Ep. 72: How Do You Transition Autistic Kids?
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Why are transitions especially challenging for autistic children?
What's up, everyone? And welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids. We're an SLP couple from California with four boys. And we're here every week to bring you neuro-affirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do this!
Hello, hello. Welcome to Making the Shift. Today we're talking about something that is a major, major struggle for a lot of people, therapists, parents, teachers, and we are going to get you some answers today. So we are talking about transitions. How do we help our autistic kids transition? This is something that if you are supporting children, it's something, doesn't matter what kind of kid, neurotypical, neurodivergent, transitions can be hard for all kids. Okay, but let's talk about what we can do because this is a question I get at least every week, if not multiple times a week, is how to transition kids. And I will say that I'm going to give you a bunch of different strategies. It's hard to know what works for each kid, obviously very individualized, but this way you can try different things out.
You're going to have a lot of different ideas and places to start. Okay. So first of all, let's talk about why transitioning is so hard. Okay. Let's talk about the more obvious reason. And then maybe we'll talk about the less obvious reason. More obvious reason. Okay. Transitioning is only hard when we are moving from something that we enjoy to something that we don't wanna do, right? Like it's never a problem when we wake our kids up and we're like, okay, time to change into your clothes. We're going to Chuck E. Cheese. They're not like, no, I don't wanna take off my pajamas, right? They're like, yeah, let's go, come on. Same with you. Like, it's only going to be hard if I'm trying to get you to move from something that you enjoy doing to something you don't want to do.
So say I was like, okay, you've had enough Love Island for today. And now you need to go wash the dishes and do the laundry. Like... that's not fun but if you were like yeah oh you're doing the dishes that's awesome hey the real housewives is starting you'd be like let's go you would have no problem leaving those dishes in the sink okay so it's really when kids are moving for something that they really enjoy doing or they prefer doing to something that they don't prefer doing okay and i will say that I understand a lot, like some of these strategies are not going to work depending on what setting you're in. Okay, I can speak to my perspective as a parent. I can speak to my perspective as an SLP in a clinic.
And certain of these strategies might work better for like a larger classroom. And some of them are going to be harder, right? Because kids don't always have that autonomy over their schedule in a full classroom, whereas they might have more autonomy when they're in a one-on-one therapy setting. Okay, so most obvious reason is they're moving from something that they don't, that they enjoy doing, or they're having fun doing to something that they don't know if they wanna do, or they're not sure, or they never done it before, or it's something that they don't wanna do. Okay, less obvious reason, is that a lot of autistic kids are gestalt cognitive processors meaning they process events as a whole so to them a play scheme to you you might be able to you know start a play scheme and then just end in the middle of it and be fine to another child they might be experiencing that play scheme from beginning to end and to them
If you are pulling them out in the middle, it has not been completed, okay? So a lot of times kids will think about these experiences as a chunk, as a whole, and to them, there's a very clear beginning and end, but we may not know that because we may not know where the kid played this game last, or if they do this at home, or if they've watched this story on YouTube and they're acting something out. Okay. But that's definitely something that we need to consider is, is the child acting out or going through a play scheme where to them, there's a very clear beginning and end, and it's going to be just harder to pull them from it.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why are transitions especially challenging for autistic children?
0:08–9:20
2
What is the most obvious reason kids resist moving from a preferred activity?
9:20–12:56
3
How does gestalt (whole‑scene) processing affect transition difficulty?
12:56–17:14
4
When should I let a child finish a play scheme before transitioning?
17:14–20:32
5
What are the best practices for using visual supports without creating compliance traps?
20:32–24:12
6
How can a transition object be used consistently to ease switches?
24:12–26:54
7
What is the “replace the countdown” strategy and how does it teach kids to transition themselves?
26:54–27:48
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)