advice on helping an autistic child with sensory stimuli
Hello #Autistic #Autism Mastodonians. I am a ballet teacher and I am looking for some advice to help one of my autistic students succeed in class. She is both very visual and tactile and easily overstimulated, and one of the things she does to self-soothe is touch stuff. Unfortunately for me, the things she wants to touch are my laptop, the stereo, the light switches, and the air purifiers, all of which really shouldn't be messed with as they will interrupt class. Would it be beneficial if I provided her with something she was allowed to touch instead, like a boom box not hooked up to anything - something with buttons and switches but which won't cause any disruption to the flow of class? I ran this question by her mother as well, and I'll talk to her about it when I next see her in class, but she is only 7 and is still learning what works for her so I was hoping some other #ActuallyAutistic folks could provide me with some insight.
advice on helping an autistic child with sensory stimuli
@awkwardlefty_cj
It depends on the individual and how they see things (i.e. what kinda support they derive from it), but I can give my perspective: a lot of the value of such objects for me is the fact that they're constant parts of the class that I've already seen and mapped out in my brain. So they're mentally a comfortable place to retreat to.
Practically, that means that - at least from the students' perspective, i.e. around the time she's there in the room - this additional boom box or whatever object should also be a constant in the room. That'll help the chances of it being beneficial to them.
@digital_carver Thank you for this input! This is similar to what her mom told me, that if she can have a space to go to when she needs to self soothe or needs more time to process it will help her. She definitely prefers order and consistency. In a way, these attributes make ballet a perfect hobby for her because it is so focused on repetition and structure.