Dubai Autism Center .
5 Tips for Motivating Kids with Autism to Exercise
Motivating kids can be a challenge. Motivating kids with autism to exercise is often more than some parents are willing to put the investment into trying. Of course, parents of kids with autism are incredibly busy, and just meeting day to day needs is often the only priority they have. To that, I have two points:
Exercise is a requirement that deserves day to day attention to maintain a healthy, balanced life.
Exercise can have incredible benefits to help focus and calm kids while helping to regulate emotions through out the day making other activities and daily interactions much more manageable and time effective.
Therefore, making daily exercise a priority and a habit can have amazing benefits to make the rest of the daily activities much easier. This will be accomplished much more effectively if the child is intrinsically motivated themselves. One of the most important points to consider is how to motivate your child to exercise of their own will. Asking your child to continually perform exercises just for a small reward will not last long, but helping your child to find enjoyment in exercise will promote life-long fitness..
Here are a few key tips for helping to motivate your child with autism to exercise:
1: Teach new exercises in a familiar setting.
The gym or other standard exercise areas such as a playground or park can often be overwhelming with a plethora of equipment, noise, and other people. However, basic exercises can easily be taught and practiced first in your child’s room, your home, or your backyard. When ready, transfer the familiar exercise to a new setting or add other variables.
2: Encourage individual learning and experimenting:
We’ve found that when we give our athletes the option to pick some of their workouts themselves, these tend to be the exercises that they are the most motivated to accomplish well. You are there to assure your child is performing correctly and safely, but they will feel independent and intrinsically motivated by doing exercises they enjoy and choose themselves.
3: Provide a way to visually see progress:
We have started using check-lists in our gym, a simple table with 5-10 exercises in the rows, and days of the weeks in the columns. The checklists get placed on the athlete’s refrigerator, door, etc. and they get to check off the list themselves when they complete exercises. We also add a section at the bottom allowing the participant to make up an exercise, allowing for independent exploration (point 2 above). Changing the checklist goals and exercises each week takes 5 minutes in a word document and keeps the tasks fresh. For a sample checklist to use, send us a comment we’ll email you one that we use.
4: Structure the workout so that a difficult activity is followed by an easier, more fun one:
This simple idea of rewarding a good behavior allows the participant to complete a difficult exercise, and then be rewarded with more exercise, a win-win that will also make exercise a reward that is sought after. Example: The child loves bean bag tosses, but doesn’t like squats. Reward 10 well done squats with a few minutes of bean bag tosses, explaining that the bean bag toss is a reward for the well done behavior of squats.
5: Be consistent!
This is important for any individual on any exercise, training, or diet program, and even more important for our athletes with autism. Consistency will help to alleviate the stress of performing something new that is physically demanding, and will make it easier to slowly incorporate more difficult exercises. It will also help them to achieve a greater overall physical ability and promote better health.
Remember, knowing your child or athlete is very important. Think about where they are most comfortable, what cues work best for them, what environment stress make new tasks difficult, and at what speed they can be introduced to new activities. No one knows your child better than you, so you are the expert in maintaining an exercise program that is the right level for your child. But with that said, as is true with anybody, remember that you are there to push them past the point of comfort to reach the next level of gym
Motivating kids can be a challenge. Motivating kids with autism to exercise is often more than some parents are willing to put the investment into trying. Of course, parents of kids with autism are incredibly busy, and just meeting day to day needs is often the only priority they have. To that, I have two points:
Exercise is a requirement that deserves day to day attention to maintain a healthy, balanced life.
Exercise can have incredible benefits to help focus and calm kids while helping to regulate emotions through out the day making other activities and daily interactions much more manageable and time effective.
Therefore, making daily exercise a priority and a habit can have amazing benefits to make the rest of the daily activities much easier. This will be accomplished much more effectively if the child is intrinsically motivated themselves. One of the most important points to consider is how to motivate your child to exercise of their own will. Asking your child to continually perform exercises just for a small reward will not last long, but helping your child to find enjoyment in exercise will promote life-long fitness..
Here are a few key tips for helping to motivate your child with autism to exercise:
1: Teach new exercises in a familiar setting.
The gym or other standard exercise areas such as a playground or park can often be overwhelming with a plethora of equipment, noise, and other people. However, basic exercises can easily be taught and practiced first in your child’s room, your home, or your backyard. When ready, transfer the familiar exercise to a new setting or add other variables.
2: Encourage individual learning and experimenting:
We’ve found that when we give our athletes the option to pick some of their workouts themselves, these tend to be the exercises that they are the most motivated to accomplish well. You are there to assure your child is performing correctly and safely, but they will feel independent and intrinsically motivated by doing exercises they enjoy and choose themselves.
3: Provide a way to visually see progress:
We have started using check-lists in our gym, a simple table with 5-10 exercises in the rows, and days of the weeks in the columns. The checklists get placed on the athlete’s refrigerator, door, etc. and they get to check off the list themselves when they complete exercises. We also add a section at the bottom allowing the participant to make up an exercise, allowing for independent exploration (point 2 above). Changing the checklist goals and exercises each week takes 5 minutes in a word document and keeps the tasks fresh. For a sample checklist to use, send us a comment we’ll email you one that we use.
4: Structure the workout so that a difficult activity is followed by an easier, more fun one:
This simple idea of rewarding a good behavior allows the participant to complete a difficult exercise, and then be rewarded with more exercise, a win-win that will also make exercise a reward that is sought after. Example: The child loves bean bag tosses, but doesn’t like squats. Reward 10 well done squats with a few minutes of bean bag tosses, explaining that the bean bag toss is a reward for the well done behavior of squats.
5: Be consistent!
This is important for any individual on any exercise, training, or diet program, and even more important for our athletes with autism. Consistency will help to alleviate the stress of performing something new that is physically demanding, and will make it easier to slowly incorporate more difficult exercises. It will also help them to achieve a greater overall physical ability and promote better health.
Remember, knowing your child or athlete is very important. Think about where they are most comfortable, what cues work best for them, what environment stress make new tasks difficult, and at what speed they can be introduced to new activities. No one knows your child better than you, so you are the expert in maintaining an exercise program that is the right level for your child. But with that said, as is true with anybody, remember that you are there to push them past the point of comfort to reach the next level of gym
"Life on the Autism Spectrum can be ENJOYable."
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Thanks for sharing.