Thinking and learning strengths in autistic children and pre-teens

Thinking and learning strengths in autistic children

Autistic children have many strengths and abilities.

These might be strengths when compared with peers or individual strengths within their own skill sets.

Once you work out what your autistic child’s strengths and abilities are, you can use them to help your child’s development.

The following tools can help you learn more about your child’s thinking and learning strengths:

Developmental assessment: this is used for children as part of autism diagnosis. It measures children’s strengths in areas like non-verbal thinking skills, language and communication, and movement.
IQ test: this test measures children’s verbal skills, visual reasoning, working memory and processing speed compared with children the same age. It’s also called a cognitive assessment.

Visual learning and thinking and autism

Visual thinking can be a strength for autistic children. They might be good at visual search tasks like finding a triangle within a complex picture or finding a red S in a set of red Xs and green Ss.

These strong visual skills might be because autistic children tend to focus on details, rather than the whole.

Also, autistic children are often visual learners. This might be because visual information lasts longer and is more concrete than spoken and heard information. It might help autistic children to process information and choose how to respond.

You can help your autistic child learn by presenting information visually. You can also use your child’s visual skills to help them in other areas. For example:

Put visual reminders around your house. If your child can read, these can be written words, but they can also be pictures.
Take photos of the play activities your child can do, and put these on an ‘activity board’. This tool can work as a reminder or help your child make choices.
Take photos of the steps involved in daily activities, like packing a school bag or brushing teeth. Stick the sequence on a wall near where your child does each activity.
Use visual supports for either the whole day or for daily activities.

Therapies and supports that use visual strategies often work well for autistic children.

Rule-based thinking and autism

Autistic children often work well and feel safe and comfortable with rules, routines and structure. You can use this to help your child develop new skills.

One way to do this is by making it clear what your autistic child can expect and do in different situations. You could make a book with words and pictures about different situations.

Positive phrases like ‘When x happens, do this ...’ work better than negative phrases like ‘Don’t …’. You could talk to other parents or professionals to get ideas about what situations to cover.

For example:

When it’s bedtime, I brush my teeth.
When Dad hands me the dice, it’s my turn in the game.
When I see a car coming on the road, I stay on the footpath.

‘If, then’ statements are good for activities with clear steps and sequences, so you can use them when your child needs to do something. For example, ‘If you put your shoes on, then you can go outside’. Or you can use a simpler version – for example, ‘Shoes first, then outside’.

Special interests and autism

Autistic children can often focus intently and learn a lot about things they’re very interested in.

Here are ideas for developing your autistic child’s skills by making the most of their special interests:

Play skills: when your child is playing with their special interest toys or objects, play alongside them. You can expand your child’s play by commenting on what you’re both doing, swapping toys, taking turns and so on.
Numeracy skills: use your child’s favourite toys to talk about colours, numbers and size – for example, red toy cars and blue toy cars, big trucks and small motorbikes, and so on.
Daily care skills: develop your child’s ability to cooperate by building their interests into challenging activities. For example, if having a bath is challenging, you could give your child some special interest toys to play with in the bath, or stick pictures of your child’s special interest around the bath as a talking point.
Conversation skills: talk with your child about their special interests. Your child might start by giving a speech instead of having a conversation. You could gradually introduce questions, and get your child to ask you questions too.

As your child gets older, you can look for ways to use their special interests in one area to build skills in other areas. For example, if your child has good computer skills, they might like to learn about coding or developing video games. Or if your child loves Thomas the Tank Engine, they might be interested to learn about train networks in your area.

Rote memory skills and autism

Autistic children are often good at learning by heart (rote memory). Many autistic children can remember large chunks of information, like conversations from movies, words to a song, number plates and so on.

You can encourage your autistic child to use rote memory for learning other useful information, like your phone number and address, the alphabet and times tables.