Frequently asked questions

If you continue to get your child involved, then at some point they may be able to learn to do the chores independently while you relax! In addition, while doing chores with you, the child learns many things: how to work with another person, vocabulary about household items and actions, causal factors for conditions, sequenced steps, basic science concepts (e.g. absorption, impact of heat on materials), tool usage, problem solving, and more.

If you use visual referencing, as opposed to language, the child learns to look at your face. Since the face is the source of most social information, it is very important that the child learns to shift their source of information to faces.

Some suggestions for incorporating the daily use of visual referencing are: offering two items and visually referencing the one the child should take; letting the child know where to put something based on a general statement, like "over there", paired with a visual reference.

As our goal is to have the child be attuned to the face, i.e., to gain information from the person's face, the more we use visual referencing to guide the child, the more the child learns to look to the face to gain information.

In the beginning, using declarative language can be difficult. Start by choosing one activity to practice using declarative language. You can even 'translate' the commands you typically use during that activity into declarative language ahead of time (e.g. instead of "get the plate", say "we don't have a plate"). Once you become a declarative language expert, you should try to use it at least 80% of the time.

Since we want to get things done, we are used to using and giving commands. It can be difficult to reset our brains to instead use declarative statements when we are comfortable with commands.

A patterned activity is one in which one person has one role and another person has another role. These roles are defined ahead and each person stays in his assigned role, e.g. one person gives and the other puts/ one person sprays and the other wipes/ one person soaks up the liquid and the other squeezes the sponge/ one person scoops and the other spreads.

No! Once you learn what a patterned activity is about, you can set up a patterned activity about anything you are doing in the household, e.g. apples into the refrigerator/ boxes into the cabinet/ shoes into a box/ wiping a table/ drying dishes/ washing dishes, etc.

Since a pattern is established, the child knows what she needs to do and can feel competent participating. Competence is a better motivator than M&M's!

Coordination is when two people align their actions but don't have to be doing the exact same movements. For example, when walking we coordinate our walking to match manner, pace, stop and go but we don't have to move in exactly the same way.

The ability to look to the face for information about emotional reactions. The ability to share facial expressions reflecting emotional states with another person.

Social interaction is based on being attuned to other people: reading others' reactions to what he is doing or what I am doing or saying; figuring out what a person might be thinking about based on the person's eye gaze.