Helping your child learn life skills and find opportunities to gradually spend time independently can help them reach their full potential and live in the level of housing that is appropriate for them as adults.
Gradually Spending Time Away from Home
Encourage your child to stay with a grandparent, aunt, uncle or trusted babysitter. Learning how to feel comfortable being on their own is an important transition for them to build independence. The next step is for your child to sleep over at a close relative’s home. You can prepare them with a social story about going to Grandma’s (or whoever’s house it is) with pictures of activities they’ll do. Start with one night, then over time increase it to a three day, two night stay to keep increasing their skills while giving you the potential of a weekend away.
As your child gets older, explore a sleep away camp for children with special needs. Ask questions to find the fit that’s right for your child. Camp is a special experience that helps foster independence, increase maturity and provides a natural environment to learn self-advocacy. The Milestones Camp, Social & Recreation Tool Kit gives tips and information for choosing a camp and questions to ask.
These experiences are important if you want your child to eventually be able to live outside your home as an adult in the setting that is right for them.
Finding activities they like to do on their own so that they can entertain themselves while you do something else helps you balance your day while giving them important skills. Doing fun recreational activities they enjoy will help them learn social skills, listen to a group leader or teacher and know how to handle themself in a group. You’ll find detailed information about leisure activities in the Milestones Afterschool Activities & Independent Leisure Skills Tool Kit and this article in the Milestones Autism Planning (MAP) Tool.
Supporting Your Child Learning to Make Their Own Decisions
Self-determination is the ability to make decisions for yourself. This begins very simply with the idea of making choices like what does your child prefer to play with to what kind of after school activities they are interested in. You can give your child the power and ability to decide what they want by giving them some choices when you can. Someday when they are an adult this leads to what kind of job they would enjoy.
Learning how to do simple chores that gradually increase in level are the first seeds of employment skills for when they are older while essential for living as independently as possible as an adult. They teach organizational and other critical life skills while giving your child the experience of taking responsibility.
An example of a chore to teach might be giving them a section of a room or bookcase or toy shelf to organize, like “sort these toys and books and put them away.” You could say, “Let’s decide where each kind of thing should go and label each shelf and bin with what goes where. Then you can go through these things and put them in the right place.” The label could have a picture of the item to make it easy for your child to recognize what goes where.
Other chores could be filling and emptying the dishwasher; carrying down, loading laundry, folding and putting away; sorting mail; setting the table, clearing the table; helping with cooking, preparing a menu, baking.
Another idea as your child grows older and starts having homework is to set up a homework/study table or desk with what they will need to have handy. Then teach them how to keep it organized so they put things away and put their homework where they will need it to hand it in.
Working on life skills like hygiene, self-advocacy, money management basics and social communication are important building blocks to prepare for living as independently as possible.