Behind the scenes on our project for children with autism.

Eight weeks ago, I started to work on my first project in Carmel 6000.

The project is being carried out in partnership with Alut organization for autistic children.

One of the characteristics which autistic children often possess, is that they need to have very organized schedule for every day. This is because they aren’t comfortable with changes (like most human beings), and by knowing exactly what happens in every single minute in their day, they feel that they have control on their lives.

The problem begins, when they have to face a change in their schedule — whether if it’s for visiting the doctor, or for taking a haircut.

These unknown activities terrify them and they usually respond accordingly, by crying and yelling.

Recently, an experiment was done on this subject, and the results showed, that if the parent or caretaker of the autistic child, sits with him/her before a specific activity, and explains step by step in a very logical way, where he/she going to go, what he/she is going to do and why, it gives the child a very clear picture of what is going to happen and he/she feels that he/she has control over his/her life again — which makes all the difference and helps prevent the negative affect of the opposite situation.

Furthermore, if the caretaker also explains the child, the two possible ways he/she can behave in that situation (he/she can behave and be nice and do what he/she is told OR he/she can yell and shout and do the opposite.) It helps the child to understand the better consequences for his/her actions and gives him/her the possibility to decide which of the possiblities is the best.

The project I am developing is going to contain a large selection of stories.

Each story represents another exceptional activity from the autistic child’s life.

After selecting the relevant story, the child will be able to personalize it by adding their name and designing the main character.

When they finish, the story is played, and the pages of the story describes the same psychological “step by step” preparation for the activity.

At some point in the story, the child gets the opportunity to control it’s flow by choosing from the two options represented on the screen, how the story will go on and see the consequence of each decision.

An additional feature that is planned to be developed, is to enable the parent or caretaker to create their own stories in case they don’t exist in the selection.

This way, we achieve the same positive affect on the kids behavior and confidence which was achieved in the experiment, and help prevent unnecessary confrontations in their daily lives.

The road ahead seems long, but I am excited to see where it leads!

Written by: Roni Ashkenazi * Carmel 6000 Cohort 2018–2020