This book provides parents and teachers of children on the autism spectrum (aged 2-5 years) with strategies for promoting childrens optimal social, emotional, language, and academic competence. It includes verbal and nonverbal strategies to help caregivers to enter in childrens attention spotlight and expand their interest and joy in relationships with others. The book includes sample adult-child social and emotion coaching scripts for interacting with children and suggestions for modelling, initiating, and prompting social behaviours and joint activities. Also included are other connection and communication strategies such as sensory games, visual prompts and pictures, gestures, pretend and puppet play, and intentional communication. Through repeated, sensitive and responsive interactions, parents and teachers can learn to enter the child's attention spotlight and to jointly share experiences that bring the child interest and joy. This results in a strong interpersonal connection and gradually leads to the child's desire and ability to communicate and share emotions and experiences with others. This child-focused and developmentally based way of communicating and teaching leads to a stronger relationship, more emotional connection, more emotion regulation, and less frustration for parents, teachers, and the child!
