Family Support Key Worker – Pegboard

We spent our second appointment with our family support key worker in the garden as it was a lovely sunny day. She had brought Ethan a game to play, it was a pegboard set, Ethan had to put the begs in each coloured board

My First Pegboard Set

We had control of the pegs, giving him one at a time, and as we gave him the peg we had to say its colour. We also gave him the time to repeat the colour back to us, he wasn’t expected to say the colour exactly, she was happy with any sound from Ethan. 

At fist Ethan needed some help with putting the pegs in the board. When Ethan wants help he expects you to use your hand to guide his own, this is an autistic trait, he gets very upset and frustrated if you don’t help him in this way. The family support worker gave me a fantastic piece of advice and its something so simple but it has made Ethan hold his own tooth brush again and it was the following simple advice.

When Ethan expects and needs this help instead of holding his hand we must place our hand on his elbow and guide his arm as desired. When doing this we must say ‘Help’. This removes our hand from his sight and therefore removes his thinking that it’s our hand that completes the task. Such simple advise but so effective. After doing this a few times with Ethan he never needed our help putting the pegs in the board again. 

After playing the game a few times we moved on to PECS work. 

This time she had brought a snake in a tin that when the lid is removed the snake pops out and foam that when you clap it turns into snow. 

She started with the snake, Ethan had to exchange the card for the tin to be opened. Every time Ethan exchanged the card he would make a ‘sssssssss’ sound which is what he does for snake. After playing this game for a while she asked Ethan to choose the snake or the foam using the PECS cards. He choose the foam but he didn’t like it and that is when we lost him and he didn’t want to play anymore. 

Our family support key worker was happy with what Ethan had done during the session and left the peg game with us for homework, you can see how we got on HERE.

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