Okay, so I am ridiculously excited by this, and no doubt pretty late to the game but I'm pushing ahead with this mini-series of blog posts anyway for the other mothers living under rocks with me. How Alexa can help your ASD kiddo and/or autism families like us. Alexa has lived with us for a good while now. She is great friends with Badger, who uses her to answer the important questions in life: How old is Kanye West, Harry Styles, Calvin Harris. (Birthdays are the latest fascination.) And yet somehow it is only through the homeschool groups I am in on Facebook that I heard about Alexa Blueprints. I was overcome by a few of the options in particular. This is definitely going to help our family on a day to day basis. I have no doubts. Which is why I am so keen to share this mini-series. Read on below the ad for the first instalment: Random Picker - Changed to 'Help me Choose'. Imagine this: You are alone at home with the kids. Something … could be the rain, could be a cancellation, could be a lack of sleep, could be a Tuesday... sets off your child. It's been two hours of this, on and off, and you can feel the behaviour escalating each time something adds to your child's anxiety. You have learnt, from the many days like this before, that offering numerous ideas or solutions will go down like a lead balloon. Your child cannot cope with making choices, but they are also resistant to being told what to do - by you - in these circumstances. "Alexa, Open Help me Choose." What category would you like to try? "Calming Techniques." "Ok, I'm going to go with... Take 5 Deep Breaths" or "Ok, I'm going to go with... Bounce" or "Ok, I'm going to go with... Go outside" Alexa has made the choice for you/your child from a pre-completed list you drew up on Blueprints in a category specific to your family and situation. This could be revolutionary for us, with the calming techniques, particularly if we can reach a point where Badger asks Alexa for this assistance himself when becoming frustrated. Whether I like it or not Badger is going to listen to Alexa over me in this situation. We already have Alexa tell him when it is time to get into the bath and out of the bath because he doesn't argue with her... Note: We changed the name in blueprints to 'Help me choose', if you are searching or already used to it, then the default name is Random Picker or What to Do. Other list ideas to remove the difficulty of decision making:
I would LOVE more ideas for lists that are autism or special needs specific. Please hit me up with them. I think the skills/categories are going to be shareable in the UK too. In which case, how awesome would it be for a group of us parents to get together and make these awesome lists to share freely amongst each other? To make your own, just head here, sign in and get to work.
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