Activities That Fill Dead Time

There are interventions and activities that can be helpful in filling dead time when in community settings. Planning ahead by bringing some supplies is helpful but you can engage the child with autism in the community setting in a number of ways.

Bringing play items and interesting materials on a trip is a great way to engage the child while addressing sensory needs as well. Dead time can be filled with simple tactile experiences. A rattle stimulates both vision and hearing.

Dead time can also be filled with language. Ask the child questions and encourage him to attend to specific objects and sounds. A child with autism may enjoy counting the number of times that a speaker is used while in a retail or grocery store. Encouraging him to tell you when he hears the speaker helps him attend to a sound and communicate with others.

Keeping the child with autism engaged at all times is not realistic. However, a community outing will be more interesting and beneficial if there is less dead time.