by Jillian E. Shepard

Created on: January 09, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2012

Teaching autistic children about emotions is a challenging endeavor. Autism is a complex disorder that can take many forms. Each child with autism is unique and truly needs a program tailored to suit his or her needs. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder often have difficulty reading, understanding and using facial expressions.

One of the to teach emotions and social skills (which tie hand and hand) is the use of social stories. Social stories provide an indivdidual with accurate information about those situations that they might find confusing or difficult. The situation at hand is described in great detail. Focus in the stories is given to a few key points such as the important social cues, the events and reactions the individual might expect to occur in the situation, and the actions and reactions that might be expected of the individual. The overall goal of a social story is to incrase the individual's understanding of, make them more comfortable in, and possibly suggest some appropriate responses for the situation in question.

Another suggestion for teaching children with autism about emotions is to use a mirror. When the child is "working" at her table allow her to look at the mirror. The parent/teacher can point out emotions. For example: if she cries you can say "Look at (name), she's sad". The mirror is great because you can also have the child attempt to immitate your expressions in the mirror.

Studies have shown that autistic populations respond well to computer assisted instruction. Technology can be used to help aid in teaching autistic children about emotions. There is an interactive program called FaceSay that teaches children where to look for facial cues such as eye gaze or a facial expression. There is also a variety of free games online that allow children to look at pictures to determine emotions according to the pictures.

Believe it or not, television shows such as Thomas the Tank Engine may be affective in teaching autistic children about emotions. The important difference between Thomas the Tank Engine, and almost every other show geared for children is the manner in which various emotions are evinced by the characters. The faces of the characters, owing to the way in which the show is produced (live-action and stop-action), are completely static and non-animated. There are no slow progressions from one emotion to another with these characters. They are either happy, or angry, or surprised, or tired, or scared, with no middle ground. Moreover, the emotional state of the character in question is usually reinforced by explicit statements from the narrator, i.e. "Thomas was surprised" or "Bill and Ben were angry", etc.

In summary, there are numerous methodoligies that can be used to help autistic children learn about emotions. The approach must be individualized for each child. Each and every child on the spectrum is different. Some methods will be much more appropriate for the autistic child that is higher functioning than others and vice versa.

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