The Power of Routines for Shaping Behavior

I came across this article the other day by the program manager of "More Than Words - The Hanen Program for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder."  Here is a summary of the article.

The beauty of daily routines is that they provide recurrent opportunities for learning in a naturalistic, yet structured way.  Routines include bathing, feeding, diaper changing, riding in a car - anything that a parent does with his or her child every day.

Children learn a variety of skills and knowledge through participation in daily routines, such as:

• Social Roles - such as how to initiate and respond in socially appropriate ways, to understand the words that people say and how to participate with others as an equal conversational partner. In order for children to learn how to initiate, parents need to give opportunities to children to do so.  Initially, the parent is leading the routine and doing most of the work, but as they child learns and develops the skills to participate, opportunities need to be available for the child to initiate and participate more.  The parents job is to teach the routine and then be willing to watch for and respond to cues the child provides.
• Understanding Meaning of Words - by making routines language rich experiences (talking about what you are doing and what the child is doing and labeling things), parents are able to "map" words onto objects and through many experiences with the same words, children are able to attach meaning to the words.

Here are some guidelines for making daily routines into learning opportunities.

1. Break routines into a series of small consistent steps, so that there's a shared understanding of how the routine goes.  It may be helpful to visually represent the routine through a series of pictures to make it easier for the child to know what he is supposed to do.
2. Be flexible.  Young children learn best when you follow their lead.  If the child wants to roll on the bed when he's putting on his pajamas, instead of trying to eliminate this behavior, work it into the routine by saying, "First, put on your pajamas and then you can roll on the bed."  If the child sees that there is a reward for following the steps of the routine, he'll be more likely to comply.  And just as much learning can take place in a playful game of rolling on the bed as in putting on pajamas!
3. Label what the child's interested in at the very moment it seems to be his focus.  Studies show that the most important aspect of an adult's language input in helping children's word comprehension is timing.  For example, if the child looks at pizza and the adult labels the cup, what the parent says won't help the child crack the language code at all.
4. Be creative.  Routines can be made out of anything that the parent and the child do together regularly.  Routines can be created around planing flowers, changing a bandage or baking cookies.  The best learning opportunities are the ones that are the most fun.