If you are looking to involve your autistic child with household chores, be sure to download a copy of my free chore chart printable for children with autism. And while you’re here, check out the rest of my free visual printables for autism.
How to Use Chore Chart Printables for Autism and Why Chores are Important
When we are raising our children, on the autism spectrum or not, we want to show them how to do things. This not only teaches them responsibility but also important life skills for the future. One of the ways that we can actively teach them life skills is by having them do household chores. For autistic children, while we can also teach them by showing them how to do something; we can also teach them by incorporating chore chart printables.
Get the Chore Chart printables and more with the Visual Schedule toolkit – exclusively inside the Autism Family Life Toolkit.
Chores also teach kids:
- Personal responsibility/accountability
- Goal setting
But, I think the most important part for autistic kids? Chores teach them about life skills in a hands-on way that is also meaningful.
How to Involve Your Autistic Child With Household Chores
One of the most important things, for an autistic child or not, is to be consistent. If you’re trying to help them with steps, that’s one thing. Ultimately you want them to be able to do the chore independently.
How do you accomplish that?
Break it down into steps.
For example, let’s look at doing laundry:
- Sort dirty laundry
- Start washing machine
- Add laundry detergent
- Add dirty clothes and shut lid
- When done, add a dryer sheet to the dryer
- Put the wet clothes into the dryer
- When done, remove clean clothes from dryer
- Sort clean clothes
- Fold clothes
- Put clothes away
You may think it’s not necessary, but really? I think the more steps the better. You can also have your child watching you at first while you perform the steps of the task.
Gradually, they can become involved in the process.
Incorporating Your Chore Chart Printables Into Your Visual Schedule and Daily Routine
As your child becomes more familiar with the chore (or chores) that they have, you can also start incorporating them into their visual schedule. For example, on certain days of the week you may have certain chores such as doing laundry, vacuuming, etc. Similarly, there might be tasks that are performed daily such as walking the dog, feeding the cat, or washing dishes. If you are using a daily system, these chores are simple enough to incorporate into the schedule (ex. wash dishes at 7:00PM).
You can also make the daily chores as part of the daily choices or implement them with your first/then task board.
With my daughter, she does laundry every week and we also have daily chores like putting away dishes and cleaning up her toys. She’s come to expect that at certain times of the day, we’re going to do one of those tasks. She still isn’t 100% independent in performing these tasks but she is getting better.
From an autistic autism mom to you
The Autism Family Guide is your shortcut to autism parenting.
How do I know?
Because friend, the resources in this guide are lifechanging.
Create routines with ease, calming strategies at your fingertips, and more.
Kori
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