Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post for teach2talk but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
For kids with autism and other disabilities that affect social interaction, it can be a struggle to teach them about everyday interactions. We are lucky that our girls get a chance to work with their guidance counselors from time to time to learn about issues that can be challenging. For example, Amelia right now is working with hers to learn about what true friendship is and to lay the groundwork for understanding bullying.
Introducing Autism App: Behaviors with Friends
Kids can make a good choice or bad choice and see how that action plays out.
For most parents, these topics are a struggle to convey (raising my hand). That’s why I’m happy to share with you a new app, Teach2Talk’s Behaviors with Friends. This app easily lets your child walk through a video scenario and teaches her to make good decisions, solve problems and interact properly with her peers in typical social settings, such as playdates and car rides. Some of the issues dealt with in the Behaviors with Friends app include:
- resolving conflicts without tantrums or other negative behaviors
- sharing
- taking turns
- telling the truth
- bullying
- dealing with anger and frustration
- being nice
- encouraging others
- body boundaries
This autism behavior app allows your child to select Easy or Normal. There is also a “Sticker Book” section, where they can earn stickers a as they progress through the videos. Each story tells you what it’s about (i.e., “Sharing Toys”) and then launches into a video with voiceover which describes the problem. Kids get to select choices – the good choice or the bad choice. Animated characters lay over the video to help kids get through the video. Then kids can choose to move forward or watch again.
The character helps reward the appropriate choice.
Behaviors with Friends, created by Teach2Talk, is available at the iTunes app store for download for $19.99. This app is a wonderful resource to support kids who have trouble with social cues and help them learn to build friendships with proper behaviors. It’s also great for homeschoolers and also for moms like me, who need all the help we can get teaching our kids! As co-founder Sarah Scheflen says, “Behavior issues are a common complaint from parents. Parents need strategies to help teach their children how to behave. Behavior with Friends not only teaches children how to behave appropriately, but also provides tips to parents on how to implement their own behavior modifications.” As for me, I’m selecting my iPad to remain on the homepage and using this autism behavior app as a task to do when the kids get out early on Wednesdays!
teach2talk™ produces educational resources for children, which target core speech and language, play and social skills using techniques including video modeling and was co-founded by Sarah Clifford Scheflen, M.S., CCC-SLP and Jenny McCarthy. You can find Teach2talk on Twitter or Facebook.
Sarah Clifford Scheflen, M.S., CCC-SLP is a pediatric clinical speech–language pathologist who specializes in working with children with autism and other developmental disorders. Sarah is the founder of Scheflen Speech–Language Pathology, Inc., her private practice in Santa Monica, California, and she is also the senior speech–language pathologist on staff at an intensive partial–hospitalization program located at a major public research university in Los Angeles, California. Jenny McCarthy is a The New York Times® best–selling author, actress, producer and comedian. More importantly, she is “mom” to her son Evan, who received a diagnosis of autism with associated language, social, and play delays in 2005. Check out Jenny on Twitter.
