Books Beyond Boundaries

Each time you read aloud to your child, you are helping their brain develop. They learn to recognize your voice and expressions and learn more about the world around them.

Sharing books together is an excellent way to connect with your autistic child, regardless of age or level of severity. Reading helps your child’s language development and encourages good listening skills. Even non verbal children benefit from reading!

Some autistics may be early readers and show intense interest in certain subjects, wanting to read everything they can on a particular topic. Encourage this! Use their interests and love of learning as motivators to increase skills in other areas.

Autism impacts the way your child reacts to new situations and the world around them. Reading non fiction can be especially helpful for those who worry about new situations and how to navigate them by lowering their stress level.

If your child craves routine, try reading a favorite book to help move from one task to another. Reading can be a precursor for nap time or bedtime.

Work with your child’s therapist’s to learn how reading can help with social skills, fine motor skills, acquiring language including increased comprehension, new activities, and transitions.

Choose books that are appropriate and encourage your child to turn the pages. It is important to teach that pinch grasp as it is a precursor to many other fine motor skills, like handwriting and tying shoes.

Regardless of your child’s autism severity level, make reading a fun activity and in turn help your child’s learning and social skills.

Try reading for only a few minutes at a time, then lenghten the time you read together. Make every effort so that your child sees reading as FUN as well as a time to learn.

Read aloud. Don’t forget to talk about the pictures and/or read the text in funny voices to help keep engagement high.

Help your child recognize emotions through books. Borrow books from the library that have photos and drawings of babies and people’s faces. Point to each face and lable the emotion displayed. Imitate the emotion yourself and ask your child to do the same. Make a game out of it with other siblings joining in on the fun.

Read the same story again and again. This will help them learn language. As you read together, encourage them to say one of the words on each page in the story. Don’t worry if they aren’t saying the words correctly at first, it will come with repetition. Be silly and have fun!

Find books that have lots of repetition. Encourge your child to repeat the highly repetitve words or phrases. Again, be silly, have fun and involve siblings whenever possible. Strengthen that sibling relationship in all the ways you can. It's the longest relationship your autistic child will have.

Find rhyming books. Clap your hands, snap your fingers, or come up with unique hand gestures and help your child clap/gesture along to the rhythm.

Find books that have sound buttons your child can press. The more interactive story time is, the more fun and engaged your child will be during your time together.