Archie really struggles with waiting. Really struggles. Even the word “wait” sends him into a frenzy. It actually makes going out incredibly difficult because as soon as we hit a queue I know that things are about to get noisy.
School introduced a low tech aid, known as wait buttons. You can see them in the photograph. 3 threading buttons velcroed onto a PECS sentence strip. When Archie has to wait he’s told “3 waits” and shown the sentence strip. After an appropriate amount of time has passed, one button is removed and he’s told “2 waits”, and so on, until all the buttons are gone. In Archie’s case we can string this out to about 10 minutes, but not really any longer, and he does get very cross. He’ll also pass us the sentence strip with the wait buttons on as way of asking for things to move along. It’s definitely a good system though, and can be adapted to be used as a quick visual countdown system to warn when activities are going to end.
Recently we’ve been having problems at home with Archie wanting to hurry things along. For example people come into the house to carry out various jobs, and he wants them gone. Not because he doesn’t like them being there, just because he wants the sequence finished. Cue lots of screaming at some poor visitor, who has to fight off their bag and coat being repeatedly fetched. Wait buttons have helped a little with this.
I became interested in using something that would show the time elapsing more continuously to see whether this would increase the length of time Archie was prepared to wait and today my time timer arrived. This product aims to visually represent elapsed time. The best way to see what that means in practice is to look at their website. It’s a simple idea, but is really effective. It took me a long time to find a UK distributer. Eventually I found Ed-Solutions Direct Ltd . If you’re in the States you can order from the excellent Different Roads for Learning. There are several different models available. We went for the small clock with an audible alarm (this is very quiet) that goes off when the set time has elapsed. This allows up to an hour to be set to countdown. If Archie takes to it I’ll probably invest in a watch. One of these, the “time timer watch plus”, allows up to 12 hours to be set to countdown (perhaps useful if he tries to get up at 3am?-That may be a little optimistic).
There are other options. Some people find sand timers work well. We have tried these, but found that Archie just wanted to watch the sand falling, and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. There’s also the time tracker, although I found this a little complicated to use, and hard for Archie to understand. He’s a bit keen on lights and buzzer noises as well. I do have a friend who uses it successfully.
UPDATE Tue 22nd May 2007
The Time Timer is working better than I could have expected. Yesterday Archie was desperate to look into the boot of his ABA tutor’s car. Looking in boots is getting obsessive and generally interfering with daily life as well as triggering lots of screaming, so we said he had to wait until the end of the session (30 minutes) and set the Time Timer accordingly. He calmed down immediately and worked really well for the last 30 minutes. Today we set the timer at the beginning of the session for 60 minutes, showed him and had an exceptionally calm session. I suspect I’ll be buying a watch soon……
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