Joint attention games

[Coco2891]

Hi all,

Does anyone have any suggestions for little made up games they've played with their children with suspected asd ? My son is severely speech delayed and we are working on his social communication.

For example with my boy , he says night night -kisses me and I pretend to go to sleep , then he says wake up!! (Sort of) And I wake up and say hello to which he replies hello ! Then night night -kiss and so on

This was just an off the cuff game when I was laying on the sofa with him the other day which I'm finding beneficial for him as he's leading the play. Just wondered if anyone else had any made up games they could share

Thanks x

Any ideas anyone ? 😬 I'm knackered after a long week and want something new to try over the weekend xx

Some good ideas post on this thread by
Checklist

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3106921-Receptive-language-delay?msgid=73911297#73911297

Does he like bubbles?

Blowing bubbles is great for joint attention.
You can hype up the excitement by breathing in but pausing before blowing, either wait for eye contact, him to make a noise or say go/blow whatever is appropriate.
Then you can point to them and shout pop together while pointing and popping them one by one. Clapping them is a fun way to pop them. Or think of different silly ways to pop them and see if he copies you or comes up with his own. Use your nose, clap, poke, grab, elbow.
Lots of dramatic faces of excitement from you. (I used to love playing this)

Also a marble run is great for things like that.
“Ready steady” and pause to see if you get a “go”. Then use your finger to stop the marbles as they’re on the way down shouting ‘stop’ and then ‘ready, steady’ etc.

Basically anything can be made fun and get joint attention by you with silly faces and dramatic pauses.

We used to fire plastic fish out of our mouths at bath time with DD (so it would ricochet off the walls and then plop into the water). She loved that (and eventually even started trying to copy us, so more good skills there!) She loved water and sand, so anything to do with pouring was always good for joint attention, turn taking, etc.

We also used to play games with two of anything. So e.g. two tupperwares with pasta shapes inside. Make noises with it, and see if she copies. Then if she did something different we would copy her. You can use almost anything for that if you have two of it (we got two of things like bubbles, bean bags, those gymnastic twirling ribbons, etc. so we had a variety of things to play with).

Pretty fun actually ... must try some of that with DS (no real reason to think he is autistic although his speech is a bit behind, so it can't do any harm - I think he'd enjoy them!)

Thanks for the replies 😘

Some of the best games are just silly games made up on the spot arnt they 😛

Yes - one of our favourite ones now is that we get all of the sofa cushions and put them on the floor, and then copy each other's silly dance moves. It's really fun but also great for turn taking, taking other people's ideas on board, creativity, exercise, observing and copying and I'm sure lots of other good stuff!

Anything where you can "increase the pause" while they anticipate something - so, as MissShapes said - marble run (or anything where you are running a car or a small ball down a slope / drainpipe / tube / toy garage run / etc is great. As are songs and rhymes where there is a 'tickle' (eg Round and Round the Garden) or a 'scream' (eg Row, Row, Row your Boat), or some other thing they 'anticipate', and can indicate they want 'more' as you hold the pause for a second or two longer. Whether that indicating is Makaton, moving your hand, or just a fleeting eye contact.