Dear Parents (from a parent),

 

Are you familiar with the question: “How many more minutes?” Many young children - especially toddlers - struggle with transitions, and parenting books often suggest that you give a 10 minute warning, then a 5 minute warning, then a 2 minute warning prior to, say, leaving the playground.

 

Merrill struggled with transitioning well after toddlerhood. Even when we gave her the heads up at "10 minutes" or "5 minutes", she would fight tooth and nail.  I wonder now if it was because she had no sense of what a "minute" was.  

 

At the suggestion of our occupational therapist, we got a special timer to help visualize the length of a minute for Merrill. It would show the big red pie slice getting smaller and smaller as the minutes ticked away. 

 

She responded pretty well to this and even turned it back on us to ask us, "How many more minutes?" when she was anticipating something.

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What was actually happening?

 

• To this day, we’re not sure exactly why Merrill had trouble visualizing a minute, but she does remember consistently being confused by time and multiplication. She had perceptual challenges when a visual queue was not available. She has always been a more visual person, and prefers to learn by SEEING how something is done, rather than being told how something is done. We think the red pie slice clock was the perfect visual to jog Merrill’s understanding.

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Things I’d recommend to help your child in a situation like this:

 

• If you’d like to purchase the timer mentioned, please find it here on a website called “Autism Products”: https://www.autism-products.com/product/time-timer-audible-countdown-timer-12-inch/

• Aim to SHOW instead of TELL. It might drastically help the perceptual challenges your child might face. There is a possibility your child uses other sensory inputs to gain meaning to mentalize the scenario at play or see the significance of what is happening.