From the Wellbeing Team

Anxiety & Autism (part two)

Ways to help autistic children and teenagers recognise anxiety

Your autistic child might need to learn what anxiety feels like in their body. For example, when your child feels anxious, their:

• palms get sweaty
• stomach feels strange
• heart beats faster
• hands flap.

You could try drawing an outline of a person’s body. Inside the outline, help your child draw or write what happens in each part of their body when they feel scared or worried.

Relaxation and calming strategies for autistic children and teenagers when they feel anxious

You can help your child learn ways to calm down when they start feeling anxious or stressed. These might include:

• counting slowly to 10
• taking 5 deep breaths
• running around the yard 5 times
• doing 50 jumps on the trampoline
• looking at a collection of their favourite or special things
• reading a favourite book
• closing their eyes for a few moments
• going to a quiet part of the house.

Get your child to practice these strategies when they’re calm. Once your child knows the strategies well, you can gently guide your child to try them when they feel anxious.

Visual tools to help autistic children and teenagers prepare for anxious situations

If visual supports and social stories work well for your child, you could use these tools to help your child prepare for situations that make them anxious.

For example, if your child gets anxious when you drop them off at school, you could take some photos of what your child will be doing – walking in the school gate, sitting in the classroom, playing sport, eating lunch etc. You could also take photos of what you’ll be doing while you’re not together, like driving home, grocery shopping, gardening and so on. A clear picture of you coming back to pick your child up would be important too.

If your child gets anxious when there’s a change in routine, daily or weekly visual schedules can help prepare your child. When you know a change is coming up – for example, no swimming lessons in the school holidays – you can show this on your schedule. Leading up to the change, look at the schedule regularly with your child so that your child knows the weekly routine will be different.

Getting help with managing anxiety in autistic children and teenagers

A psychologist might be able to help if your child is very anxious. A psychologist can work directly with your child and family to develop strategies for reducing anxiety.

Psychologists use a range of approaches:

• Cognitive behaviour therapy – this helps children develop skills to change their thinking in situations that make them anxious.
• Therapies and supports that use gradual exposure to help children face their fears – this might include the stepladder approach.
• Social stories – these can prepare children for unfamiliar or stressful situations that generally make them anxious.
• Relaxation training – this can help your child learn to relax.

You can ask your GP or paediatrician to recommend a psychologist or therapist.

Medicine can also reduce anxiety symptoms in autistic children. It’s usually recommended only when anxiety is affecting a child’s everyday life and other strategies haven’t reduced the anxiety enough. You can speak to your GP or paediatrician about this option.

R U OK Day

On Thursday the 14th of September our teachers celebrated R U OK Day with their students. Each class was provided with posters to display, activities and video links.

The message for the day was to remind everyone that any day is the day to ask “are you OK?” and support those around us. 

Students looked at the four important parts of a conversation:

1. Asking R U OK?
2. Listening
3. Encouraging action
4. Checking in