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The Random Walk... Going for walks provided many opportunities to "deal with issues of partiality". For example, instead of walking forward, I walked backwards, sideways, etc. - and I always made sure to label the specific "walk" for what it was. As I walked backwards, I said to Zachary: "walking backwards... mommy is walking backwards". At first, he tried to stop me... pushing me from behind in an attempt to make me go forward...so, I would entertain him and go forward a little... but, soon, I would "walk backwards" again. In no time, Zachary figured out that this "thing" mom was doing was "walking backwards" and having a label now made this an entity in and of itself... and as such, now, it was ok to "walk backwards". Another thing I did was that instead of walking left, right, left, right, left, right (the way you normally walk), I went against the "normal" left, right, left, right, etc. , way to walk by moving my legs in a random fashion... what I came to call, "the random walk". For example, I might do: right, right, left, right, right, right, left, left, left, right, left... As I did this, I called out each step (left or right) as I move the appropriate leg (kind of like dancing down the street). I just made sure I was using a "random" pattern... something that had "no order" because that would have defeated the entire purpose of "the random walk". Every once in a while, I would throw in a "twirl", or "walking sideways", etc... labeling those motions too! It was just another way to "break order" and increase flexibility. Zachary was not able to "follow along" with his feet yet... but, this activity still frustrated him. Just seeing me do this was enough to increase his frustration level. As time went on, the randomness and silliness of the random walk became perfectly acceptable. If I spoke very slowly, and moved very slowly, Zachary would now try to do the random walk with me, but he still had trouble doing this activity (I suspect because of issues with motor coordination more than his lack of desire to do so). "The random walk"... another simple way to help an autistic child deal with issues of partiality. For more on issues with direction, and how each direction, in my opinion is seen as a "part" to the concept of "direction", see my sections on "Odd Behaviors" and "Safety Issues" as they relate to direction changes. I could basically use the same concept while in a store shopping and "changing directions" or aisles... going down one aisle and then in the middle of it, "going backwards" as I said: "going backwards". This was fairly easy to do since Zachary was sitting in the cart. I would just slightly begin to go down a new aisle and then, I would turn the cart completely around and go down another, saying: "no, not this one... let's go left, or let's go to aisle 3, not aisle 2". Labeling the aisles helped him cope... doing this in a grocery store or store that actually had numbered aisles helped tremendously because Zachary could focus on the "counting" aspect to each aisle as I did these things. The numbers to each aisle provided a coping mechanism to help him deal with "mom's indecision" as to where to go, what to do, while providing me with a great opportunity to further help him deal with issues of partiality! :o)
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