Children With Autism Activities - Welcome Children With Autism on Your Playground
Using These Simple Planning Tips © 2010
Children With Autism Activities - Welcome
Children With Autism on Your Playground
Using These Simple Planning Tips
Written by: Autism Advisor
Children With Autism Activities
When designing a playground to include children with autism, you must understand that there
is a spectrum of severity and every child is different. Some children have a more moderate
type of autism, while others will have more severe symptoms. There are other diagnoses on
the spectrum, most commonly Asperger's Disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder.
Some researchers even put ADHD and ADD on the spectrum. Despite the differences along
the spectrum, there are common symptoms between people with autism and one of those is
that 95% of people diagnosed on the spectrum have Sensory Processing Disorders.
Dr. A. Jean Ayres is generally credited with developing both a theory of sensory integration
dysfunction, now called Sensory Processing Disorder, and the therapeutic interventions for
children who have it. Her work emphasizes the importance of three of the senses: tactile (the
sense of touch), vestibular (the sense of movement and gravity), and proprioceptive (the
sense of how our body works (muscle and joint information).
People with Sensory Processing Disorders maybe hyper-responsive to sensory input meaning
they overreact. While other people maybe hypo-responsive to sensory input meaning they
under-react. In many people it is a combination of both. This leads us to the fact that every
child is an individual. Therefore, just like every other child, children with autism react
differently and enjoy different activities on the playground. However, we can take some
information about the three senses talked about above and make some general observations of
what should go into a playground that actively welcomes children with autism. Children
With Autism Activities
Children With Autism Activit