Reward chart for child with ASD - can they work and how?

[TapselteerieO]

DS is nearly 9 (HFA) and we recently moved LA and he is at a new school, so his new teacher is trying to understand how to support ds and get him to "participate in class activities".

We have offered our own ideas(timer, simple instructions, advance warning about changing activities), but the teacher also wants to start some kind of extra reward chart (over and above points children get in class towards achievement rewards) - this is to replace home/school diary. The rewards/stamps would be for participation/independence - I think - we were in a meeting at school so lots of other stuff discussed too.

Dh and me are concerned that when these charts come home, weekly, we won't know why he has/hasn't achieved a certain number of stamps - but we want to support the teacher and make it as easy for him as possible whilst making the reward meaningful for our ds. I would prefer a home school diary, bullet points would be fine saying participated well in xyz but refused/reluctant to do maths/other activity and then briefly outline what solutions were tried. Then we can talk to our ds and try and get to the bottom of any issues - ds not good at communicating about school (no child is?).

Anyone here using reward charts that convey some information over the normal face type thing? I am not sure ds will be motivated or understand what these extra stamps are for, when he already gets points in class...

Tbh, it is common for standard reward type systems to not work with children with Asd.
Having said that I dont know your Ds.

I tried to use them with Dd1 many years ago and didnt have much success. I have never tried with Dd3 because I am pretty sure she wouldnt be motivated by a stamp. If she doesnt want to do something a stamp on a chartis not going to change her mind.

Does the teacher have much experience with Asd? If not she needs to be listening to you about the best ways to motivate him.

Good luck

DS has a positive behaviour book. It doesn't work as it is supposed to, but if it did it would go like this:

At or during each lesson, a behaviour that the teacher wants to encourage ds to do more of, she goes overboard with praise and writes it down in his positive behaviour book with a comment 'let's tell your mummy and daddy about this'. i.e. ds sat really still at carpet time. There is a place to write behaviours that ds needs to improve too, but they are only allowed to be one or two per day, plus there is a number written for how many times per lesson he had to be taken out (not often, but to establish a pattern).

Then I go overboard with the positive comments when I read them, and support ds telling his dad.

I think it is a good system, but ds has lots of teachers and I don't think any of them even know that he's on this system so it is currently nothing like this.

Children with ASD tend to need more instant rewards than accumulated points kind of strategies, which don't work so well.

Ds used to like Yu Gi Oh cards and I'd buy them by the sackful and give them out for positive behaviours. It did motivate him at the time and we saw some improvements at home. Top Trumps worked the same way - in fact better because he was motivated to earn the full set quickly so he could play the game . I suggested introducing the same thing in school (the Ed Psych thought it was a great idea, since it was an extension of something that had worked successfully at home) but the school wouldn't have it. Schools can be very set in their ways about strategies they think should work and they keep banging away even when it's not happening, which can be frustrating for all concerned.

IMO reward systems CAN work for autistic children but you have to find the right motivators, something that engages the individual child. You need full consistency and that would obviously mean between home and school as well. I wouldn't start anything unless you know for sure it will be supported in school, but you're right that it's pointless attempting something you know from experience will fail.

We have a daily contact book that ds TA records the activity, issues and achievements. I respond on a daily basis.
Ds does have 3hrs per week un-supported and CT was concerned that he was "drifting" if the work wasn't to his liking, she also didn't have time to record in the contact book. So she made a laminated letter, reminding him that he had to do his work and so on - if he does he gets one of his computer games at home. Ds ticks the choice of game - at the end of the day the CT indicates if he did the work or made a good effort and gets his game. He did some but could do better work - he's gets 15mins of the game. No work, no game.
It works quite well, but as others have said it depends on the dc, the motivators if the dc needs instant reward or can wait

Thank you for the responses, going to read over them and see what we can figure out.

Ineedmore I don't think the teacher has much experience with Autism, the school has a base for children with severe/complex additional support needs, but ds seems to be a challenge for his teacher - though he seems keen to be a proactive teacher & he is well liked by the children in general. I think the subtleties of dealing with hfa are not immediately obvious until you get to know the individual child.

Starlight the positive behaviour book does sound great in theory - I think that could work really well for my ds if put into practice. We are in Scotland so ds has one teacher for most of the day but goes to PE and music with other teachers and maybe art and computer too.

Agree streaky about consistency and getting the motivator right - that is what the school wants us to work with them on, my ds is getting better but still long term goals are a huge ask...

Frizzcat just read your laminated letter idea out to my dh (he'd just come into the room) - he likes that - thinks it creates good home/school linked motivation.

Also we have agreed to put ideas from this thread to the teacher.

So much food for thought, I am very glad I posted! to you lovely SNmners

hi we did a reward system with school a few years ago, we did a picture of the reward on the chart on whatever last number sticker he needed, ds also had laminated picture of the reward in his pocket, needed a few as changing coats, trousers etc, i also had spares as did teacher, we would say look in your pocket at the reward picture and encourage the behaviour we wanted, saying if you play for 5 mins with little jimmy you will get a sticker and you will get your reward, it's hard for children to visualise the reward thats why we did picture reminders

We've used a token system for ds (similar to what Davidsotherhalf described). Most recently we used tokens for 5 minutes on Temple Run (ipad) - cut out picture of the icon, stuck on piece of card, with '5 minutes' or '10 minutes' on each one.

We're currently using a system with 1pennies (for going to the toilet unprompted at school, which is an ongoing problem) - each time he goes without being asked he gets a penny. 10 pennies gets him a 10pence piece which he can then put into his Cadbury money box and get a chocolate (also a big favourite for him).

Imo the trick is to work out what the thing is that motivates him more than anything, then break that down into tangible chunks. Eg if it's a wii game or ipad game, the reward would be x minutes of the game. A tangible token like I've described might work, or a tick chart, with a visual of the reward itself.

PolterGoose makes a good point about schools abdicating responsibility for support. Any home/school mutual strategies need to monitored VERY carefully if they're to have any degree of success - I think it's fair to say that consistency can be variable in schools and you'd never get to know if strategies had been allowed to lapse.

Something else we did, and still do, is a weekly progress meeting at home. We set targets on a six-monthly basis, so there's a realistic amount of time for changes to be established, and the meeting is to look at how ds is managing, what I can do to help him, what he can do to help himself, with the aim of going all out to make sure he achieves his aims. It's very carefully planned, SMART targets, substantial reward at the end and it keeps the goals fresh and clear in his head. He's made massive progress with this, with other tools incorporated eg 5-point scales, social stories when he was younger, visuals and everything written down so he can see what he's aiming for and there's little chance of confusion.

We also used the token reward system but found it quite difficult to maintain. Ds is the King of Loopholes and was magnificent at manipulating it .

One system that worked quite well for a while with ds1 was having a point system. He could be awarded 5 points a day for good behaviour with points deducted for non-cooperation or other bad behaviour. If he got 20 or more points in the week he got a reward at home. This was accompanied by a behaviour book in which the teacher wrote comments for each lesson. It worked initially because he had the most positive teacher imaginable and it was her idea so she was prepared to make the effort! When it was transferred to other teachers they seemed less willing to use the system, more negative comments were put in and it stopped working. I guess whatever system you use will fail unless you have the full cooperation of the teacher involved.

More good points, we wrote about a few points to the teacher, so I am waiting to see what he says. Sure when ds gets a new teacher after the summer we will probably be back to square one. Every teacher will have a different approach as you experienced Onineight?

Poltergoose you have hit on something I am v concerned about re ds and his teacher's expectations - I.e it is my ds who "must learn to participate" and I have tried to point out to school that he needs to be taught with simple, structured support and clear examples from them, in order to learn how to do this. We also need to know what is happening in order to support the school, which is how a good home/school diary would work? Good communication is better than a smiley chart.

Streaky do you do the Smart targets with school?

Streaky do you do the Smart targets with school?

Ah, if only

Despite all my best efforts, schools wouldn't cooperate with how we worked at home and that's why we've home educated for four years. I got sick of having to bow down to unprofessional numnuts who wouldn't know autism if it slapped them in the face (which, sadly, it frequently did), so now I'm in charge and there's nobody to stick their oar in and spoil it .

But yes, obviously it would work more effectively if there was a collaborative approach at home and school.