C2U plus Synchrony

 

C2U^® Plus SYNCHRONY

developed by Barbara Avila, M.S. RDI^®

Consider  C2U^® plus Synchrony as a stand alone intervention that must happen for all children with autism to adequately receive and integrate any of the traditional interventions we have today (e.g., ABA, DIR, RDI, Social Thinking, and more). C2U + Synchrony ensures a child's true joint attention with his or her guide to keep her safe as she experiences her world around her. Developmentally, she must feel that security to then explore both independently and with others. With Synchrony, she learns the beauty of back and forth engagement and connection with others to learn and love. The earlier the better but this can happen starting at any age at any time with any trusted guide.

In autism, children have significant regulation and sensory issues that make this early connection, learning, and joint attention challenging. Therefore, they resort to their own devices for regulation (e.g., repetitive actions or verbalizations). A child with autism will seek familiar and repetitive patterns to attempt to soothe him/herself. It is our goal with children with autism, to ensure connection and repetitive engagement from a developmental standpoint to then redirect them to more meaningful soothing, while learning and engaging with others.

C2U^® with a child with autism takes significant, purposeful, and artful engagement from the guide. The purpose of this blog is to guide you to guide a child (or person of any age) with autism to connect with you and your guidance.

Step 1: Provide the environment for connection

In order to truly be curious and receive curiosity from a child (C2U^®), a child must trust his guides to provide manageable environments for him/her to connect and be guided. The first environment for connection should be quiet and relaxed with as little additional stimuli as possible. OR when a child is struggling with overstimulation, confusion, or otherwise seeming to be feeling “chaotic,” this quiet, calm scenario can be provided by the guide (e.g., in a busy environment, taking the child to a quiet part of the room or outside or simply well away from the offending environment).

•Quiet space

•Decrease clutter, including your own voice and visual stimulation

•Define the space visually where you are staying together (e.g., a couch or a room)

Step 2: Be calm while sharing the same space

Children with autism can vary moment to moment probably due to neurological or biological reasons. This requires us to truly be in a place that we are calm, collected, and settled in our own bodies. This may mean sitting beside the person or child with autism and listening to your own heartbeat, your own breathing. Allow yourself to breath deeply. Not only will this help you, it will help the child by your modeling breathing and not making immediate demands on him/her. This allows the child's attention to shift, his body to calm, and his availability more possible.

•Breathe

•Slow your own body down

•Say nothing

•Sit down

Step 3: Offer engagement “bids”

Children with autism are often used to people telling them what to do and/or trying to get them to respond a particular way that is either right or wrong. The performance anxiety in both scenarios can be high which can decrease interest and motivation to engage with others. Here is your chance to offer “bids” for engagement that are non-threatening, not performance based, simply bids to connect.

•Offer your hand out near the child

•Touch

•Lean in toward the child (or away)

•Say the echoed statement back (if being requested to do so) but in an ever so slightly different way... slowed down or with a lower or higher pitched voice than you typically might.

Step 4: Allow time for and recognize engagement (C2U)

Here is the most beautiful moment of all. This is where the child responds to your bid for engagement. Sometimes you have to wait a significant amount of time (offering your hand out and simply being in the moment for up to a full minute while you offer). That moment that the child gazes or shifts or reaches out to you is the most rewarding moment of all.*THIS is C2U®.

Step 5: Establish Synchrony

You know that moment when you are in a conversation with a friend and it is just flowing well? You feel truly connected to the person and the conversation topic. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, connection with a repetitive pattern is our goal, just like in a fluid conversation but here we are meaning nonverbal back and forth shared engagement. I like to call this “synchrony.” Synchrony implies that all are parts are working equally and efficiently to engage in a rhythmic pattern. This is also called co-regulation in developmental literature. An example of a co-regulated pattern with synchrony is the game of peek-a-boo. 

So following your first bid, your second bid should be to establish this synchrony. If you offer something now that is very incongruous with the first bid, you are out of synch with the last action (and the child). If you offer something very closely related, you can connect and establish synchrony, a rhythm of engagement that repeats while changing and evolving into completely different interactions and learning.

Step 6: Keep the Synchrony as you Redirect

Yet another moment of serious enjoyment... with the child responds to you and you respond to him in ever evolving ways and you feel truly connected. This is where so much of the art of engagement comes in. Your job is to expand and evolve the engagement while keeping the synchrony AND provide new experiences for learning and growing. If you have an activity in the other room that you would like to teach your student or child, this is the time to share the schedule or visual of the next activity and start moving physically toward the door with a rhythmic or synchronized pattern. This may be VERY subtle and your student may not find it meaningful for you to be too overt in the process. Some like it (e.g, chanting as you walk)! Many need to have an active and physical role to remain in synch with you (e.g., a heavy laundry basket to carry from one room to the other) or holding your hand).

Step 7: Either re-establish C2U^® or start allowing moments of disconnection and reconnection

Depending on the child and level of engagement you have achieved on a given day, you can have more moments of allowing the child to have more moments of independence (using you as a base). Allow these moments of freedom to explore and engage with materials you are providing, as you are able to join in momentarily to guide, teach, expand the child's thinking. If you are NOT able to join, teach, or expand, it is time to re-establish C2U^®. Go to step 1 or 2 and repeat.

Example activities with C2U+Synchrony

1. You sit down, relax, breathe, and then hand your child something for him to shift his attention to you (C2U) and the item, and do whatever he wants with it. You then keep handing him items for him to do whatever he wants with the items (the goal is synchrony).

2. You bring your child to the kitchen telling him you need his help with the dishwasher. You take both of his hands in yours and allow shift of his attention (C2U) then say "hi," then hand him a plate from the dishwasher to put away. You repeat the pattern with dishes to him, periodically checking with bids, gaining moments of C2U just to share how much you like his help, while achieving synchrony in your work together with multiple plates. 

3.  You go for a walk with your child, stopping just before you walk out the door for a moment of C2U before you walk together in a synchronized manner to be silly, smooth, or simply keeping in step with one another. Periodically, you stop, pause, or slow down to check in (allow the shift of attention to be to you - C2U) and share something you see, hear, touch.

*If the child is used to simply responding and/or requesting as their only means for communicating, s/he may respond “robotically,” in this moment. This is NOT engagement. We are specifically seeking moments of engagement vs passive responding or compliance.