Ep. 77: Supporting Autistic Play Development
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What is functional play and why do we question its definition?
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 it!
Hello, hello, and welcome to Making the Shift. If you are new around here, my name is Jessie. I'm an SLP. I'm half of Making the Shift. My partner, Chris, is also part of the show, and he is an ADHD or SLP, works in the schools. I work in private practice. So I'm coming to you today from our brand new clinic that we just opened. So super long weekend of moving. especially because I am now 20 weeks pregnant. So yay, really fun activity to move at 20 weeks pregnant. But we are very excited for the clinic and the baby. Today, actually, I'm going to my 20-week scan. So very excited about that. And Chris and I together, this will be our fifth boy. So fun fact about us as well there. So the point of this show that we do every week
is to bring you neuroaffirming tips and strategies, making things easy and digestible for you, talking about hard topics and trying to figure out a way for us all to learn, relearn and move forward. And I think what can be hard sometimes is after we start to identify as a neurodiversity affirming therapist or parent or professional, We want to, you know, be able to be affirming with our kids. We want to honor the way that they are. But we also know that our job is to help them learn and grow and develop. And how can we do both things? And a lot of times the questions that I get very much reflect that kind of internal conflict that we feel. Especially today's topic, which is about autistic play. We're going to talk about, you know, lining up toys, something that we see a lot in play and how can we help our kids to learn and grow?
How can we tell if a child’s lining‑up behavior is a regulation strategy?
And that's something I hear so much is, well, I let him do it and I want to let him do it, but how can I also turn this into a learning activity? So let's talk about that. I shared this story on social media and this was several years ago when this happened, but I Had a child that I was seeing in our clinic. She also got speech at another nearby clinic and she was playing with trains. I went to observe her in that session. She was playing with trains and she had the exact order of the trains. She wanted them in. It was like, she's played with that set before. She had a plan. She knew exactly where she wanted, what she wanted and what order. And she just started doing her thing, like getting everything where she wanted it.
This girl was seven. And her therapist was, you know, intentionally taking pieces and moving them. Like the little girl would set up the trains and the track and then the bridge. And then the therapist would like come and move the bridge or something and say, oh, the train's coming through. We have to move this. And when I had asked her, you know, I can't remember how I freed it. It was a respectful way of asking why not. Are we moving her trains around because she seems like she knows exactly where she wants them? The answer was, I want to teach her functional play. And this is a word, I don't know why, I don't like the word. I feel like it's just been used in so many ways. stigmatizing context that it has become something that I don't even like to use anymore but you know when we think of what is functional play technically the definition of functional play is playing with toys the way that they're meant to be played with something along those lines like they're they're designed to be played with in a certain way they're intended to be used a certain way are we playing with them in that way
right? So a functional way, functional, I'll put in quotes, way to play with trains might be putting the train track together and then running the train through the tracks, not necessarily just lining up the trains, okay? But when I think about what is the function of play, okay, so maybe functional play is using a toy the way it's intended to be used. But when I think about, but what is the function of play?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is functional play and why do we question its definition?
0:08–2:36
2
How can we tell if a child’s lining‑up behavior is a regulation strategy?
2:36–5:16
3
Why is emotional regulation the first step before teaching new play skills?
5:16–8:52
4
What are the different types of play (independent, parallel, collaborative) and when should we use each?
8:52–11:27
5
How can therapists create collaborative‑play opportunities without disrupting a child’s flow?
11:27–14:19
6
Is trying to make autistic children ‘more flexible’ by changing their favorite play sequences effective?
14:19–16:46
7
What role does problem‑solving practice play in building flexibility and emotional bandwidth?
16:46–19:31
8
How can we keep therapy fun and silly while still supporting communication and learning?
19:31–20:21
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
Ep. 125 How to Run Successful Social Groups
Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)