So on a slightly different note to my other thread, if I may? SENCo said something about a visual time table...

[NatalieJane]

What is it? Where do I start?

Am I to fill a wall with pictures?

Am completely clueless

Visual timetables work well with some children, they dont with others (ask Starlight ) but my DS is a visual learner so we are hoping they will help him.

My Ds uses them. He has a little flip chart thing that shows what he is going to do in the morning - get up, change nappy, get dressed, have breakfast, go to school, once he has done the task we flip it over.

He doesnt really take alot of notice at the moment but its in preperation for school - he uses one at preschool for different things there.

as shadeofviolet said they do not work with all children. my ds uses a simplified version. we only use them a key times of the day. we use individual cards for breakfast, meds, wash and brush teeth, get dressed then his reward which is tv time. they are stuck on a cupboard door when he has finished one, he removes it and places it in a box.

There is an assumption that children with communcation difficulties, and particularly autism have difficulties ordering their world and find anything un-predictable stressful and confusing which is shown by their difficult/rigid or melt-down behaviour.

This assumption is true probably for the majority.

A visual timetable gives some predictability and order to the day. It is done with pictures because it is assumed verbal communication as well as working memory is poor.

If your child can be told and remember 'first we'll get up, have our breakfast, get in the car and go to grandma's' then you possibly don't need them. But if not, you can reduce anxiety about what is going to happen by presenting it visually and going through it with him before it happens.

It can help with learning routines and sequences too, like toileting i.e. first pull trousers down, then pants, then sit, then wipe, then pull up pants, then trousers, then turn the taps on, then put soap on hands etc etc etc.

If you look at sparklebox or google "pyramid+PECS" you will see some examples

So for e.g. if DS2 is eating breakfast and I say when you have finished we will brush your teeth and get you washed and dressed, if he doesn't then go into melt down when I say it is time to brush teeth etc. he doesn't need a visual timetable? Or he doesn't need one for those circumstances?

He doesn't bother too much in the morning as long as his routines are all followed, it is more dinner time through to bed time he struggles with, and is the most likely time for him to have a meltdown due to events taking place.

Thanks Agnes, will go take a look, even if he doesn't need one, am quite interested in a geeky sort of way!

Well NJ, why don't you make one for the bedtime routine and see what happens. You need to go through it with him before the critical meltdown time.

You can get velcro on a roll and just have a line stuck to the hall wall or something, or a portable board, with the sequence on it.

And wrt morning I wouldn't bother. Why create a solution to a problem he doesn't have?

So do I go through it all at once? Change the picture as the activity changes? Or say we'll be changing the picutre in a minute and give him the verbal warning as well? He does react to the verbal warnings fairly well in the mornings, but it goes out of the window in the evening, I guess he's tired etc.

Don't mind telling you, I am in way over my head with all of this. We are a month down the line from when the HV first saw him, and since then I've done nothing but fill in forms, sort a nursery, fill in more forms, read as much as I can, fill in more forms, but I don't feel like I'm any closer to understanding what is going on, I know absolutely nothing, and yet everyone (including me) is expecting me to know everything. Everytime I think I've got a bit of a handle on a situation or what happens next, or what the rough outlines of a plan in formation are, it all changes again.

And so many people keep saying things like 'He's a boy' 'X was waaaaaay worse than that and he's alright' 'he's just being stubborn/spreading his wings/testing the boundries/whatever other nonsense that seems to be spilling out all over the place, none of it is helpful, none of it makes a jot of difference to the life DS2 is leading. And it seems to be getting worse all the time, as I am reading more and more there are more things that I didn't know that are part of an ASD, so they haven't gone on the form I had to fill in for the assessment for this bloody statementing thingy, or the DLA forms.

Sorry am banging on again about nothing to do with the thread, I am just having trouble getting my head around it all. One minute he is fine, hard work but fine, the next he has an ASD and we're just left to it, the HV has been great but there is no one that can spend the time we do with him and can advise us on how we handle him. It is like someone has handed us a warehouse full of Ikea furniture to make up, with no instructions.

this person has helped a number of us make sense of things as well as advise on next steps