Creating a "Think Back" book aids an autistic child with recall and storytelling (part 1)

Autistic kids can have problems with understanding time. Remembering something that happened yesterday or even this morning and managing to tell the story with a beginning, middle and end can be a challenge.

My son, Billy, who is four years old and a highly functioning autistic, has little problem describing what is right in front of him. I can show him a picture of me pushing him in a stroller and ask, "What are we doing?" and he will respond, "Going for a walk!"

But if we're talking about what we did earlier in the day and I ask him, "What did we do this morning?" he has difficulty answering the question.

I decided to combine the pictures and the storytelling to have conversations about events in Billy's day and help him grasp the idea of things that happened before now.  When we plan a particular event or activity, I take the digital camera and capture a picture of the beginning of the event, several important moments during the activity and then a final image. Keeping the number of photos low is ideal, particularly for younger children.

In taking the pictures, get the child in as many of the photos as possible (a picture of him holding a flower, for instance, rather than just a photo of a flower) and try to make the event one, obviously, that he enjoys.

After printing out the photos of the activity, I bind them together in a little book. You can staple the edges together, or fold paper to create a book.

I add a short caption to each photo to describe the action: "This morning, I took a walk," is one photo. And the next might be "I went with my mom," and include a photo of the two of us. I like to include pictures of things we saw with captions like, "I smelled a yellow flower," and "I crossed the street."

After nap time, we look at our "Think Back" book together. We talk about the things we did and saw as we turn the pages and read the captions.

Part two: Drawing a Think Back picture.

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