Eric Carle books are magic for children with autism
Tyler Cox is a first-grader at Pullam Elementary School in Brownsville. He has classic autism and has been going to school since he was 3 years old. Tyler rarely speaks and when he does it is often in very low monotone sounds. He is a beautiful boy who happens to be stubborn, determined to have his way and absolutely loves animals. That is the key, Tyler loves animals.
When Tyler began first grade in August, we knew he had mastered certain skills from his PPCD class with Ms Janie Casanova (preschool program for children with disabilities). The best skill he mastered was the ability to match upper and lower case letters. We also knew that Tyler loved miniature figures such as dinosaurs and farm animals. The question was whether the boy could move his strong interest of animals into books and better communication. The main problem was Tyler did not have the ability to stay focused for more than a minute or two. Developmentally, in many ways, Tyler was like a 2-year-old child. In other ways, he was ahead of some of his peers with his single focus interest of animals. The challenge was to try and move the boy from what the Floortime Therapy Model refers to as a level one child with autism to a level two (see Dr. Greenspan and Dr. Wieder on Floortime Therapy).
I had found in the past that young autistic children often love the books by Eric Carle. The author’s repetitive flavor, bright colors and simplicity work extremely well with children who are developing speech and learning simple sentence structure. One of the favorite storybooks for a young child with autism is either Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? or Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) has created a wonderful series of pictures that interact with these stories. These PECS help children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) develop simple communication with picture icons.
So, early on in the new school year, we sat down with Tyler on the floor. We knew that the boy’s interest needed to be picked up quickly. So we placed some tiny little animals that matched Eric Carle’s Brown, Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? in a little blue box. While quickly turning the first pages, the words “Brown, bear, brown bear what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me,” were read to him. As the words were read, a brown bear figure and a red bird figure were placed in front of him on the actual pages of the book. His eyes opened wide. Tyler reached out to touch them. The story continued to be read quickly the first time. Gradually, toy animals were lining up on the floor beside him. Eventually, a line of a brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog, black sheep, gold fish, teacher and little toy children were all in a row. He became very excited and reached out to hold them.
The story was repeated many times during the next several days. One day, the next step was introduced. Tyler was shown icons of the brown bear and the other animals along with the figures. Soon, the boy was putting three icons together of “I see __brown__ bear” so he could play a while with the animal figures. After a while, we checked to see how much he remembered. As the reader paused to turn the page, he would grab the next animal. Eventually, even without saying the animal’s name and Tyler was correctly grabbing the next animal. He even began to verbalize what came next and placed the animals on each of the pages. Before we knew it, Tyler had memorized the entire book.
A few weeks later, we wanted to see how Tyler might respond to the computer program “Writing with Symbols.” Initially, Tyler didn’t really want to sit there until he spotted the words “brown bear brown bear what do you see” on the screen. Each of the words had pictures with them. The boy grabbed my hands and wanted more of the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? typed. Instead, we showed Tyler with hand over hand assistance how to type the words. The boy knew the upper and lower cased alphabet. The rest was easy. Today, Tyler loves to type away words from Eric Carle’s various books. Fortunately, the author has written lots of books. It will be a long time before Tyler gets bored. Plus he is learning lots of new words too. Guess what he is getting for Christmas this year?
Eric Carle has been a wonderful author of more than 75 books. He has written such classic children books as: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Pancakes, Pancakes!, Do You Want to Be My Friend?, Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me and The Very Busy Spider, to name a few. For children with ASD, the format and simplicity works well to help them communicate and understand in a way that really works well for them.
Pamela Gross Downing, a special education teacher, can be contacted at downpamg@aol.com.
