Using Obsessions to Teach
September 5, 2008 by admin
Filed under Social Skills
It is not uncommon for children with ASDs to develop obsessions over just about any subject imaginable. It may be an obsession over SpongeBob Squarepants or it may be memorizing random facts like capitol cities and species of whales. The list is really endless.
The good news is that these obsessions can be turned into learning opportunities, when parents know how to use them. This is especially true for children with Asperger’s Syndrome. These children very often have areas or items that they are very interested in. When parents and teachers learn to use these special interests as a learning opportunity, everybody wins! The child gets to learn about things that he or she is interested in and the parents or teacher gets to teach the child a new skill.
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i have used Thomas the Tank engine to teach my son so many things. He has learnt his colours and his numbers this way. The thomas website also has an emotions game which i think would really help some children. (Oliver memorised the sequence of emotions so it didnt work for him).
What a great example of exactly what I was talking about. It is easier when a child’s interest is something along the mainstream like Thomas, but I’ve had some really challenging special interests that have been hard to use as well.
Kelli
What a great idea! Maybe I will try this. Our Peyton loves dinosaurs, and anything on the history and military channels…. I could definetely see this working!
I have used dinosaurs many times in my therapy sessions, let me know if you need any ideas. I’d be happy to help.
Kelli
My son has an obsession with the compression units on central air conditioners of every home we come in contact with; same for ceiling fans. They induce stimming oppprtunities for him. Any idea how to put a positive “spin” on this ?
Let’s move this discussion to the forum area so we can get more answers! Julie, check in the forum area under therapies/stragies and we’ll start a thread!