Teaching Your Child to Play with Toys

There are many different ways to "teach" play skills to young children. Some children can learn to play by simply experiencing toys in a natural environment, while others need a more direct teaching approach to develop these skills. Children with autism often have difficulty learning through simple observation. These children may benefit from having play skills directly taught to them.

In this lecture, we will be discussing ways to teach children who need this more structured way of learning how to play with toys. The following is an example of how you might break down the process of teaching your child to play.

Step 1:

Identify you child’s level of play

• Given an activity, what does your child’s play look like?
• Does the child play with one toy?
• Does the child play with one toy in only one way?
• Is the child interested in the toys around him/her?
• Does your child look at toys you show him/her?
• Will your child show you toys of interest?

Looking carefully at how your child "plays" with toys will give you some idea of the best place to start. Checking a developmental chart of play skills also helps you gain further information about your child’s level of play (See "Levels of play" in this lecture).

Example:

Jon is a four-year-old boy with autism. By observing him, we found that he did not play appropriately with toys that his peers enjoyed. Instead Jon lined up toys, or tapped them together. He did not observe his peers in play. Jon had learned to imitate motor actions with simple toys (pushing a car, rolling a ball, beating a drum). Since Jon had these imitation skills, we had him begin learning to imitate appropriate play with a toy in which Jon showed interest and was also enjoyed by his peers.

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