Mini Training Series: Ep 29 Do's and Don't's of Teaching Waiting

Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, we're going to talk about the dos and don'ts of teaching waiting. So the skill of waiting is hard. It's hard for kids, all kids, and it's hard for a lot of adults. I'm sure sometime within the last week you have been at a stoplight and and either been the person that was on your phone that someone had to beep at, or you were the person had to beep at someone that wasn't going because we have a hard time waiting. So we want to think about waiting as a skill that needs to be taught, just like reading comprehension and adding and identifying body parts. Those are all skills that need to be taught. So is waiting. Don't assume that your kids coming into your classroom are going to be competent with that skill. And as a parent, don't assume that your kid is just going to naturally pick up that skill. A lot of kids, regardless of diagnosis, really struggle with waiting. So it's important to think about how we're going to teach the waiting skill, because sometimes I see this done really well and sometimes I see this done really poorly. So when we think of the skill of waiting, waiting really comes down to response inhibition. We're stopping ourselves from doing something else. So if someone tells you to wait in line, you have to inhibit the things you maybe want to do of like running to the front of the line or pushing the people out of your way and just being first or talking loudly. If it's somewhere you have to be quiet, you have to inhibit certain responses. It's about impulse control. Those are things that are hard, right? So you want to look at teaching waiting in ways that are naturally occurring. One of my pet peeves is just teaching waiting to wait, because that doesn't happen in real life. You don't just wait for arbitrary reasons, like with a stopwatch, like, okay, we're working on 20 seconds. Okay, you waited 20 seconds. Here's a token. Here's a goldfish. Here's an M&M. I kind of don't like that because I think there's so many opportunities to wait that are natural, that happen all the time. Instead of just waiting to wait, wait for the iPad to charge, wait for the iPad to load a new game, wait for mom to go get your snack. Wait for little brother to come back and play with you. Wait for your turn for a game, for the bathroom. I mean, there's just countless opportunities to wait in real life that we don't need to contrive some kind of odd situation that doesn't make sense. So first, use real waiting situations because there's endless opportunities for real waiting situations. Then you want to, as much as possible, use that naturally occurring reinforcer. So wait for something awesome. Wait for your turn to go on the trampoline. Wait for your turn to play pop-up pirate. Wait for your turn to talk about your weekend. So things that are going to be naturally reinforcing, you're waiting for that. So learning that something cool is coming while waiting instead of always jumping to that arbitrary contrived reinforcer. I think that there are some ways to add in those things that are reinforcing for our kids, but add it in a way that is natural. And then you really want to make sure that your expectations are age-appropriate. This is a common mistake I see. So you want to look at what's developmentally appropriate for other children that age. When I see a 3 or 4-year-old working on waiting for 60 seconds, I kind of want to pull my hair out because when have you ever seen a 3 or 4-year-old of any range of skills or diagnosis or not a diagnosis just sit with no other activity for 60 seconds? I mean, they're probably like squirming in their pants or moving all around. Like, 3 and 4-year-olds don't just sit crisscross applesauce, stone-faced, hands perfectly nice, just waiting for 60 seconds. That doesn't happen. That's not an age-appropriate expectation. So really look at what Jen Ed peers are doing, what your kids' siblings are doing, and make sure that your expectations are in line with what's developmentally appropriate. And this brings me to the next thing, is a lot of times we just teach waiting just with no other activities. Like, you just wait wait with doing nothing, with nice hands. That's it. But in reality, when you and I wait, we do stuff. There's appropriate activities for waiting. It's not appropriate while you're waiting in line in the post office to get like your jumping jacks in or to, um, bring in your knitting needles and start knitting. That might be a really long post office line, but very few of us, I would bet, while we're in line at the post office, just sit there. What are we doing? We're on our phones, right? You're on Instagram, you're checking emails, maybe you're talking to someone, you're texting, you're doing other activities. But you have great skills to discriminate what are appropriate waiting activities and what are not appropriate waiting activities. So I think it can be really helpful to teach our kids what are some appropriate waiting activities. If the teacher says, hey, you know, we're, we're done with our lesson but we're a little early for recess, So just wait a few minutes. It's appropriate to quietly whisper to friends nearby. It's appropriate maybe to doodle in your notebook. It's not appropriate to run up and get the iPad. It's not appropriate to play tag right now, but there are some appropriate options. So I think it's imperative that we give our kids and give our— teach them that what appropriate options there are in different places and allow them to do that because that's what we like to do. So we should give our kids the same respect. Another thing that we want to do when we're teaching waiting is to use waiting tools. A lot of our kids really respond well to visuals because it gives a concrete component to something that's not concrete. So waiting 2 minutes, saying 2 minutes to some kids could mean the same as 2 hours or 20 seconds, right? They don't yet have the knowledge of what 2 minutes feels like. So add some type of visual timer. There's a ton of cool visual timers out there. Some type of visual waiting board of maybe adding a token or a piece to a picture so they know like, okay, I only have 3 more tokens to get or 3 more pieces of the picture to get until waiting is done. So it's going to kind of show the passage of time and illustrate that in a way that is concrete, which can be really, really helpful. So I hope that you've enjoyed learning about the dos and don'ts of waiting. I think it's such an important skill to teach and work on. It's really an essential life skill. Skill, right? None of us can have successful jobs or be independent, independent adults if we couldn't wait. So it's really important to work on. If you want to check out other episodes of the mini video training series, head over to my YouTube channel, The Autism Helper, or to theautismhelper.com.