THE COLOURS OF AUTISM

Over the past few months, my wife and I, along with my son, have been having some in home assistance in order to help Jacob learn how to regulate his emotions.  The sessions have been going quite well and yesterday we had a major breakthrough.

We've been trying out a mad plan, that helps Jacob understand the difference between good and not so good behaviours when he becomes upset.  The plan has both words and pictures, and the poster is hanging up in our living room so that he can see it all the time.  It's been working quite well, but we felt that it could use some tweaking.

So yesterday, together we developed a colour scale to help Jacob understand his feelings.  They are as follows:

Green = Happy

Orange = Calm

Red = Angry

Blue = Sad

Then his ABA therapist asked Jacob if the colour Yellow could be used as a colour to describe things that help him feel good.  And Jacob felt that things like using electronics or reading could be described as the colour Yellow.

So the trick became that when Jacob was mad (red) or sad (blue), he could then use his yellow things to change his mood.  And since Jacob loves colours and understands how to change them by mixing other colours, he understood how they could essentially change his mood for the better.  We turned them into an equation.

Red (angry) + Yellow (electronics) = Orange (calm)

Blue (sad) + Yellow (electronics) = Green (happy)

We're in the process now of creating another visual chart with the colours on it, so that Jacob can use them as a guide when he begins to have certain feelings.  And it's already working, even without the visual aid.  Hopefully this will help Jacob regulate his emotions even more efficiently that he already does, which in turn, will improve his behaviour at school.