Teaching turn-taking to children with autism is crucial for their social and emotional development. Turn-taking is a fundamental social skill that fosters communication, cooperation, and the ability to form meaningful relationships. Turn taking is often something that neurodivergent children struggle with. This is due to a number of reasons like poor impulse control, lack of understanding of social cues, issues with unpredictability or difficulty to shift focus to allow someone else their turn. Hence, it is important to teach to take turns the child early on for their social and emotional development.
This video gives tips about activities that we could use to encourage the child to learn turn taking.
Another helpful way could be the use of a social story. You could make your own social story surrounding the concept of turn taking and read it to your child. You can read our blog on making your own social story here. Alternatively there are also social stories available online that touch the subject of turn taking. The video below is one such story found on youtube.
