Take a look at the following common difficulties and helpful strategies to support your child:

Hand to eye coordination

Problems you may notice:

1. Handwriting difficulties
2. Difficulties with dressing and fastening clothes
3. Using tools, utensils and cutlery

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Practice multi-sensory letter formation, e.g. sandpaper letters, sky writing, rice trays
2. Use pencil grips, writing lines, stencils
3. Wear loose-fit easy on/off clothing and Velcro fastenings
4. Break down tasks into small sections to be mastered one by one

Muscle movements

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty walking in a straight line, bumps into people and things
2. Difficulties running, hopping, jumping, catching/kicking balls

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Use balance or wobble boards, walking on the line and hand to hand throwing using bean bags or water-filled balloons

Attention/concentration

Problems you may notice:

1. Reacts to all stimuli without discrimination
2. Attention span is poor
3. Distracted in open-plan environments
4. Flits between activities
5. Disturbs others

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Allow child to choose activities which meet their own interests
2. Avoid disturbing them when on task
3. Avoid fluorescent lights or fluttering ceiling decoration
4. Keep wall displays to a minimum
5. Promote a ‘no-disturbance’ culture showing respect for everyone’s work space

Conceptualisation

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty understanding concepts such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘in front of’

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Play games using items and command cards, such as ‘cow in front of barn’ with the correct picture on the back of the card

Personal organisation

Problems you may notice:

1. Generally poorly organised

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Use timetables, daily diaries and instructions for specific activities in sequenced picture cards

Communication

Problems you may notice:

1. Unable to remember and/or follow instructions

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Get the attention of the child before giving instructions
2. Use simple language with visual prompts
3. Provide time to process information
4. Use activities, demonstrations and pictures

Speech, language and communication

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty in explaining needs or answering a question
2. Difficulty in retelling an incident

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Provide visual supports to help recollection of personal experiences (e.g. photos)
2. Use closed questions rather than open ended questions

Social skills

Problems you may notice:

1. No concept of personal belongings
2. Difficulty keeping friends
3. Difficulty judging how to behave in company

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Role play to develop understanding of the concepts of private and public
2. Have consistent explicit classroom/home rules
3. Use social stories to explain the social rules and expected behaviours

Creativity/imagination

Problems you may notice:

1. Artwork and story telling is immature
2. Difficulty with time sequencing, e.g. ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘future’

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Use role play and drama to explore different outcomes and scenarios
2. Timelines can help fix events in child’s mind
3. Teach from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’ by making concepts relevant to a child’s own experiences

Social skills and flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty coping with sudden changes, leading to anxiety

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Give advance notice of any changes
2. Use visual timetables
3. Give clear rules and consequences

Flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty in using a learnt skills out of the learnt situation

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Teach each skill in all the possible contexts and in different ways

Sensory perception and flexible thinking

Problems you may notice:

1. Resistance to certain activities or situations
2. Finds it difficult to concentrate

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Prepare for the change
2. Introduce sensation gradually
3. Provide other options if the student cannot overcome the sensory difficulty
4. Introduce new sensory experiences using the child’s interests, e.g. messy play making aliens to get used to slimy texture
5. Give a distraction free learning environment
6. Reduce the social demands while learning
7. Permit time out if child is becoming over-stimulated

Social skills, flexible thinking and communication

Problems you may notice:

1. Difficulty in developing play skills and following game rules

Helpful strategies to support:

1. Identify and focus on teaching necessary play skills such as turn-taking and negotiating
2. Introduce a circle of friends of buddy system to help the child in building relationships<br>