whether this is necessary.

As individuals mature, they develop adaptive behavior in society.

It seems like we need to look a little deeper.

Adaptive behavior:

It includes the personal independence and social responsibility needed to care for oneself and interact with others in a variety of settings. It includes the areas of socialization, communication, and daily living skills (DLS) (Burger-Caplan et al., 2018; Sparrow & Cicchetti, 1985).

It is commonly expected that the higher the cognitive development ability, the better the social adaptation ability.

Surprisingly, the influence of an individual's cognitive ability on adaptive behavior

It is said to be not that large (Kenworthy et al., 2010; Szatmari et al., 1989).

Even if an individual's IQ is high, adults with ASD have difficulties with social adaptation behavior,

It is too late to teach social adaptive behavior once they reach adulthood (18-21 years old).

Intervention strategies should be developed starting from a slightly younger adolescent age (10-14 years old) .

So today, we're going to look at a paper on daily living skills (DLS), which is the most important factor in readiness for the transition to adulthood.

Today's paper: Baker E, Stavropoulos KKM, Baker BL, Blacher J. Daily living skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: Implications for intervention and independence. Res Autism Spectr Disord. 2021 May;83:101761. doi: 10.1016/j.rasd.2021.101761. Epub 2021 Mar 5. PMID: 33796139; PMCID: PMC8009320.

The paper reveals that adolescent children's adaptive behavior and daily life skills

The most influential thing is externalizing problem behavior (problem behavior that is shown on the outside).

Let me explain.

For example, if the level of aggression is high, they may approach certain areas of the kitchen or home.

The family itself can be limited,

This is ultimately a way for ASD youth to cook safely.

It can prevent you from learning.

Also, when sensory problems manifest as externalizing problems,

Problems may arise, such as choosing clothes that are appropriate for the season and changing them yourself.

Also, adolescent children who show externalizing problems tend to

Because they receive less praise and have fewer opportunities to interact positively with their caregivers.

Opportunities to practice or experiment with everyday life skills are disappearing more and more.

However, this period is very difficult to learn adaptive behavior.

They say there is a good arbitration strategy!

• In the case of adolescent friends with ASD who also have anxiety disorders, it was reported that parental acquisition of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques was closely related to improvements in daily living skills (Drahota et al., 2011).

• In addition, if the adolescent is already receiving intervention, it is said that simply including daily living skills (DLS) in the intervention goals is helpful. If the difficulty in acquiring self-help skills is due to sensory or gross/fine motor skills, it is said that it is effective to first acquire hygiene-related behaviors through occupational therapy (OT) (National Autism Center, 2015).

• Dr. Amie Duncan teaches youth how to develop daily living skills through her website, www.STRW.org (Surviving and Thriving in the Real World). She talks about how to write down specific rewards and decide what to do each day, and how to use Task Analysis, which is often used in ABA, to figure out what steps to take to acquire skills. If you do this kind of active intervention for just 12 weeks , it is said that children who do not receive this kind of intervention acquire the skills two years earlier than children who do not (Duncan et al., 2018).

As children grow up,

In order to adapt well to school life, it is important to focus on things like social skills, communication, and grades.

You may end up having to adopt a very focused arbitration strategy.

But if we think about children's successful independence and social life from a longer-term perspective,

Daily life skills that are pushed to the back burner should also be taught from a young age.

I think it will be a great help to our children's lives as adults in the future.