Increasing Language in Children with Autism Through a Shoebox

As some of you may know, I’ve been a behavior
analyst since 2003 and worked for the Pennsylvania Verbal Behavior Project, which was a statewide
grant from 2003 to 2010. When I left the project, I began working in
the early intervention field with very young children through a contract with the birth
to three provider in my county. It was in 2010 when I started to develop my
own step by step procedures to help kids who were not talking or just talking a little
bit and had what I call pop out words. So today I want to share with you one of the
procedures that I created, um, early on, starting in around 2010 using a shoe box to get more
language. Hi, I’m doctor Mary Barbera from marybarbera.com
and each week I provide parents and professionals like you with some of my ideas about turning
autism around. So if you haven’t subscribed to my youtube
channel, you should do that now. Back in January of 2019 I also started a weekly
podcast called Turn Autism Around, so you can check that out either on my website or
by searching Turn Autism Around on iTunes. Today I want to discuss this procedure using
a shoe box that I created um when I started working in the early intervention field with
very young children, one, two and three year olds who were either not saying any words
or were saying some words, but I was having trouble establishing what we behavior analysts
call echoic control. So echoic control is I say ball, you say ball. And for many of our young children with and
without autism, um, they might have words, but if, unless you know how, know procedures
to get those words out, it’s really hard to teach them. And so developing the ability to get echoic
control is always, um, the best, the best situation because a lot of times with kids,
especially with autism, the flood gates then open and we get more and more language. Way back some of my very first video blogs
where with a little girl named Mia and you can, um, look at those video blogs now. And they were, I went out to Mia’s house
and I consulted with her, um, and she was talking, but it was, you know, months of intervention
and, and the parents and professionals working where they’re still didn’t have any echoic
control. She had these pop out words. I was really kind of wondering what the best
way to quickly gain instructional control and get the ability to produce more, a lot
more language. Whether you know a lot about the analysis
of verbal behavior or not. We want to, when we can focus on the mand,
which is, um, an operate, which means like you have a word but you use it because you
want something. So if somebody says to me, my child has 10
words, so the word, what are the words? Okay, cookie drink, banana out. Um, mommy, Daddy, tree, Sun, you know, whatever
the 10 words are. Okay, great. How does your child use those words? Oh, well when they want to go outside, they
say out and I open the door when they want a banana, they say banana I give them a banana. So those are both examples of mands of requests. So they want something, they say the word
and they get it. But a lot of times the words like with Mia,
I remember her mom would hold up a cup with Dora the explorer characters on it and Mia
would just say Dora boots, whatever the character’s names were. And she would label them or tact them. But when she wanted something she would cry. So she had tacts but not mands. And with early learner programming, what I
found over the years was that it’s really hard to separate out the different operants
when you’re talking about early learners. So a lot of my early learner programs that
I recommend, like the shoe box, which I’m going to talk about in a second, are actually
a combination of, uh, the operants together. So what I would recommend is you get a shoe
box. Now in Mia’s situation, we came up with
the box idea and mom had a pasta box. So we used the pasta box. You can use any box. I find that a shoe box with a lid that’s attached
is the best thing and you can cut a slit into it. Obviously this lid is just hacked with a scissor. I had a client that was very exact and she
wanted a perfect little slit. Whatever you can do, then you can gather pictures
of family members. Um, but if you gather pictures of family members,
make sure it’s one person per picture. So if it’s mommy, it’s just mommy. It’s not mommy holding a ball or mommy on
a bicycle or mommy with a hat on because that might be confusing. So picture of just one person and the picture
pretty close up so that the child can see the face. Um, but I’d also recommend that you go to
the dollar store and get pictures of, you know, uh, just various items. So monkey for instance. So monkey, two syllable word. Lots of little kids know monkey. Okay, we’ll keep that. Sun, yes, sun is, is a good one syllable word. So when you start to think about like what
words your child might come in contact with, you know, sun would be one thing. So now in this packet we’re also going to
have things like X-ray. A two or three year old child that’s not
talking, doesn’t need to learn to X-ray because it’s an x and no. So I would exclude that. I might exclude flower because it has a blend. Unless the child is really into flowers and
exposed to a lot. Kites that depends if they have any exposure,
yes or no. Turtle, kind of a little kid kind of word. Um, so two syllables. Okay. We’ll take it. Lemon depends on the child. Um, tent again, if they’re not exposed to
tents, then no. Um, cake. Yeah. Everybody is unfortunately exposed to sugar
and cake. Um, fish. Yes. Okay. So we have some words and maybe we have some
pictures of family members too. And we would want to sit diagonal from the
child. And then we would want to, um, say the words
one at a time. And we would say them if we can three times
fish, fish, fish, we give it to the child. We have the child all the child and has to
do is put the fish in the box. They don’t have to say it, they don’t, you
know, they, we want to pair up the ability for them to want to put it in the box. So what happens then if a child, does echo
cake or some part of cake, it is, they want it to put it in the box because this will
become a reinforcing activity. So they want it so it’s part mand, they’re
labeling it. So it’s part tact. They’re echoing you because I’m going to say
cake. So it’s part of Echo. Um, it’s part receptive ability, you know,
cause and effect following directions sitting at the table with me. So we’re pairing up so many things, um, at
the same time, but because it has a mand component in place because they want it to put it in
the box. What I find is if we really focus on 10 or
20 words and we pair them that the child, some children will pick up some words or partial
start word approximations and this is extremely exciting. So that’s why I feel a shoe box is one of
the best tools in the house usually that you can find and some pictures of family members
that you hopefully have laying around that you can use. Um, and the dollar store cards to get language
going. And I also did a video blog a little while
ago on the shoe box with a little bit more explanation of the shoe box procedure. I also have a free download, uh, explaining
more step by step about how to do this shoe box program at home. One of the things I will say is if you are
not engaging with a shoe box and the child and the cards to actually have them not uh,
laying around, that the child could get into some weird stim behavior to put it up on a
shelf and to engage a child when you are available. Um, because I have found that sometimes when
you let it be free access, it just, uh, kind of loses it’s therapeutic value. That’s my little tip of the day. You can use this in preschool settings and
for even for older kids who are not yet talking, you can use this for older kids as well, and
you can certainly use this within homes and to get engagement, going to get responding,
going and hopefully to get some language going as well. So again, if you like this, leave me a comment,
download the free six, I think six-step, a guide about how to set up your own shoebox
program. I would love to see you here next week.