Letter Tracing

Many of you know Lady is autistic. At the suggestion of my mother, I am going to start including things that help us cope and work through raising a child with autism.

And this is my first post. Lady struggles with fine motor dexterity. This morning we were trying to trace letters and she was about to melt down. So, what I did was using my fingernail, I gently traced the letter on her left arm as she was tracing it with her right hand on the paper. She would follow my pattern, so she formed the letters correctly, but I wouldn't begin until she started moving the pencil on the paper. She needed that sensory motivation to complete the assignment. I also would use the pad of my finger as if it were a pencil eraser and rub her arm over the spot where I just traced the letter so we could start a new letter. I also did that if she erased on her paper. She responded beautifully. We have some great looking pages of A's, B's, and C's.