Play Therapy and Autistic Children.
1- Autistic children, that is, those children suffering from Autism Spectrum disorder generally have impaired communication, behavior, as well as social interaction (Quinn, & Malone, 2011). When it comes to communication, the autistic children either have a dysfunctional language and communication skills or completely lack such skills. This disability is common in autistic children at the elementary age. In order to curb this disability, play therapy especially the use of toys can be applicable in developing language skills in the autistic children. My desired outcomes for my research topic is to improve student’s language skills threw play therapy.
2- As an educator I am interested in student achievement and mentoring. When applying the play therapy, two approaches can be used. These approaches are the directive approach and the non-directive approach. In the directive approach, a child is provided with a toy to play with, under the guidance of a therapist (Cummings, 2008). In this case, the therapist will give instructions to the child, to determine the level of responsiveness of the child. On finding the levels of responsiveness of the child to be low, the parents will be advised to regularly engage themselves in playing with their child using toys, whereby they should provide commands and wait for the child to respond (Cummings, 2008). Continuous and persistent engagement of the parents will help in developing the language skills in autistic children.
Besides the directive approach in play therapy, an in directive approach can also be applicable. This approach is also referred to as client-centered approach. Under this approach, the child is given a toy to play with without any instructions or guidance with hope that the child will be able to develop language skills on his own (Wolfberg, 2009). This approach is based on the assumption that children can be able to speak when they are given an opportunity play freely without any assistance or guidance (Wolfberg, 2009). However, it should be noted that some children need to be pushed for them to even play with the toys.
3- The types of reflecting I feel will be most valuable to my research are going to be:
Self reflection: Reflect my own working and the out com after each observation.
Students achievement in each steps: the student will see their own working and the will Express their opinion .