I have an autistic 5yo daughter, who does swimming lessons. As part of swimming lessons the kids get certificates when they move up a level or improve on something that they have been working on etc. now every week the same thing happens. My child gets very upset if she doesn’t happen to get a certificate, to the point where she will have a meltdown and often I or whoever takes her gets hit and a couple of times I think she has nearly hit her teacher. We have all explained it to her that she can’t get one every week and we need to celebrate when our friends get them but nothing seems to work. I don’t know what else to try at this point. I know to a lot of people it just looks like she is a spoilt brat which makes the whole situation more anxiety provoking for myself and I don’t know if it’s just my expectations that I have to get in check or what… does anyone have any advice please..
13 Replies
Be firm with her. It's not something she can't control if she's only doing it when she doesn't get a certificate.
Considering one of her greatest challenges is emotional regulation, no I don’t think she can fully control it.
This is emotional regulation - disappointment and being able to think about others not just ourselves. Great thing for her to practise.are you teaching emotional regulation? (When calm of course) Start by naming the feeling, describe how it feels, ask how it feels to her, what can you do when you feel it?
We are slowly working on it. She is only recently diagnosed and just now getting extra support sorted as emotional regulation is one area she has a lot of difficulty with. I will work on working through the feelings with her though and see how that goes.
I missed the autistic part. Some Kids with autism can have extra difficulty with this concept, it takes extra time for them to cope with their own feelings and extra time for them to be able to consider that there are other people and it’s not all about them (that is a developmental step, on the curriculum for around prep/grade 1) but as I said some kids on the spectrum can have great difficulty at this age still.
Teaching emotional regulation is the best way.
Setting clear expectations, not giving in to tantrums. Reinforcing that ‘Ella’ did really well today and she deserves it.
teaching and planning coping and calm down strategies. She is young, I think it’s ok for the teacher to tell her before the presentation that it’s not her this week.
She needs to learn like everyone else that she wont always get one. It’s as simple as that.
That’s pretty obvious but considering I said that she is finding it difficult to get the concept it isn’t quite as simple as that.
There are lots of books and YouTube songs about disappointment and tantrums. Saying ‘oh well, never mind’ saying ‘well done friend’.
Perhaps set a specific goal for her to work on, include the swim teacher, but do not give it to her yet. You can even tell her before the lesson that she is not getting it today, she is still working on her goal.
I would also ask that the award is finally given for persistence, not for ability to master whatever the goal is.
Then you can refer back to that in future, ‘remember when you didn’t get the swimming award but you kept on trying’ you got the award eventually and even better than that, because you kept trying, You learnt how to touch the bottom.
Social stories can be really beneficial in helping with emotional regulation with kids on the spectrum. Use the stories to explain what's happening and practice how to respond.
I think the start is talking about friends achievements before the lesson and during the lesson. Role modelling it more at home, and playing more win/lose games at home might help role play the sportsmanship side of it. Like If you lose say “oh well, another game?” And showing how you react, then encourage the same thing. With time it should start to reinforce those messages.
Unfortunately all children require this type of learning but don’t receive it due to busy lifestyles and the introduction of participation certificates, so most of her peers (especially at 5yo) haven’t grasped that aspect yet. Start teaching more win/lose games and encourage team sports for the win/lose aspect. Like a family game of cricket or soccer or similar. Then encourage the whole family to have good sportmanship and hopefully it will all trickle down.
Could you involve the teacher/swim school in explaining to her where she's at in terms of achieving the next level each week? So that she knows what skills she's working toward and when she might get there?
We found this with my child (also neurodivergent - AuDHD) when they were doing swimming lessons - there was no timeline or indication of where they were at shared with the kids, and certificates and progression seemed to be random and arbitrary. They're not, obviously, but it can seem that way when you can't see the timeline. The biggest thing with autistic kids, at least in my experience with my kid and my friends' kids, is they need to know what's going to happen and when.
Agree they don’t do well in random draws. They like much better when things are clear, expected and relate just to themselves. So ‘when you do this, you can get this’.
Our last swim school had a system you could log into and see exactly where the child was measured against the criteria of the next level. So you could see whether you were close to mastering all criteria or just at the beginning. It also helped for the child to see what skills they would be practising in their lessons.