SUPPORTING SUCCESS THROUGH PROMPTING AND FADING

Hi… warm greetings

The road to success is always under construction. Such a true statement

 Today We will focus on teaching skills through prompting and how to fade them when your child is ready or independent at that skill.  Prompting and fading are two important teaching strategies, they help in teaching new skills as well as support participation in everyday routine like brushing teeth, tiding up after playing etc.

Thanx to http://www.superstock.com/ for the above picture
Prompting is a cue or a hint that helps your child to know what to do in a particular situation. Ex, when you ask your child to put on shoes you might want to point the shoes or hold up a picture of a shoe, either one of these prompt will help the child to put on shoes. Using prompts will increase the likelihood, where children will make the correct response. Prompts can take different forms depending upon what you want your child to do as well as his needs. Generally use more obvious prompts when teaching new skills as we go use less prompts/support for the skills he/she already knows( just reminders).

Types of prompts:

Physical prompts-physical prompts generally involves using your hands over your child hands (hand over hand prompt) to guide the child to attain a task/teach a skill.  It provides the greatest amount of support and is most helpful when teaching a new skill. Partial physical prompting can be practiced or lighter physical assistance once the child started showing progress in learning a skill. Ex; helping the child brush his teeth giving prompt by holding the wrist of the hand, gradually decreasing the prompt by holding his arm for greater independency.

Modeling or demonstration- is a prompt that shows the child how to do the skill or action; he learns the skill by watching or imitating the parent or others. Ex; child learns to wave his/her hand for bye by watching you saying bye to others.

Gestural prompts- these prompts include pointing, nodding and gazing at items or to a location.

Visual prompts- using visual cues (pictures, photographs, objects or signs)  to help the child to perform the correct response. Or is anything you see will help the child perform the task.

Positional prompts- the item related to skill positioned close to the child.

Verbal prompts- using verbal instructions to guide the child for the task. Verbal prompts can be helpful with certain tasks and has to be always combined with other prompts.

There are two main systems in using prompting strategy; the first system is

Most-to-least prompting: providing a level of prompting parent know will get the correct response from their child. Then gradually remove or decrease the prompt over time. When teaching a new skills use this approach. Use hand over hand prompt for initial success of the skill and he/she does half of the task modify the prompt. The other system includes

Least-to most prompting: when using this system begin by giving your child the opportunity to respond on his own/ giving chance for independency then progressively increase the prompt level until he/she responds correctly. This system works well when you want your child to be more spontaneous.  It’s not good to teach new skills because there are too many opportunities for your child to make mistakes.

Always remember helping too much and too long can be a problem, the child learns prompt dependency (this could be your child unable to do a task without you). For avoiding this use technique called Fading.

Fading: fading is the process of gradually reducing the given prompt.

Prompts can be faded many ways; the amount of force used in a physical prompt can be gradually reduced (full physical hand over hand>to support in the wrist> tapping the forearm> eventually light touch of elbow).

Fading the force of visual prompt (shrinking the picture size, lightening the picture, line drawing, using fewer pictures in the sequence)

The other way of fading the prompt; extend the time between the instruction and the support, wait for sometime may be 2 to 3 seconds before delivering the prompt

Finally changing the position when prompts delivered from (increasing the distance between you and the child)

Important steps to follow when practicing prompting and fading

Ø  Define the skill you are going to teach

Ø  Identify suitable prompts

Ø  Prompt, reinforce and fade

Ø  Monitor results

Ø  Return to strong prompt when necessary

It may take long time or little time to move your child up to success through prompting and fading, every child learns at their own pace. Just keep trying prompting and fading useful way to help your child learn new skills. Take care

The source of the information: Mr. Jonathan Weiss workshop by community living inToronto, my deepest gratitude to him.