“I wouldn’t expect them to do that on their own.”
“It’s [easier, less disruptive, more efficient, safer, less time consuming] if I help.”
“If I just do it for them, it saves me time.”
“We get the best outcome if I prompt.”
“It would take too long to teach.”
“I like helping them with things.”
As a parent or teacher of a student with unique learning needs, do you ever find yourself saying similar statements about daily living skills (DLS)?
We know at times, many of us are guilty of providing help with DLS, even when our learners may not need it. It may undoubtedly be more efficient or effective for adults to offer prompts, but in the long run, continuing to prompt doesn’t lend itself to greater independence.
While it’s okay for our children and students to use adult support when needed, it’s not okay to stop working towards more independence if it’s possible to achieve. It’s why creating a plan to fade prompting when beginning DLS should be just as important as making the plan to teach them.
Why do we use prompts?
When teaching DLS, if we didn’t use prompts, we might have to wait for days, months, or years before a behavior spontaneously occurs. With many students with unique learning needs, they might not ever demonstrate a particular target behavior without prompts. Prompts are what we can use in those situations to speed up the learning process. It’s also one of the best evidence-based ways to teach DLS to individuals with unique learning needs.
Using prompts can help the learner get to the outcome faster and be less frustrated in the process.
Types of Prompts for DLS
Modeling
Modeling is a type of prompt where the instructor demonstrates the target behavior for the learner. An example of modeling the DLS of meal prep would be showing the learner how to make a sandwich immediately before making their own.
Vocal Prompts
Vocal prompts, sometimes known as vocal verbal instructional prompts, provide words, sounds, or phrases to achieve the intended behavior. For example, coaching a learner step by step through folding a t-shirt or repeating instructions while checking out groceries can be helpful vocal prompting for learners.
Physical Guidance
With physical guidance prompts, the instructor physically guides body movements (usually arms, hands, or legs) to perform the behavior. It’s one of the most intrusive prompts since it doesn’t allow the learner to do the behavior independently until prompts are faded. However, there’s lots of research about when and why to use physical guidance, especially in working with diverse learners.
Visual Prompts
Using videos, pictures, symbols, schedules, or signs to help prompt the target behavior is part of visual prompts and supports. There’s a large body of research detailing how visual prompts can teach daily living skills. There are also some instances where we may fade to using visuals as our final goal (e.g., the learner uses a visual prompt or a visual schedule)
Movement Prompts
Often known as gestural prompts, the instructor provides a body movement cue to the learner about where to find the correct response. Movement prompts can include tapping or pointing, looking at an item, or gesturing towards the correct answer. Movement prompts can be beneficial as one of the last stages of prompting, where we’re just giving the learner a tiny bit of help to succeed.
Positional Prompts
Positional prompts involve setting up things in the environment to serve as a reminder or to make the response easier. For example, imagine a learner having a specific place to put their belongings in order before packing a backpack for school. The position of the items themselves helps the learner know to fill the bag in an organized way. Positional prompts like these allow the learner to use context clues to figure out the correct answer and are a helpful tool to avoid using additional language.
What is fading?
Fading is a behavioral process of providing fewer and fewer prompts or support until an individual can demonstrate a behavior without any help. There are many different ways to fade prompts for DLS, and learners are unique in which strategies work the best. However, we must fade support for these reasons:
- Advocating for independence is part of providing person-centered care.
- It’s impossible to predict if or when a learner might need to do a skill without support. By proactively teaching DLS, you’re giving the learner the best chance to be prepared for the unexpected.
- Greater independence with DLS increases social opportunities, decreases caregiver stress, and can improve family relationships.
How to Fade Support While Teaching Daily Living Skills
So if we know that fading support is essential, how do we go about fading prompts when teaching DLS?
There are four steps to fade support when teaching DLS. To share these steps, let’s consider the daily living skills activity of helping your learner purchase groceries from a list.
1. Identify the end goal
The first step in teaching any DLS is to identify the end goal. What would you like the learner to do? In this scenario, consider that our student can take a preformatted grocery list to the store, collect all the items from the list, purchase them with a credit card, and bring them home. By writing the steps of the end goal with specific features, we can now work backward to identify the types of prompts that will help the learner succeed.
2. Conduct observations
Before we can fade prompts, we must first understand how much and what type of prompting is required for the learner to succeed at the task. The only way to understand this information is to complete observations.
First, watch your learner complete the task without any help. What goes well? What goes wrong? Do they need help with specific steps or with the entire sequence?
3. Identify how much prompting is required to obtain the end goal
After 1-2 observations, the next step is to identify how much prompting is necessary for your learner to complete the target behavior fully. In our grocery store example, we need to physically gesture to each item on the list for some learners and guide them to pay with a credit card. Other learners may only need vocal prompts to keep going and stay on task. Still, others may only need visual prompts to indicate the steps in the grocery shopping sequence.
Since every learner is different, you’ll want to identify how much prompting is required to reach the end goal.
4. Start there, and gradually reduce support
As you identify the level of prompting it takes for a learner to succeed, the next step is to gradually fade the prompts required. Each time your learner demonstrates success, provide a bit less help. Work towards the end goal slowly. Your learner will help guide you in this process; as they succeed, that’s a good indication it’s time to fade support. If they start to falter, that indicates it’s best to give them more practice at the current level of prompting before fading out more.
For our grocery store example, check out the steps to fade prompts in our “Teaching Diverse Learners about Smart Shopping” article.
We’ve created a step-by-step worksheet to guide your learner through prompt fading with a DLS skill. Download our free fillable .pdf worksheet here:
Other Tips for Fading Supports
- It’s okay to fade out support in one area first before fading support completely. Not every learner can sustain rapid prompt fading right at the beginning, especially if it’s a new skill. Sometimes it’s best to fade in one location, area, or set of skills first and then move on to others. For example, a teacher might fade out support on one subject of homework vs. all subjects simultaneously, or a parent might fade out of helping a child pay for groceries first before paying for clothes or electronics). Identify where your learner is likely to be most successful and start there.
- It’s okay to ask for professional support. Consulting with a life skills coach or your learner’s care team members may provide valuable information and extra support to help with the fading process.
- It’s okay to take a step back. If you encounter challenging behavior or resistance from your learner, step back. Sometimes we may try to fade out support too quickly or skip steps in the prompt fading sequence. If you start to encounter these types of challenges, return to the level of prompting that was last successful. Stay there, observe again and make revisions before attempting to fade again.
Unsure about which DLS your learner needs to know? Check out this list of 25 Daily Living Skills Every Teen Should Know.