ECE 28 CLASS NOTES WEEK 13 The Exceptional Child Inclusion in Early Childhood Education Sixth Edition Thomson-Delmar Learning

ing Chapter 14: Facilitating Self-Care, Adaptive, & Independence Skills

OBJECTIVES: After discussion, you should be able to: Define functional skills. Describe ways a teacher can help young children learn self-care skills. Contrast helpful & not-so-helpful "kindness" when helping young children achieve independence. Select a common self-care skill such as bathing & list its component sub-skills; select any one of the sub-skills & list its components. Demonstrate forward & reverse chaining in teaching a self-care skill such as tooth brushing or hand washing. KEY TERMS: adaptive behavior forward chaining functional skills generalization learned helplessness maturation non-ambulatory reverse chaining self-determination sphincter muscles SELF-CARE SKILLS & THE CURRICULUM: Embedding Self-care Learning: Opportunities integrated into every part of the curriculum. Conversation during mealtime is an excellent example of embedded learning; opportunities to practice language - to promote discussion about names, colors, & textures of food. opportunities for the generalization of cognitive skills. opportunities to learn function & actions of objects that are part of everyday lives. Individualizing Self-care Programs: Effective programs are designed to allow children to participate individually. Building independence: The early years are the prime time for children to learn self-care skills. Building in success: All children need to experience the joy & self-esteem that come from mastering self-care skills. SELF-CARE SKILLS & THE TEACHER: Let the Child Do It: "Me do it! Me do it!" The urge to do for oneself is strong in typically developing young children The efforts of children with special needs to do for themselves often go unrecognized. How Much Assistance? Misguided kindness leads to adult take over. Given enough time & opportunity, a child can do for themselves. Too much adult intervention & assistance to the child can lead to learned helplessness. When to Help? When you understand developmental sequences, readiness & the interrelatedness of developmental areas. Least intrusive assistance: Given as subtly as possible to preserve children's pride in their own efforts. Excessive demands: Occasionally, a child will give up without trying or make excessive demands for adult assistance. When children can't: Children too, have their "off" days. Game-like Assistance: One way to keep children involved in a self-care situation is to create a game-like atmosphere. Give out the right amount of appropriate timed assistance & feedback in order to keep the child involved. Task Analysis: Self-care can be taught in different ways. Taught by skills, component parts, & teaching in context. Maturation & Learning: All self-care skills are learned. Step By Step Planning: Toilet-training & programs: - physiological maturity of sphincter muscles, task-analyzed & taught in component parts and commercial toilettraining programs for children with disabilities with greater emphasis on small steps. Chaining: - chains of individual steps, forward chaining; the teacher helps the child learn the first step in the chain, reverse chaining; instruction begins with the last step & progresses backwards to the first component. Special Considerations: Demonstrations must be from the child's perspective. It is most effective if the teacher works behind the child. Programs Fail, Not Children: If a child is not learning, it is usually the fault of the program, not the child. The teacher must change the sequence, size of steps, reinforcers or task itself.