Autism Motor and Cognitive Skills: 10 Essential Tips for Parents

A psychologist and a behavior therapist share their top tips for parents looking to improve their autistic children’s motor and cognitive skills.

As a parent of a child diagnosed with autism, you might constantly worry about current goals and targets. You may worry about your child missing a milestone (or even a few!), leading to never catching up with peers. What about the future? You may fret about your child finding a job, love, and having children of their own.

These are all legitimate fears, but they are legitimate fears for all parents. Your autistic child’s specific missed milestones may be more evident, especially if they are receiving therapy or specialized education. Your child’s teacher, speech therapist, or occupational therapist might note each target and the progress (or sometimes lack of progress) your child has made in their session or during the day.

This is a lot of pressure, not only on you as a parent, but also on your child and your entire family unit. If we were judged on the progress we make on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, we may feel differently about the importance of each of these goals.

It is a tricky subject, as I don’t want you to feel that goals and targets are not important or relevant. Rather, a little less intensity could be helpful when it comes to the pursuit of goals on a daily basis.

We know, from lived experience, that children progress according to their individual abilities, needs, and motivation. We also know that if children are engaged with interest-based activities, they learn more naturally. I have combined our top 10 tips that incorporate these findings.

1. Choose your goals strategically

As a parent, you might be receiving feedback from an array of professionals, each with their own specific goals and ways for you to either generalize or practice at home. Remember that your child is going to therapy for these goals and that ideally, generalization should happen naturally. Yes, there are concepts we can work on as parents, at home, but you can choose which goals you feel would be good to work on with your child.

Look at what he or she is good at and start with those. You want to set your child up for success, but also yourself. You don’t want to tackle the most difficult task (one that your child does not enjoy) and then focus on this during “downtime”.

2. Reframe these goals

Once you have chosen the goals that you feel are most important (and easier to introduce) for your child, you can now take a bit of time to reframe these. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), clients (children and adults) work on reframing a specific perceived problem in a more positive way. You can do this with targets and goals, too! If your child needs to work on math, you can reframe it as “counting blueberries to bake a cake” or “let’s become pilots and do some pilot skills.”

It doesn’t need to sound like or look like math from school. You can give it a twist and create interest-based activities. It is the concept we want our child to learn, not the actual worksheet (that often can be quite generic and “not that fun”).

3. Take breaks – and generalize

We often hear that our child is doing exceptionally well in one environment with a specific task, but struggles to generalize to other environments. This is a great opportunity to create an arts and crafts activity (if your child enjoys these) and generalize the spelling or handwriting from school with clay, for example.

There are some extremely creative Instagram pages for parents to learn from: try @crafty.moms, @oyunla_ogreniyorum, or @aims.global on Instagram for some great ideas!

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4. Think of the future, but not too much 

Yes, it is absolutely normal to worry about the future of our children, but we want to keep in mind that they are on their own journey. They will become the best versions of themselves with our support and love. As a parent, currently reading a magazine focusing on supporting your child, I am confident in saying that you are doing just that: providing the love and support your child requires to become the best version of themselves. 

Something else to keep in mind is that the future we envision for our children might be a little different from their idea of what they want to do, what they are interested in, and where they want to expend their energy. Personally, I think my parents still believe I am going to study law…

5. Be mindful and present, when possible

When you have a moment, try to be fully present with your child. Leave your phone—pinging with important emails—in another room. Focus on completing one generalization activity, one that is fun for both of you, without any distractions.

We often limit screen time for our children, but forget that while we do a countdown, we check our messages or scroll through social media. Although it serves as a coping skill at times, to unwind, we know there are better ways. Instead, try a short meditation or a walk. I am a firm believer that decreasing social media intake is always a good idea.

6. Validate your child’s feelings, big and small

As mentioned before, our feelings about our child’s future might differ from theirs. This is also true for our differing emotional states—especially the way it relates to a specific event. As a parent, we might feel that missing our child’s soccer game is a big deal, whereas our child might not seem to notice that much; but if you misplace their favorite Pokémon card, they might have a full-blown tantrum. This might not make sense to us, although it makes sense to our child. It is a big emotion that they definitely feel and experience to the full. We should validate those feelings. Give your child a hug and let them know you understand their disappointment.

Look for the missing card and remind them that you love them. Once, It took me half a day to find a missing Lego piece, one of a thousand. That half a day was not lost when I received a massive hug and happy tears at the end of the successful search!

7. Validate your OWN feelings, big and small

And now for the most important point on this list: validate your own feelings. It is completely fair and much needed for you to take a day off or even a weekend away. You should also validate your own feelings, not only about your child and what all these added goals may mean to them, but to you, too. How are you feeling about less time for yourself, your child’s sibling(s), and added stress and worry?

It is normal to feel overwhelmed. There is help and support out there for you, too, if you need it. If you feel sad, cry; if you feel angry, shout; if you feel happy, laugh. We can always shelter our children from our feelings, but we don’t want to be dishonest with ourselves and our partners.

8. Social Stories, with a twist

Many times, the goals your child receives from school or therapies do not make sense to them. The association of the actual goal and concept with their own life doesn’t seem to match. This is where social stories may come in handy.

Most of us are familiar with social stories, where you include real events in a made-up story to teach your child how they could react to scenarios. To shake it up, include photos of your child and their friends or peers. Personalize the activity even more by asking your child to come up with possible reactions or behaviors for the characters.

If your child struggles to communicate their needs, you can create a social story with their face as one of the characters. Use the story to show them why it’s important to communicate, whether expressively or with an AAC (Augmentative or Alternative Communication) device, such as an iPad. If you go through the self-made storybook at night, it might help them recognize the association between the goal or target (to communicate more) and their own life.

9. Affirmation diary, for you and your child

An “affirmation diary” is always a great way to increase motivation for any child. Have a diary next to their bed and write down one thing they did exceptionally well that day (this should include the goals you are working on). Read these with them every night and go through the previous night’s affirmations too. It is always a great idea to share something positive right before a child goes to sleep. “Sleep is the best meditation” – Dalai Lama. Imagine meditating about what you did well for 8 hours!

10. Boundaries

Many of us struggle with personal boundaries. Sometimes this comes in the shape of a lack of firm boundaries with our parents-in-law or our own mother. What about boundaries regarding what we can and want to take on, as far as our child’s development is concerned? We want what is best for our children, but how can we offer this if we don’t have boundaries concerning our own responsibility?

Listing what you are willing to help the therapists with can help with creating boundaries. You still want to ensure you have “off-time” with your child, where there are no expectations of introducing or generalizing goals. 

I hope these tips will help with motor and cognitive skills, in addition, I hope it provides some insight about streamlining goals and targets for your child. . You are doing a fantastic job, and I want to thank you for reading this.