What We Do

“Basic learning skills”
Many children with ASD lack basic learning skills, such as sitting nicely and paying attention in class. Long Yiu always left his seat at the beginning of the treatment. The therapist therefore taught Long Yiu to control his behaviours. Gradually, Long Yiu was able to concentrate in class, and learnt to maintain eye contact with people and imitate others’ actions. These skills have helped Long Yiu lay a solid foundation for imitating sounds and understanding different instructions afterwards.

 “Opening the door of communication”
Hon was a quiet boy. In the beginning of the treatment, Hon could only imitate the therapist’s mouth shape. He could not make any sounds, so the therapist taught him to whistle and blow tissue paper. Hon finally made some sounds! He then made rapid progress, learnt the names of different objects and actively expressed himself in words.

“Let’s play chess together!”
Hei was not good at interacting with others. He always displayed inappropriate social behaviours, such as pushing others and messing up others’ chesses while playing chess. With the help from the therapist, Hei understood that he should control his behaviours and follow game rules so that others would be willing to play with him. Hei eventually learnt to invite others to play games together politely. On this day, Hei was playing chess with another child happily and didn’t mess up other’s chesses anymore.

“Help!”
“ee…ah…” Chi could only produce few sounds at first. He could neither understand instructions nor communicate with others. Our therapist first taught him to earn tokens. He had to complete a task to earn a token. After collecting a number of tokens, he was allowed to play on a tablet. Chi had gradually understood the rule, so the therapist started to teach him imitating movements and sounds. After series of training, Chi could imitate the therapist to say “help”, “I want” and “mum” to express his needs and seek help from others.

Winning together
Many children with autism struggle with winning or losing and throw their temper when they lose a game. Jayden couldn’t accept falling behind or losing a game so he often cheated. The therapist taught Jayden the rules and social etiquette of playing games. Jayden’s current attitude while playing games is completely different. He actively invites other children to play games and also assists others to ensure everyone has fun and experiences victory.

[A Bubble World]
“Want!” Wang said while pointing to the bubble bottle in the hands of the therapist. He was so into the bubble world. We recalled the time when Wang first came to our centre, he was very impulsive. He often ignored instructions given by the therapist and took whatever he wanted directly. The therapist first taught him the rule that he could play with toys after completing an exercise. When he had understood this rule, the therapist started to teach him how to express himself in different ways. Wang now can imitate movements, point and say “want” to express himself. We believe that continuous training will help him imitate sounds and understand instructions.

Long Yiu, Hon, Hei, Chi, Jayden and Wang were invited to present their experience in receiving ABA services with Autism Partnership Foundation (operating in Hong Kong) (APF, HK). Long Yiu, Hon, Hei, Chi and Wang are past beneficiaries of APF, HK, Jayden is a current beneficiary of APF, HK.