Adults With Developmental Disabilities

One of my pet peeves in our day program was when a "behavior expert" would come in to "observe" one of our clients. The "expert" would spend a half hour or so talking to staff, then they would invariably announce that all we had to do was create a board with pictures and icons so the client would know what their daily schedule was, and they could use to board to communicate with us. Behavioral issue solved!

I never experienced much success with that process, but we tried every time the "experts" said that's all we had to do. I'm not saying it never works... my point would be that every person is different and there was no way the "expert" could know the client well enough after a half hour of talking to staff to make a pinpoint recommendation like that.

Move up to now...

I just finished reading a book by a 13 year old boy diagnosed with autism. It's called "The Reason I Jump" by Naoki Higashida. The standout section for me was where he answered a question about visual schedules. He said that for him, visual schedules were a pain in the butt (paraphrasing here). His mind saw the schedule posted there on the wall, and if anything changed that schedule, his day was shot. He couldn't handle it.

By the way, there is a section in my SNAP Curriculum called Dealing With Changes in Routine. I had someone criticize my book "How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities" because it wasn't a true direct "How To" book (do "this" and "this" will happen). Somehow they completely missed the point that all clients are different. I give some ideas of things that staff persons need to know, and things to try, and I included personal stories because I think it's useful to see how what I talk about affected some real people. It's the same with the curriculum - I give ideas of things to try, I don't say they work every time with every client. Sheesh! But I digress...

You can try visual schedules, but don't insist that they work for every client, every time. Don't get all frustrated with the client for not "getting it" when you go to a lot of time and effort making up the schedule board. Take a deep breath and do some observations of your own. Do some assessments before you decide what is best for the client (OK, that's a dig. You shouldn't be deciding "what is best" for anyone). Generally speaking, a half hour isn't enough observation time to learn how a person learns things... like how to communicate in a socially acceptable manner.

We had a client who was deaf and had trouble communicating verbally,  so he had difficulty participating in our morning planning sessions where each group decided where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do each day. Staff created a board for that client so he could point to pictures of himself (no "icons") at various locations. That was his way of saying "Here's where I want to go today." It made his day a lot easier when he could participate in choices. A communication/schedule board worked very well for him. This was also a guy who could handle changes in plans during the day when something came up.

Consider that picture idea, too, if you try a schedule board. A drawing of someone at a grocery store is not the same as a picture of a specific person at their local grocery store. Seeing myself in a picture in front of Safeway is way better than seeing a vague drawing of an unknown person in a setting that could be construed as a grocery store. It's worth a try.

And check out Naoki's book.