We recommend that you avoid using physical prompting (touching or hand-over-hand guiding) with TAGteach to get the child to do the action. Many children find this kind of touching aversive and it can spoil the fun or even cause a meltdown.

Other children become very passive when physically prompted or helped to do something and they don’t make the effort to do it themselves.

Another important thing to consider is the issue of consent. We teach our typically developing children that their bodies are their own and no-one touches them without consent. We should consider this as well with our children with autism. It could be putting your child in a potentially dangerous situation down the road if they have no way to say no and indeed have learned that it is futile to say no to a care giver or a person in authority (such as teacher or aide). They may learn that anyone should be permitted to touch them or move them in any way. With TAGteach there is no need for your child to learn to tolerate and permit others to touch them in the name of teaching.

Use your imagination to set up ways for the child to succeed through her own efforts. This will ensure that the child understands exactly what to do and gains the satisfaction of succeeding through trying.

Instead of physical prompting, you can get behavior going by:

• Capturing behavior when it happens by tagging at the exact moment it happens
• Shaping, by tagging each time the behavior is a tiny bit closer to the goal than the last time
• Using targets to help the child understand and practice the behavior
• Showing the child and tagging your own actions
• Showing the child and having him tag your actions
• Setting up the environment so that the behavior you want is more likely and behaviors you don’t want are less likely (always a great idea whether you are actively teaching something or not!)

We will talk more about these later in the course

Another great resource, which is specifically for special needs parents is our Facebook group, which you can apply to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TAGteachAutism/