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Transitioning Back to School: Tips for Parents

Transitioning Back to School: Tips for Parents

Transitioning Back to School: Tips for Parents

Transitioning Back to School: Tips for Parents

It’s that time of year again, that transition back to school. Every year, most parents are happy to have their kids go back to school. But for parents of autistic and other neurodiverse children, transitioning back to school isn’t often easy. Many kids on the spectrum enjoy having a routine, and although they might enjoy school once they’re there, making the change can be hard on everyone. In this article, we’ll go over transitioning back to school, including some back to school tips for parentsFirst Academy Child Care provide the best  good preschool education for your child.

How Do I Prepare My Child for Back to School?

First, talk to your child often about what the new routine will look like and feel like. Talking with your child will help to ease the anxiety that a change in routine will bring. Transitioning back to school is rarely an easy task. You may want to create a calendar together so that your child knows exactly when school starts. Put the calendar in a prominent place so that your kid can see it. Another tip is to practice the new routine a few days before school begins. Set a clock for the actual time they will get up, and have them dress, brush their teeth, get their lunch, and prepare for the bus or car ride to school. Make your child feel like the new routine is in his control as much as possible so that surprises are minimized. High school in particular will be filled with big, scary new routines for kids going to high school for the first time. Visit the school ahead of time, meet with teachers, and find students who are a year or two ahead of them to help ease the anxiety. 

How to Prepare Your Child for the School Day

If you’re able to meet with your child’s teacher or teachers, ask about the schedule for breaks, PE, and lunch. Your child will enjoy knowing the schedule for successfully transitioning back to school. Your child will also need to know what to do during each time of the school day. For instance, how does he or she change clothes for PE? You may want to rehearse each step with your child: putting on the new shoes you bought them from shoe hero, showing how to wear pants, and shirts, as well as any athletic gear they may need.  Your child also needs to know what to do at lunchtime, and how to handle breaks. Maybe she never has eaten lunch from a lunchbox. How does she do that? These steps can be practiced as well. Get as detailed as possible so your child feels really comfortable. What is easy for you might seem daunting to your child.

How to Help Your Child Enjoy School

Your autistic child will enjoy school more if there is a highly-structured routine. Most schools have routine built into their schedules, with set times for recess, lunch, and classes. In addition, set up specific times for your child to do homework and prepare for the next day of school. It’s important to have visual reminders for everything. Pictures and photos can be used to schedule your child’s day. Neurodiverse children make the adjustment to a new school or change in routine if they know ahead of time what is expected of them. As your child ages, you can replace the previous year’s pictures, calendar, and routines with updated ones. You’ll be learning along with your autistic child what best works for them. 

How to Help Your Child Adjust to a New School

Transitioning back to school, especially if your child is going to a new school, is a significant change for your child. You will need to spend more time going over schedule changes, and what is expected at the new school. Not only will all activities and expectations change for your child, they’ll have different social activities and goals as well. Your neurodiverse child may well have a lot of anxiety because there will be so many changes. 

Back-to-School Tips and Tricks

One of your best resources will be teachers at your child’s school. Other parents will also be a goldmine of information, especially if your child is transitioning to a new school. You will not be familiar with the routine enough to explain it to your child unless you understand it yourself. Be sure to go to any open house events at your child’s school to familiarize yourself with the teachers, layout, and nuances of the school. 

Check Out Identifor’s Tools for Back-to-School Success

Identifor has a career tool parents can use to aid with transitioning back to school. Then parents can discuss the results with the child’s study team/teacher, etc. We strongly recommend downloading Identifor’s Companion app and becoming familiar with Abby for support before, during, and after the school day.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also find Transition Planning For Students With Autism: Achieving Success on the Spectrum interesting.

Use Person-Centered Planning for People with Disabilities

Use Person-Centered Planning for People with Disabilities

Use Person-Centered Planning for People with Disabilities

Use Person-Centered Planning for People with Disabilities

Person-centered planning is a process to help those with disabilities plan for the future. The ultimate goal is to get to an endpoint of a “meaningful life” for that person. Like it sounds, person-centered planning is focused on the person. Once the goal is set, you can work backwards to plan how to get the person as close to the goal as possible. Prevent most tooth decay conditions easily with dentitox pro reviews.

Person-centered planning is a customized problem-solving process so that the person can develop personal skills and find some measure of control over their own lives. Since the person-centered planning looks at the person in an individualized way, no two plans are ever alike.

In the person-centered planning model, the emphasis is on giving the young person the tools he or she needs, rather than on fixing the person. It is a strengths-based model (based on skills, abilities, interests, maximum capacity in work and life skills, etc) and NOT a medical model. Since there is nothing broken, there is nothing to fix. Find the best treatments and supplements reviews at gobiofit.com.

A contrast to person-based planning is the concept of service-based planning. Put simply, service-based planning tries to have people fit into services. In this article, we’ll talk about how to use person-centered planning in special education, and some person-centered practices, along with some examples.

Person-Centered Planning in Special Education

Teenagers and young people with disabilities need a support system that recognizes their strengths, interests, and fears, which allows them to take control of their own future. Person-centered planning helps the young student figure out what their goals are, what steps they need to take to get there, as well as classes they need to take in the future. It’s critical that person-centered planning address many details of a young person’s career planning as they transition into becoming adults. Furthermore, the plan is usually written in everyday language (without medical or professional jargon/rhetoric) so everyone working with the person is on the same page. Learn more about javaburn benefits.

Person-Centered Practices

Some person-centered practices can range from choosing the right facilitator for the young person to developing the student’s personal life story.

Here are some other examples of person-centered practices:

  • Identify events that may have an impact on the young person’s health or career path
  • Brainstorm ways that the student may reach his or her goal
  • Find a comfortable location for meetings suitable to the student
  • Document a list of concrete steps for the young person to take
  • Celebrate successes along the way

A Person-Centered Approach

One important component of person-centered planning is that each step be completely customized to the individual. A person-centered approach should ensure that people critical to the young person’s success listen to his or her voice. The young student should feel completely supported along the path to their success. A young person ought to feel included every step of the way with a person-centered approach.

Person-Centered Treatment Plan

The “discovery process” is often difficult for kids with cognitive disabilities. Identifor was designed with this in mind–to uncover the skills, abilities and interests a person has by playing bias-free games so that realistic goals and thus a treatment plan can be set. Both Autism Speaks and McCloskey Surveys at identifor.com are powerful tools for aggregated situational analysis to help fine tune a person-centered treatment plan. For more information about healthy supplements visit Gazette.com.

Person-Centered Planning Tools

There are many person-centered planning tools available. Here are a few:

MAPS is a way for young people to move creatively into the future. Check out the excellent MAP template on this list of PCP Tools. An outstanding way to customize a document for a young person is to answer a series of questions. Make sure to check out SodaPDF, offers advanced security support, is easy to adopt, and increases the productivity, get the app on sodapdf.com. The questions can be a set of prompts for future actions. For example, asking who are all the people in the young person’s life can yield the network which will be used to support the teenager in the future. Asking for details about a young person’s health can determine physical strengths and weaknesses. And listing things that work and don’t work can help create a strong roadmap for the future. Take a look to the latest visishield review.

Plan for Success

Once a young person has a customized person-centered plan in place, they will be more likely to achieve success in their lives and the transitions they will encounter. For more information about transition planning, see Transition Planning For Students With Autism: Achieving Success on the Spectrum.

Autism’s Hidden Curriculum: A Genuine Lifelong Challenge

Autism's Hidden Curriculum: A Genuine Lifelong Challenge

Autism’s Hidden Curriculum: A Genuine Lifelong Challenge

While the autism hidden curriculum may sound like a complicated phrase, understanding it is not complex at all. It simply means those unwritten social rules that people seem to pick up instinctively. There are many of these unwritten rules that everyone seems to know, and yet hardly anyone talks about. In this article, we’ll go over some hidden curriculum examples so you’ll get the gist of why this is a lifelong challenge. After all, social rules are difficult enough without having to understand all the complex unwritten rules.

Societal Expectations

One of the dangers of the autism hidden curriculum is that although they are never taught we’re all expected to magically know what they are. We are also supposed to know what impact our words and actions will have on others, even though at times we have never been in the exact same situation before. For example, most people know that hugging a stranger without knowing them first could make that stranger uncomfortable. But how do we know that? Another example is talking a lot without noticing that the person you’re talking to is bored or not paying attention. How do we learn to notice these social cues when they’re not usually taught or talked about?

Different Behavior Depending upon the Circumstances

Different circumstances call for different behavior. So if your environment changes, so too will how you’re expected to behave. There’s a spectrum of environments that range from casual to more formal, with different rules for each. So on the more casual end would be your home. Your community would be a little more formal, and the community would be towards the formal end of the spectrum. And if you were at a concert or in a restaurant, your behavior would be more formal still. The autism hidden curriculum would change depending upon the age of the person you’re interacting with, too. People who are older tend to be more formal in the way they speak and younger people tend to use more slang. If you’re talking to someone of a different gender, you might be a little more formal and courteous. Of course, there are always exceptions to every rule.

Dos and Don’t of the Autism Hidden Curriculum

Just as there are some things we shouldn’t do, there are also some things we should do to fit in and stay in other’s good graces. For instance, saying please when making a request is a good idea. And to say thank you after someone does you a favor is also a very good idea. Maybe that’s why please and thank you are considered “magic words.” One don’t would be to not insult someone when they have given you a present, but to thank that person. Sometimes that can be very difficult–because you’re saying one thing, but you’re thinking something else. For instance, if you receive a book as a birthday gift, but you already have a copy of that book, you might be thinking “I don’t want this!” But if you said that, you’d risk insulting the person giving you the gift. That could be both unkind and impolite. It might be better to instead thank the person. After all, they had good intentions when they chose the book for you.  

Pros and Cons of the Autism Hidden Curriculum

You might be secretly pleased when you understand the autism hidden curriculum. So one pro would be that you feel that you’re in an exclusive club when you understand what everyone expects. But the downside is that you might feel that you’re guessing whether you’re doing or saying the right thing. And that can lead to stress, which is usually a negative thing. One of the characteristics of hidden curriculum is that they can be positive and negative at the same time. To counter that stress, you might want to play  games like w88.

Some of the Autism Hidden Curriculum is Straightforward

There are some rules that are easy to implement, and putting those into play may give an autistic person a sense of mastery. For instance, greetings are important to most people. Saying “hello, nice to meet you” when you first meet someone is a good social practice because it signals the beginning of a conversation. Likewise, saying goodbye when you or someone else leaves is another positive and easy-to-understand social practice. If you see someone struggling because they fell down, you might say “do you need help?” That one is fairly straightforward. Another straightforward example is asking personal questions of strangers. That could be considered rude.

Others Parts of the Autism Hidden Curriculum are More Difficult

Some people think you should always be smiling or looking at people in the eyes when speaking to them, and that may take more practice. There are different rules for different social situations. When you’re speaking directly to one person, most people think you should maintain eye contact. But for an autistic person, eye contact can sometimes be difficult. And the rule about smiling? That is also difficult if you aren’t talking about something pleasant. It’s difficult to always have to consider what effect your words might have on other people. This hidden curriculum is not always easy! You could also call hidden curriculum implicit curriculum because it’s implied, but never spelled out in black and white.

In Summary

As part of the autism hidden curriculum, being kind and polite are very important. If you’re unclear about whether something you have said might be either kind or impolite, perhaps asking a trusted friend could help. And then that friend could explain why something is unkind or impolite, and what you might have said instead. The autism hidden curriculum is related to soft skills. If you’d like to learn how to improve soft skills, see How to Improve Soft Skills in Your Autistic Teen.

The Importance of Starting Career Planning for Students Five Years in Advance

The Importance of Starting Career Planning for Students Five Years in Advance

The Importance of Starting Career Planning for Students Five Years in Advance

Everyone has heard about the importance of career planning for students. In particular, it’s critical to begin planning farther in advance than you would probably believe. Although some parents would like to begin planning when a child is in kindergarten, that might be a little extreme. Would you believe that the best time to begin student career planning is five years in advance? At Identifor, we believe that the perfect time for career planning for students is five years ahead of time. In this article, we’ll go over career guidance for students, careers advice for students, and cover a career exploration tool to help you and your student prepare for college.

Importance of Career Planning for Students

At Identifor, we believe that any career planning for students should begin with an assessment of a student’s strengths. Think about what your student does best, and how those strengths can be applied to a career or career path. A strength-based approach in career planning for students can inform the choices a student makes when choosing a career path. By the way, if you or your young adult still don’t know what his or her strength is, you may want to use Identifor’s games to help figure that out. It’s an easy and fun way to highlight the skills your teenage student may have. Not only that, but you can sign up for free. You may also want to discover what “soft skills” and adaptive behaviors that young person will need for that career. Working backwards, the child’s school team and family can assure they work on the building blocks to help them ultimately reach the endpoint before graduation so they are fully prepared.

Student Career Planning

Many kids can tell you what they would like to do for a career, but that doesn’t mean that what they’d like to do is necessarily a reflection of their actual skills. That’s why career planning for students ahead of time is so important: if a student can begin to explore the opportunities that they may actually encounter, they will have more realistic expectations. That’s not to say they should settle for a job that they don’t enjoy. A student may not realize what his or her own strengths are, so focusing on the careers that use those strengths can help them follow the right path. And that first job may be a stepping stone to the right career path. Identifor’s dashboard lists specific suggested careers that make sense for the user to explore further. And any suggested careers are directly linked to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Onet website which gives a granular view of what the job entails: skills and abilities needed, etc. The Onet website also shows which careers have a “bright outlook” and which are dead-end jobs.

Career Guidance for Students

Career guidance for students can, of course, come from career counselors. There are plenty of other people that may also help with career planning for students. Teachers, principals, friends, parents, grandparents, and others can all help narrow the choices. Once the young adult has some ideas, then they may want to test their choice or choices by taking internships, going to summer camps, or volunteering for short stints so that they can see what their options are, and understand what the daily activities of their choice might entail. Sometimes young adults romanticize a career and seeing the daily chores they might have to do could open their eyes and change their direction. By allowing enough time to change direction, the career planning for students process is really worth the investment.

Career Advice for Students

Just as with career guidance, career advice for students can come from a variety of sources. In fact, students may not realize the types of careers that are available. There are many new career paths available, so it’s critical to have career advice from someone who’s up on the latest types of careers. They may have heard about stereotypical careers, but not about unusual career choices. For instance, autistic teens may have heard about careers in computer programming, but might not realize that they could also pursue their dream of becoming a graphic designer or working behind-the-scenes in Hollywood. And there are many careers that did not exist until recently, such as data scientists. Hence beginning the career planning for students process with plenty of time will allow you and your young adult the luxury to fully explore all the options. 

Career Exploration Tool

Did you know there’s a tool to help your teenager explore possible career choices? The Holland Occupational Themes is a theory of personality that focuses on career and vocational choice. There are six different categories of occupations, based on your suitability for the occupations. These six types sum up the RIASEC acronym (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. RIASEC is also known as John Holland’s Six Types of Personality. John L. Holland developed the RIASEC theory during the 1950s. Be sure to investigate these six types of occupations during your career planning for students.


It may seem like a lot, but you definitely don’t need to implement all these tips. Just read them over and see which ones fit you and your lifestyle. Above all, remember that caring for yourself is the most important. Having an organized life on the outside means nothing if you are not happy with yourself and your life.

The Right Attitude for Staying Organized

Be motivated. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you are motivated to tackle the mess in your life. Otherwise, when the going gets tough, you will get sloppy. My advice is to make a list – yes, with real pen and paper – of why you want a clean, organized, and manageable life. Tack it up somewhere where you will see it when you start to feel unmotivated. If stress gets in your way, then sites like 겜블시티 가입 방법 might be able to help.

Have a pencil case. That way you can keep all of your pencils, pens, etc. in the pencil case. You’ll know where they are, and you won’t have to look for that one pencil. The case can get quite messy, so you should throw away broken pencils and everything you don’t need, also make sure you use these back to school labels.

Using Planning to Stay Organized in College

Keep a planner, or a planner app. During the school year, I use my planner religiously to track my classes, assignments, and social plans.

Use only one planner. Just as important as using a planner is only keeping one. If you have both a paper planner and an app, or multiple planners, the odds are that something will eventually slip between the cracks when you forget to write down your plans in both. Also, having more than one will take up a lot of your time.

Keep it with you. During the school year, I always have my planner on-hand. That way, if I get a new assignment, make plans with friends, or have to schedule a doctor’s appointment, I can write it down immediately before I forget.

Plan at the beginning of every week or month. At the beginning of every new week, sit down and write in your activities, classes, and any reminders (call Mom!) for the coming days. I don’t have the time to do this all at once at the beginning of my semester, so doing it on a weekly basis works for me.

Use the days-before-it’s-due system. I learned this trick over at Organize My College Life. In your planner, use red pen to mark the day an assignment is due. Write it out in blue pen in the two days ahead; black for three to five days ahead; and green for six to nine days ahead. That way, you will always see assignments coming up on the horizon, and won’t ever be surprised by an essay that’s due tomorrow.

In Summary

Hopefully, you and your young teenager have a few ideas about the importance of starting career planning for students at least five years in advance. Once you have a clear direction, this information can be used in the goals and objectives of the transition part of IEP or career plan. Although that idea might seem daunting, the results will be well worth it in the end. 

Job Readiness and Your Teen

Job Readiness and Your Teen

Job Readiness and Your Teen

While you might not have been obsessing over your teen’s job readiness, it has probably been at the back of your mind for a while. Although no one is ever completely prepared to face the job market, it’s critical that your teen have appropriate employment readiness skills so that he or she feels confident to talk to a potential employer. In this article, we’ll go over a few items that can help your young adult with their job readiness. And that will help both of you have more peace of mind!

What is Job Readiness?

Job readiness not only means that your teen should be ready to talk to the person who can hire them, it also means that your adolescent can keep that job once hired. Your young adult needs to have the job skills that the person who is hiring needs. There should be a match between your teen’s skills and those that the company is looking for. A job readiness skills assessment can help your adolescent prepare for the process. A job readiness skills assessment usually includes the traits that your young person has, along with their score, and what the meaning of that score is. Or, a simpler form of a readiness skills assessment might simply have a list of the skills needed. These skills may be divided into soft skills versus hard skills, as in our previous article.

Employers require a wide range of skills from those seeking employment. The Human Resources person your adolescent will talk to is carefully looking at your teen’s resume as well as how your teen might fit in with the rest of their future co-workers. That’s why it’s so important that your young adult has a job readiness skills assessment before ever setting foot in their desired job location.

Job Readiness and Interactive Games

To help with employment readiness for youth, Identifor has interactive games that can help parents figure out what your teenager’s strengths are. Your young adult may not have a realistic idea of what his or her own strengths are, and that’s where the games can help. For instance, one young lady did not believe she liked computers, but the scores from Identifor’s games showed that her computer skills would be a strength. Her job readiness significantly changed as a result of the interactive games!

Your teenagers are probably already playing interactive games, so why not use those games to ready them for a possible job? Having a meaningful job will help to ensure that your young adult stays employed longer. Chances are, this holds true for anyone: having meaningful work is key to staying employed.

Hiring a new employee can cost a lot of money, often tens of thousands of dollars. And that’s when you hire the right employee the first time. Hiring the wrong employee can seriously inflate your hiring costs, afp Police Check  is able to verify qualifications at universities and colleges across the world.

Job Readiness Activities for Youth

Once your teen or young adult has played some of Identifor’s games, you may begin to compile a list of their strengths. They’ll need to play enough games so that their strengths come through on Identifor’s dashboard. This may require some patience from both the teenager and the parent if the teen wants to rush ahead and find a job immediately.

You or your teen may also want to compile a list of companies nearby who are interesting, who need the skills that your teen possesses, and who may be hiring. You may also want to think about transportation. How will your young adult get to that job if it’s offered to her? How long will such a commute take? That may seem like a tall order, but it can be done a little at a time.

Role Playing

In terms of employment readiness, role playing can really help bolster a young person’s confidence. If he is prepared for the possible questions that may be asked during an interview, for example, he will probably feel much less anxiety about the interviewing process. After all, a job interview is difficult for anyone.

Some of the topics that may be covered during an interview include:

  • What the company does
  • Clarification of any details on a resume
  • Asking if the teen has any questions

Preparing a few questions to ask the interviewer can shift the balance a bit. Your teen can really shine when she asks intelligent questions about the company and what her role and job responsibilities would be. The ultimate goal is to find a good match between the teen’s skills and the job opening.  

In Summary

We hope that you and your young adult now have some ideas for job readiness. Moving from living at home and being dependent to becoming independent and more self-sufficient can seem like a big undertaking. Knowing what a child’s strengths are is a huge hurdle that will give both the parent and the young person more confidence. Ultimately, having that list of strengths will help to land that young person the right employment. We strongly believed that our strength-based approach gives young people an advantage so they can be matched with not just a mere job, but meaningful employment. We’ll be covering that topic in more depth in the future.

Since we’re on the subject of strengths, why not try out Identifor’s free games? The games are a fun and easy way to determine where a teen’s talents lie. You and your child may be surprised at what the dashboard shows you about their multiple intelligences and executive strengths. Identifor’s games can not only help with career direction, the games can pinpoint meaningful employment for your young person. And the games are available 24/7!

Further Resources: A Three-Step Process to Decreasing Prompt Dependency.

prompt dependency

A Three-Step Process to Decreasing Prompt Dependency

It’s important that we not let children become too dependent on the direction we provide for them. However, even in the best of cases this does happen sometimes. There are various reasons for that. There is no magic fix, but there is a process that can help reduce dependence on prompts. In this article we will go over the process to decrease prompt dependency in autism, but first let’s discuss what it means to be dependent on prompts.

Prompt Dependency Definition

Prompt dependency is a type of behavior where a child relies on being told what to do by a parent or caregiver. This is normal, and expected, in certain situations. When it crosses the line into being prompt dependence is when the child knows exactly what to do, but is still waiting for the prompt before taking action. Read more about Deccanherald benefits.

Being dependent on prompts can make it difficult or impossible for a child do things by themselves. In the most extreme cases of prompt dependence, even something as necessary as eating or going to the bathroom might not be possible on one’s own without being prompted to do so. That’s why decreasing prompt dependency is critical as a child gets older. The goal is to teach them greater independence in all areas of life, including responsibility, regulation, and relationships. This is accomplished by teaching skills and skill sets that the child can initiate independently, use across all environments, and maintain over time.

Identifying Prompt Dependency

You might notice prompt dependence in a number of different ways. For example, your child may stand by the door every morning completely unprepared for the day. That’s because he or she is waiting for you to prompt them to do something like get their backpack, get their lunch, put on appropriate outdoor clothing, and so on. If your child stands around waiting to be told what to do, whether it’s getting ready in the morning or anything else, that’s a key sign of prompt dependence.

Prompt dependence can occur for many different reasons. It most commonly occurs in children with autism because children who have difficulty with motor skills or cognitive and language delays receive more prompting than others when they’re very young. As a result, they get in the habit of waiting for the prompt, while parents get in the habit of providing the prompt before they actually need it. These are the best semen enhancers.

Decreasing Prompt Dependency

There is no one way of breaking prompt dependency in autism. This is a process, and it’s perfectly OK if it takes some time before you start to notice progress being made. Just keep in mind — when you change your behavior, your child’s behavior will change as a result. So stick with the process and you will start to notice a difference.

  1. Consider the areas in which your child is too dependent on your prompts. This involves any situation in which your child waits for you to act before they do, even if they know what they should be doing. Think ahead to all of the skills they eventually need to learn in the coming years, but start with the most basic activities of daily life (personal hygiene, dressing, safety, etc.) before moving onto more complex tasks.
  2. Instead of providing the usual direct commands or answers in these situations, encourage your child to try figuring out what to do on their own before asking for help. For example, instead of stating “Go clean your room,” you can ask “What steps do you need to take to clean your room?” Be patient, and offer positive reinforcement for the attempt, even if the child isn’t always successful. This will help them learn that the act of trying is a good thing.
  3. Plan which strategies you want your child to use and teach them over and over again. Going back to the example of the child waiting for a prompt to get ready in the morning, a strategy you might use in this situation is a checklist of things they need to do before leaving the house. Then, when they ask for help in the morning, they can refer to the list. Eventually they may progress to the point of getting ready in the morning without referring to the list at all.

This simple 3-step framework is an easy-to-implement starting point for decreasing prompt dependency. To take this concept even further, parents can educate themselves on prompt hierarchy and how to move from external to internal self-prompts. There are various types of prompts (i.e. physical, verbal, and gestural) and strategies for how to decrease dependence on them.

Always remember that it’s an extremely gradual process to move an individual from intense prompt dependence to self-sufficiency. As you begin trying new approaches, remember to pause and give wait time to encourage the thinking process, rather than immediately correcting the child.

In Summary

We hope you’re able to take these examples and use them to generate ideas for reducing your child’s dependence on prompts. This is a simple process that could be applied to just about any situation where you find your child is particularly dependent on your clear, explicit direction. The goal in every instance is to encourage independent problem solving. Remember to always reward the attempt, because taking action without waiting for direction is considered a success.

Recognizing a child’s areas of greatest intelligence, and strongest executive functions, can help create an effective plan to reduce prompt dependence. The most fun and engaging way to identify talents and strengths is to have them try some of our free games, which explore the full range of a child’s multiple intelligences and executive functioning skills.

Further Resources: Transition Planning For Students With Autism: Achieving Success on the Spectrum

rewards for chores

Creating a System of Rewards for Chores

Giving rewards for chores is an effective way to reinforce good behavior. Rewards are also a good motivator, but it takes more effort to get kids to actually complete the chores than simply rewarding them for doing so.

Getting kids to do chores involves creating a plan, providing structure, and giving them a sense of purpose. Rewards for chores is encouragement to continue going through the process day after day. But there has to be more to get them going in the first place. Visit Firstpost.com/.

One of the most effective methods of getting kids to do regular chores is chore charts. While there are great computer programs and mobile apps that keep track of chores, there’s still something to be said for the visual reinforcement of an old fashioned, printed out or hand-written chore chart.

Rewards for Chores Step One: Creating a Chore Chart

A big misconception about chore charts is that they’re only meant to list jobs, and other things the child should be doing. However, chore charts are far more effective if you look at them as a way to shape behavior. This is important to keep in mind, because doing regular chores around the house at an early age pays off later in life.

What you want to focus on with a chore chart is the behavior you want your child to eventually develop into a habit. Chores do not have to be limited to tasks like doing the dishes, folding laundry, cleaning the litter box, and so on. Household chores can involve anything that would be helpful for the child to develop into a lifelong habit. Some examples could include having them brush their teeth twice a day (find out here how important it is for kids to do this twice a day), pick up after themselves, hang their clothes up, make their bed, etc. Consider giving extra rewards or some kind of additional accolades if the task was completed independently.

When you’re creating a chore chart you want to list things that are easy for your child to do, even things that they may naturally do on their own anyway. The idea is to set them up for success. So you want to choose things they can do, but struggle with doing consistently over time. The very last “chore” at the end of the day could be reporting to you what they’ve accomplished. This will make it easy for you to monitor their progress without having to check off the chore chart multiple times throughout the day. Also consider the use of a companion app to help your child independently stay on track with their chores throughout the day. Read more at https://www.wtkr.com/.

Step Two: Determining Rewards for Doing Chores

Now, let’s get back to the main thing you wanted to learn about today. What are the appropriate rewards for chores your child has completed throughout the day? As a parent, it’s easy to go completely overboard with rewards for your child. We highly suggest you refrain from doing that. What you want to do is make the reward equal to the task they’ve been able to accomplish. You also want to make it meaningful for them. With that said, money isn’t always the best reward for children. Money doesn’t really have value to children in the same way that it does for adults. So, for some children, being rewarded with a favorite meal could be meaningful. This would be appropriate for accomplishing larger goals, whereas a small treat might be more appropriate for completing smaller tasks.

What would be helpful for your child, and to you as a parent, is determining what is most meaningful to your child when establishing this reward system. Once the rewards for chores have been determined, match them with a task (or series of tasks), and add them to the chore chart. Then the child will know exactly what to expect when completing chores, and it will be displayed on the chart for them to see as a means of encouragement.

Rewards for Chores: In Summary

Now you can see how chore charts and rewards tie in together, and hopefully you have a better idea of how to determine appropriate rewards for chores. Another way that rewards for chores pays off later in life is that it teaches the child about contracts at an early age. This is important because life is made up of contracts. Chores and rewards is one type of contract. School is another type of contract— when you fulfill a series of requirements you earn the right to graduate. Employment is another type of contract— fulfill your duties for the employer and earn a paycheck. Completing tasks on a chore chart to earn rewards will set your child up for success at fulfilling other contracts when they get older.

Identifying strengths and weaknesses in a student’s multiple intelligences can help guide you toward the areas that need the most attention when developing a plan for developing behavior with a chore chart. The most fun and engaging way to identify talents and strengths is to have them try some of our free games, which explore the full range of a child’s multiple intelligences and executive functioning skills.

hard-vs-soft-skills

Differences Between Soft Skills vs Hard Skills

In school and in the workplace an individual’s abilities are grouped into the general categories of soft skills vs hard skills. Let’s look at the difference between these two skill sets. Try out profit singularity ultra edition.

Soft Skills vs Hard Skills Examples

Hard Skills

Hard skills are learned through school or on-the-job training. These skills are specific to a particular job. For example:

  • A hard skill for a cashier is using a cash register.
  • A hard skill for a teacher would be lesson planning.
  • A hard skill for an electrician would be the ability to use specialized tools and machines. Check these ignite drops reviews.

Every job requires an individual to have a particular set of hard skills in order to perform their duties.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are non-specialized skills that may be useful no matter what an individual does for a living. You may also hear them referred to as “transferable skills” because you can transfer them from one job to another. Soft skills are often used in everyday situations as well, not just in the workplace. Examples of soft skills include:

  • The ability to work with a team
  • Communicating with others effectively and efficiently
  • Time management
  • Problem solving
  • Multitasking

As you can see, soft skills can be used in a variety of everyday situations. That’s the greatest difference between soft skills vs hard skills. The ability to use a cash register is really only useful while working as a cashier, whereas the ability to multitask is useful at just about every job.

As you may also gather from the above soft skills and hard skills list, while the two sets of skills are different from one another they are both necessary to be successful on the job.

Developing Soft Skills vs Hard Skills

Hard skills are more objective and concrete that soft skills. That means that once you learn how to do a particular task you would then possess that skill. Soft skills, on the other hand, are more difficult to develop. They are not learned through training sessions, rather, they are acquire over time by practicing them in the real world with other people.

Hard skills are easy to measure, as employers can get a fairly good idea of an individual’s hard skills by looking at their education, previous work experience, and certifications. Soft skills are more difficult to evaluate as they cannot be simply communicated through a cover letter or resume. Employers typically cannot evaluate soft skills without going through a job interview, or seeing how an individual performs during their first few weeks on the job. 

One thing that soft skills and hard skills have in common is that a particular skill may come naturally to some people, while others do not have such an easy time with them. So an individual should not be discouraged if he or she feels they don’t possess a particular soft skill. Just as a teacher can become more efficient at lesson planning over time, a person can also become more efficient at multitasking over time.

Another way to understand soft skills is by comparing them to executive functioning skills, as they are all technically soft skills. Executive functioning skills are learned in the same way as soft skills, they are not easy to evaluate, and they take time to develop. Like executive functioning skills, soft skills are also versatile and transferable from school, to work, to social situations, and to independence at home. For example — skills like pacing, self monitoring, taking initiative, and prioritization can be used at various times throughout one’s life.

By contrast, hard skills are specialized abilities and difficult to transfer outside of the situations in which they’re most useful. Cooking is a great hard skill to have, but it’s only useful when you’re in the kitchen preparing meals. Knowing how to build a computer is another skill that, while nice to have, is not something that can be transferred to other tasks.

That brings us to another term you may be familiar with — generalization. In terms of acquiring skills , generalization is the concept of using past learning in present situations. It allows people to transfer knowledge across multiple situations. This is something everyone can relate to, and it is directly tied to both soft skills and executive functioning skills. Take self monitoring and editing, for example. You may discover, in various situations, that using manners such as “please” and “thank you” evokes a more positive response than omitting those words. Knowing that, you would become conscious of using good manners more often.

In Summary

By now you should have a better idea of the differences between soft skills vs hard skills. Believe it or not, one way to evaluate a child’s soft skills and hard skills is through fun activities like computer games. We encourage you to introduce your son or daughter to Identifor’s unique selection of games, which can help identify the strengths in their skill sets.

Think of a person who can focus on a task for hours; recall obscure trivia facts; is always late to everything. These individuals have differing mastery of their Executive Functions.

Executive function skills refer to the mental processes that allow us to make plans, focus our attention, remember instructions, and multitask. You can think of EF skills as the brain’s filter  for removing distractions, and allowing us to prioritize tasks, achieve goals, and control impulses.

Effective coordination and control of EFs allows one to take in and process information, plan actions, and execute on those plans. Conversely, ineffective mastery of EFs result in behaviors that lead to difficulties in school and work environments.

Encouraging the development of executive function skills at an early age is critical for your child’s learning and development. EF skills also play a role in enabling good behavior and making healthy choices. There are special professionals that can go to your home and do a consult to understand what is going on with your children also with you can do the same home care visits with professionals for the senior citizens. Learn more about amarose skin tag remover.

George McCloskey, a leading researcher, practitioner and lecturer in the field of EF, developed with his colleagues the “Holarchical Model of Executive Functions” (HMEF), which explains the five different levels of executive control. Among the five levels, our focus is on “Self-Regulation” – the 33 separate EFs that can be grouped into 7 clusters, some of which are:

  • Attention cluster: Perceive, focus, sustain.
  • Engagement: Energize, initiate, stop, etc.
  • Memory cluster: Hold, store, retrieve, etc.
  • Solution cluster: Generate, plan, prioritize, etc.

Go to the Executive Function page or download Identifor’s EF Primer to learn more.

Executive Function Skills Really Begin Developing At Age 3-5

According to tests that measure different forms of executive function skills, results say that these skills begin to develop shortly after birth. Tests revealed the prime window for development of executive function skills is around ages 3-5. These skills continue to develop into early adulthood.

It’s important for parents to know that children are not inherently born with executive function skills. However, every child is born with the ability to develop them. It’s up to parents to provide children with the proper environment and activities to nurture these skills, otherwise development can be delayed or impaired altogether.

Providing the support children need to build EF skills at home is critical for proper development. It’s necessary to develop these skills at home while the child is young so they’re adequately prepared to perform these skills when they’re not under parental supervision, like at school or playing amongst their peers.

Parents can help encourage the development of a child’s EF skills in a number of ways, including:

  • Establishing routines
  • Modeling social behavior
  • Creating and maintaining supportive, reliable relationships.

In addition, it’s also important that the child have opportunities to exercise the development of EF skills through creative activities and social interactions. These are the Best sex pills.

Games For Assessing Executive Function Skills

One of those creative activities to assess your child’s skills can be games. Yes, games. Here you can find games that are not only fun, but are designed to assess EF skills. Let your child browse through our game selection and we’re sure they’ll find their next favorite game in no time.

Our games are a great, easily accessible solution that assess your’s EF skills while he/she is having fun at the same time. They have been specially designed to collect lots of data on how the player make decisions, react to information, etc.  Our system analyze all the data to prepare the Dashboard for parents and educators to provide an understanding of the player’s EF profile.

riasec assessment

RIASEC Assessment: Identify the Ideal Career Choices for Your Child

A RIASEC assessment is one of the starting points for helping students develop an educational plan for high school and college. RIASEC stands for:

  • Realistic
  • Investigative
  • Artistic
  • Social
  • Enterprising
  • Conventional

RIASEC test results can be used to match students up with appropriate career choices, which are determined by their abilities, interests, and traits. Educators can assist with RIASEC test interpretation and put the student on a path toward a career they’re best suited for.

A RIASEC assessment is unlike any other standardized test a student will take throughout their academic life. There are no right or wrong answers, and students can take as long as they need to complete it. The only requirement is that students are as honest as they can be with their answers. This is incredibly important, as being anything less than truthful can lead a student down the wrong career path.

Results from a RIASEC assessment can help identify the ideal types of careers for the individual student, based on John Holland’s six personality types.

  • A ‘realistic’ personality means the student may excel in jobs that require physical labor.  
  • An ‘investigative’ personality means the student may be suited for jobs that require them to analyze and solve problems.
  • An ‘artistic’ personality means the student may excel in a job that allows them to be creative.
  • A ‘social’ personality means the student will likely excel at working as part of a team.
  • An ‘enterprising’ personality means the student may be suited for jobs where they’re the boss.
  • A ‘conventional’ personality indicates the student is detail-oriented, well organized, and enjoys working with data.

Conducting a RIASEC Assessment

A RIASEC assessment doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted at school, or under the supervision of an educator. With the right tools, a RIASEC assessment can be completed from the comfort of the student’s own home.

Identifor has created a unique way to conduct a RIASEC assessment which, believe it or not, involves playing computer games. Identifor‘ s games have been designed to help individuals with autism spectrum disorder identify their RIASEC profile without a typical pencil-and-paper test.

When playing Identifor’s games, players are first presented with images of different types of activities and asked to select which one is more desirable. Based on their choices, and how they interact with the games, Identifor’s analytics engine will generate a RIASEC profile.

In most cases, we find that students with autism spectrum disorder are more likely to stay engaged with Identifor’s games than a pencil-and-paper test. That’s why we encourage you to introduce them to our games, as they can identify your child’s skills and abilities in a way that can’t be accomplished by simply writing a test.

Not sure if this is the right approach for your child? You’ll be happy to know Identifor games are always free to play, so you can see first-hand how they’ll keep your child engaged as you gain valuable insight into their traits and abilities.

Sign up for free, and your child can start playing right away on their computer or mobile device.

interactive learning games

Interactive Learning Games Online for College Students and Adults

A commonly held belief is that online games are a waste of a student’s time. Many believe online games don’t provide any value to a high school student, college student, or adult’s life and only distract from things that are more important. To them, we say you haven’t found the right games. Being the right game depends on the players perspective, if you like gambling, online games in online casinos like in 666Casino are the right games for you.

Not all games are designed purely for entertainment purposes. On the contrary, there are interactive learning games that are designed to complement a student’s education and improve cognitive function. What are also known as brain training games, interactive learning games online are the mental equivalent of regular gym workouts. The brain isn’t exactly a muscle, but it can still be exercised in a similar fashion.

Interactive Dentist Games can improve cognitive functions such as problem-solving, visual discrimination, and working memory. They can also be a means of assessing learning strengths that might apply to future goals.

Just like working out the body can improve physical performance, working out the mind with interactive learning games can improve cognitive performance over time. In this article, we’re going to focus on recommending some of the most accessible interactive educational games for students— the kind they can play on their phones! Turnkey igaming solution provider grants access to gameplay via mobile devices.

In order to get students to play these games regularly, they have to be designed in a way that easily fits into their lifestyle. Since they’re on their phones throughout the day anyway, it takes nothing to open an app and play some interactive learning games for 5-10 minutes a day. Here are 4 of the top apps for learning games that students can play on their iPhones or iPads. These are all “freemium” games— which means they are free to play on a limited basis, but full access requires a paid subscription.

Top 4 Interactive Learning Games for College Students

1. Lumosity

With over 85 million users, Lumosity is the biggest name in interactive learning games for adults and college students. It features over 30 games that are designed to challenge a student’s memory, attention span, problem-solving ability, reaction time, and more. Results are measured on the ‘Lumosity Performance Index’ scale, which provides insight into the student’s abilities and progression over time.

2. Elevate

Elevate focuses on what the individual student wants to get out of using it. For example– maybe the student is already strong in reading and writing but needs to improve their abilities in math and problem-solving. Elevate has a vast selection of games that are geared toward all subjects, and students are provided with a post-test report with insights into their results.

3. Memorado

Memorado is perhaps one of the most relaxing learning games out there. It’s designed with a pretty palette of pastel colors, which is accompanied by a pleasant soundtrack if played with the sound on. Memorado doesn’t offer anything drastically different compared to Lumosity or Elevate, though students may find it more enjoyable to use due to its unique attention to good design.

4. Identifor

We would be remiss not to mention our own mobile app, which can be downloaded for free on both iOS and Android. Unlike other apps on this list, Identifor has been designed specifically for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Identifor assists individuals with identifying their strengths and abilities. Insights provided by the Identifor app can be used to help develop educational and vocational plans. Identifor has proven to be a valuable tool for students, as well as parents, educators, and clinicians.

Follow these links to download Identifor for iPhone or Android.