If you have a child with autism or are working with a child with autism, you probably already know the importance of routine. Kids with autism already have a tough time making sense of the world, but lots of order, predictability, and structure can help them make sense of their surroundings.
Establishing a good routine is the easiest way to make a child feel safe and secure in what seems like an ever-changing world.
However, when those routines are disrupted, anarchy can ensue. Here are some tips on how to identify, act on, and track triggers and early signals of issues that could derail your daily routine. We’ll also give you some advice on how to adapt and overcome when your routine inevitably becomes disrupted.
Why Routine is Important
Children with autism tend to become very attached to their familiar routines. Those routines must be followed at all times, whether it’s at school or at home. For example, at dinnertime, a child might want his parents seated in the same spots every night. At school, any change in the bell schedule can be disastrous.
These kids process information in a very specific way, so any disruptions in routine can have a detrimental effect on a child’s behavior. These impacts on behavior don’t always happen right away, either – sometimes, it takes a few days or even weeks to see the full impact.
Negative reactions vary among children, but can take the form of tantrums, screaming, crying, or violent behaviors. Often, it can be next to impossible to comfort a child. These reactions are almost always due to the increased anxiety, fear, and stress that a child with autism feels over the disruption in routine. They feel unsafe and insecure.
It can be tough to figure out whether these behaviors are because of a disruption in routine or due to distress of some other form. Often, distress can be related to other pent-up frustrations. Therefore, as a parent or other kind of caregiver, it’s important that you eliminate any underlying or potential factors that might be causing distress.
How to Identify Early Signals and Triggers
While it would be nice to always stick to a preset routine, that unfortunately is never the reality. Therefore, it’s important that teachers, parents, and other caregivers recognize the triggers that lead to inappropriate behavioral responses when routine is disrupted. Often, the way you react can influence how your child behaves.
Often, children with autism react to the perceived stress based on their past experience and situational awareness. If you know the child well and can predict his behaviors and reactions, you may be able to manage the situation more effectively.
A trigger is any thought about a situation that then leads to a negative response. It’s not the situation that’s the problem, in other words, bu thow the child thinks about the situation.
Children who are on the autism spectrum generally have very specific triggers (these can be as benign as words, sounds, or images) that signal a disruption to a feeling of security and safety. These are unique to the child, but are often related to past experiences.
Triggers develop their personal cues in response to triggering events. Cues will vary depending on the child, but can include things like:
- Becoming withdrawn or quiet
- A change in the child’s pattern of speech
- Exhibiting a response of avoidance or fear
- Certain facial expressions
- Irritability
- Sweating
- Nervous tics
- Complaining
- General malaise
As a parent or teacher, being able to anticipate triggers and witness these cues is essential. If you see these cues, you will need to intervene immediately – because if you don’t, the situation can escalate to the point where the child loses all control.
What Kinds of Things Might Disrupt a Routine?
It doesn’t have to be a catastrophic change, like moving to a new city or losing a loved one, in order to trigger a behavioral change in your child with autism.
Some of the most common changes or new situations include:
- Switching between tasks or activities
- Doing things in a different or unexpected order
- Trying new foods
- Cancelling activities unexpectedly
- Having visitors at the house or leaving the house
- Travelling somewhere new
How to Handle Disruptions in Routine
The first step in dealing with a disruption in routine is being aware of your child’s triggers and cues as best as possible. Do your best to avoid those triggers, and when you notice the first cues of anxiety, it’s time to intervene. Don’t wait and hope the feelings will go away on their own before they result in problematic behavior or a total meltdown – this is not a good idea.
You need to make sure you figure out what the problem is and act immediately to diffuse the situation.
It’s also important that you work closely with other caregivers to share information about cues and triggers, as these can vary depending on the setting the child is in as well as the audience. This should be done on a regular basis – an IEP meeting or an annual review is a great time to do so, but it doesn’t have to be the only time.
As with any aspect of working with a child with autism, good communication is vital for that child’s success. Tracking responses to a disruption in routine is a great way for everybody to stay on the same page.
We put together a helpful resource to help you track the things that tend to disrupt your routines so you can better stay on top of it. Just enter your email below and we’ll send it to you.
Kids with autism often respond to stressful events based more on how they observe adults and peers interacting than based on how they feel themselves. Therefore, it’s important that you monitor your own reactions during a stressful circumstance, too. Children with autism tend to interpret things very literally, too, so you need to choose your words carefully when you are in one of these situations.
Strategies to Improve Behavioral Responses to a Change in Routine
There are specific interventions that can help your child develop self-management skills, too. These skills should be taught directly to your child, either through social stories or through other techniques.
Social Stories
Social Stories are a good way of telling your child that a change is going to happen – but in terms that he can understand. You could, for example, make a Social Story about going to the dentist’s office.
You could use words, pictures, or both to describe what will happen – you will leave the house, you will arrive at the office, you will sit in the dentist’s chair, etc. try to end the story on a positive note – “we get to go for ice cream afterward,” for example.
Try Using Timetables
Timetables and transition cards can also be a good way to help your child understand a routine, even if a change needs to occur. Use pictures of clocks to explain what time certain events can be expected to happen.
There are some children who will become very upset if things don’t go according to plan. For example, some children get upset when you tell them that a party will end at 4 p.m. and instead it ends at 3 p.m.
If you have a child like this, you may need to use reference points instead of specific times on the clock. For instance, rather than saying the party will end at 4, you could say that it will end after the birthday boy opens his presents.
Prepare and Break Down Information into Manageable Bits
Spend some time preparing for the change to help make your child feel more comfortable. For instance, if you are going to be having company over to your house, you will want to spend some time talking to your child about what will happen.
Children with autism benefit from concrete information that is presented at the proper level of understanding. You need to help your child learn how to stop and think about his reactions and his behavior so that he can make a good choice. Training in coping skills, conflict resolution skills, and anger management can help create a comprehensive intervention program.
Build Unexpected Changes into the Calendar
If your child thrives on routine, you may want to leave some gaps to provide for unexpected events. For example, if you make a visual schedule of activities for your child, you could leave gaps between the pictures to allow another one to be inserted later. You could use question marks to indicate uncertainty, too.
Bring in Elements of the Familiar
One way to prevent additional behavioral or emotional upset when routine is disrupted is to bring elements of the routine into the new environment.
For example, if a child needs a certain dinner routine in order to feel safe – but there is a special event that requires the family to eat out a restaurant – you can bring laong familiar eating utensils from home and follow the same rituals you would at home, too (such as saying grace or washing your hands before you eat).
This will help to create some level of “safety.”
Start Small When Managing Changes in Routine
The best way to help a child with autism adapt to a change in routine is to start small and work your way up. Introduce tiny changes and bring in larger ones over time. Go slow and steady until your child learns how to adjust. Reward flexibility whenever possible, even with small, incremental rewards.
Learning triggers is the first step to helping kids with autism learn better self-management skills. When they (and you!) know their triggers, they’ll be able to recognize them when they appear. Once these triggers are acknowledged, your child will be able to use techniques on his own to mitigate his response.
It can take some time – and plenty of problem-solving and repetition – but it is something that definitely can and should be learned.
Further Reading
- Nebraska Autism Spectrum Disorders Network: Rules and Routines
- Kara Hume, Ph.D.: Transition Time: Helping Individuals on the Autism Spectrum Move Successfully From One Activity to Another
- Kim Davis: What Triggers Anxiety for an Individual with ASD?