In this instructional video, Gina from The Autism Helper explains how parents and teachers can identify a child’s social comfort zone and use four progressive strategies—active listening, narrating, helping, and imitation—to increase joint/shared attention during play. She demonstrates how to gauge the child’s comfort by observing eye contact and gaze, then outlines each strategy with concrete examples using a toy car, showing how to move from simply observing the child’s play to actively engaging, narrating actions, offering assistance, and echoing the child’s sounds. Gina emphasizes the need to back off when the child shows signs of discomfort, then gradually re‑introduce the strategies to expand the child’s tolerance for shared interaction. The video concludes with encouragement to practice these steps to foster social partnership and enjoyment during play.
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Hi everyone, this is Gina from The Autism Helper. Today I'm going to show you and talk to you about social comfort zones and the 4 strategies we can use to increase that shared attention during play and other types of shared activity. So first, we want to establish what the child's social comfort zone is, and let's just pretend this is my child today. Everyone has their own social comfort zone, and it can increase, it can decrease depending on the type of person, but obviously as a teacher or a parent, we want to be close we're closer to our child, that's natural for us. So what we're going to do is try to establish the social comfort zone. And that part is when we're— the child is playing with something and we come into their field. So I'm going to position myself in front of my child and I'm going to slowly kind of come inwards. Okay. And when my child looks up at me and is still making eye contact with me or fleeting eye contact, I know that that is our social comfort zone. Once the child starts like averting their gaze or backing up or maybe getting upset, that means I'm too close at this point. It doesn't mean we can't work up to that, that's just too much for that child right now. So we want to actually back up from the child a little bit and give them some more space until we get that gaze back, and then we know that we're in their social comfort zone. Okay, so that's the first step for finding that zone. The next 4 strategies are the ones that we use to increase that shared attention, that joint attention, So I'm gonna give you an example with my child and say she's playing with a car. So the first stage is active listening. So the child might be playing with the car in some way, okay? And they might be flicking, you know, the little person in front of their eye or spinning the wheels of the car in front of their eye. Maybe not necessarily playing with it maybe the way we think they should be playing with it. So active listening is gonna be me positioning myself in front of the child so that they can see my face. Finding that social comfort zone, and I'm gonna do active listening. So that means that I'm looking at the truck. I'm watching her roll the truck. I might have a truck in my hand and I'm rolling my truck. So we're kind of playing near each other, or maybe I'm just looking, and I'm not trying to physically manipulate her toy at this time in this phase. The next phase is called narrating. So in this phase, I'm going to start talking. It's kind of like if you were a newscaster. It might seem really unnatural at first. But I'm gonna say things like, such as, as the child is, you know, moving the car, I might say, "Vroom, vroom, vroom," or "Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug," as the child— and you know, you might see your child start looking up at you and making that eye contact. I'm gonna use short phrases and short words. I'm gonna say things like, "Wow, big, big truck," or "Go," or "Here it comes," or "Door." And you can kind of test that social comfort zone, see if you're allowed to like tap on the car at all. Or maybe again, you have your own car and you're tapping on it and you're saying, "Door, wheel, big, go." Okay, so that's the narrating phase. The next phase is the helping phase. So maybe you have a clear Tupperware or this toy is in a basket and the child can see it, but they can't reach it. So they're gonna need you to help it. So maybe they're starting to gesture like that and you're gonna help them get it down. "Oh, you need help. Let me get it out." So you're showing that you're a communication partner a play partner for them and that you are there to help them. Maybe you have rolled the car back and forth and it's stuck underneath of the couch. "I'll get it. I'll help." So on and so on. So that's the helping phase. The last phase is the imitation phase. So maybe little Susie is playing with her car and she is starting to go "vroom" or make some kind of sound. I'm gonna echo that sound. I'm gonna imitate that sound that she makes. So she says "vroom," I'm gonna go "Rrrr." I'm gonna imitate that same sound with her, and then you will start to see them, like, look at you and know that you're a social partner and play. You might also see some gestures, like maybe she will start to look at you and move the car towards you, or maybe motion that she needs help or that she wants to play in some way. So those are the 4 phrases. That's a super quick way of summarizing all that. But it increases over time. If you start to see that maybe in one part your child now all of a sudden doesn't like you being that close in that same moment, that same activity, just re-establish it. Go back to the active listening and narrating phase for a few days and then slowly go back into the helping phase and the imitating phase. And then you're slowly going to see that your child doesn't mind you being in their space and manipulating the toys and playing with them. So, I hope that's helpful and have fun playing!
