Getting Dressed
Contributed by Mary Elizabeth Christian
Mary's Goal: To have her child use "environmental cues"- like being cold, getting out of the shower, waking up- the situations which normally cue us to dress.
Mary broke the goal down into a task analysis. This analysis assumes that the child is capable physically of dressing themselves:Simple Task Analysis for Getting Dressed
- Get out of shower
- Get towel off hook
- Dry off body
- Hang towel on hook
- Go to bedroom
- Open drawer
- Get out underwear
- Put on underwear
- Open drawer
- Get out shirt
- Put on shirt
- Go to closet
- Open door
- Take pants off hanger
- Put on pants
- Open drawer
- Take out socks
- Put on socks
- Go to closet
- Pick up shoes
- Put on shoes.
(To teach the task) I would physically prompt through all steps and reinforce. Using a backward chain, fade prompts on last step till independent then begin to fade prompts on the next to last, etc. The key would be to give no verbal directions at all and let each step be the stimulus for the next step. Possible trouble spots are that we tend to "talk" through it and this provides lots of verbal prompts which have to faded. We also have found that using most to least prompting and moving RAPIDLY through each step is more effective than standing around waiting to see if she will do it, she meanwhile decides singing songs to herself naked in the mirror is more reinforcing. So we move her rapidly to complete the task and get the reinforcer.
An intermediate way to do this would be to lay out all clothes and only prompt the dressing, then fade bylaying out all but last item and prompting finding this. We have used this technique with success. Hope this helps, if not it was good practice for me! Let me know.
Getting Dressed: The Video
Note: This intermediate step is where we began Evy. We punched up the interest in the activity by pairing it with a video we made of him getting dressed. This really jumpstarted his interest in learning to dress himself. To see the video, click to play.