Hi there,

I'm a student Speech and Language Therapist and I have a boy with Autism who is in the mainstream classroom. He has many difficulties, but is verbal and can write (he has very good spelling actually). The teacher wants him to write more imaginative pieces of work, as he tends to write very little about a few subjects. He also finds writing very difficult because of his motor skills. Do you have any suggestions on how we could develop his writing? Is this possible?

Hope you can help.

Cheers Daisy

Hi Daisy,

Yes there are ways to help children with autism write more creative pieces of work, providing they have the skills. One way is to act out an event with the child and then get them to write about it. If they act it out a few times, it may give them a bit of a blue-print to work from. It is always good to give them a bit of 1:1 guidance when they are writing this. Another way to start things off, is to have a pre-made piece of written work, but to leave certain descriptive words out and let the child use there imagination and choose the missing words. Over time you can omit more words as the child gets better at writing.

If the child has poor motor skills and writing is difficult and slow, consider using a laptop or something like an Alphasmart (see www.alphasmart.com).

I will be doing a program and possibly a downloadable video on this subject in the coming months, so look out for that.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask more questions.

Regards Johan