How To Build Frustration Tolerance and Life Skills Using Timers
Frustration tolerance is an important life skill which can be used to build many other skills, as well. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from ABA is that my child does not need to go through life feeling helpless. He can be empowered. When he reached age six I noticed he still needed help putting on his seatbelt. I could have continued to do it entirely for him, but instead, with the experience of ABA, I broke the task down into pieces.
I would pull the seatbelt down, but I’d use hand-over-hand to have him guide the buckle into the clip and push it til it clicked. I’d guide his hands every time until he’d built the muscle memory and could do that part himself. Then I started teaching him the motion of pulling the seatbelt down, until he could eventually do the whole process on his own.
By breaking tasks down into manageable parts you can teach your child essential life skills. Timers are hugely helpful in this endeavor. Think of a life skill you’ve been wanting your child to learn, and imagine how you can break the skill down into easy to learn pieces, start with one small piece at a time, and gradually add more.
Here’s how a timer can help build a skill of social interaction. For a child who is upset by social interactions, you can gradually increase levels of interaction and time exposure.
For example, help your child tolerate another child sitting at the same table; ten seconds at a time. Show them the timer, and demonstrate that the other child leaves after ten seconds are up. Offer a reward at the end of the ten seconds. You’ll want to pick a reward that is motivating for your child (and another reward for the other child who is participating in helping your child build this skill).
Once the child has mastered allowing another child to sit with them for ten seconds at a time–mastered, meaning not reacting with a maladaptive behavior–then you can add another level of social interaction.
You can help your child learn to share by encouraging them to hand a preferred toy to another child, or using hand over hand to share the toy, or by directly handing their toy to another child, and having the other child give the toy back after ten seconds.
This builds trust that your child will get their toy back after sharing. You can gradually increase the time of tolerating sharing to several minutes or longer.
Finally, you can teach the skill of playing together with the same method. You can start with something simple like catch, and build up to more advanced games which teach social interaction skills.
Gradually increasing time, levels, and components of various skills is an effective way to prepare your child to interact with the world on their terms, and achieve some level of interdependence.
Thank you for visiting! For the full book CLICK here;
Universe Rules 