Tips for Helping Autistic Young People Live Their Best Lives (Strategies):

 Simplify your language

 Give them ways to cope with sensory challenges

 Give them a visual and an oral schedule

 Use a calendar to show events, trips, changes

 Use written words to communicate during stressful times.

 Use “first‐then” strategy

 Use the phrase, “the rule is……”

 Be consistent, black and white to make sure you’ve been understood

 Give choices (e.g. “Do you want to do X before or after Y”)

 Purposefully, catch them doing the right thing and praise.

 Autistic young people often work best with structure and routine

 Use modelling and demonstration of new tasks, with lots of opportunities to practice. This is of great benefit to their independence.

 Using visuals and hands on materials will facilitate learning and independence.

 Autistic young people thrive and do excellent with instructions if you use less words, most importantly instructions written down so they can keep checking if they get stuck. This is very important as it will reduce the amount of prompting from others.

 In different situations, pause and see if your young person can do or remember themselves, if not, check in by saying “Is there anything you need to remember?”. This will also help their independence and help with executive functioning skills such as problem solving, processing and thinking aloud, organization skills etc. (see executive functioning tip sheet page 32)

 Give clear instructions and check in, by getting them to repeat or show you their understanding. If they are having trouble with understanding, repeat exact same instruction, use less words, be specific, wait at least 10 seconds for them to process and write it down, or get them to write it down.

 They will need to be able to concentrate exclusively on a task, and be aware that it may be challenging for them to have interruptions or distractions.

 A checklist (visual and/or simple language) of key steps will help them to remember what is required for each task.