Visual Processing Issues

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Hello,

My son is 21 months old and he has recently started therapy for ASD. One of the most obvious issues that he has is visual processing. He looks through the side of his eyes, and stares at lights. He stares at light so much that it distracts him from his lesson sessions. No matter what he is doing he stops every few seconds, tilts his head and stares at some light source or reflection. Does anyone know any OT exercises or tips that can be helpful?

Thank you,

Are you sure it is not a stim?

Does he do that will all types of lights? I heard (not sure if true) that many AS people see higher frequencies than most people. To me many lights flicker, so that's pretty distracting and annoying. It's especially bad in many semi-public places like schools, stores, hospitals and such, as they often have low frequency lights. It's like those old 50Hz tv screens, which was a stupid idea in the first place since most people can see 50Hz flicker (I think).

It probably is a stim. The problem is that it takes away his attention from everything else and he spends a lot of time staring.

I don't think it's frequency. He does this in different lighting. It's more of a stim that is constantly distracting him. He enjoys doing this. I wouldn't mind except at how often he does it and how long it lasts.

If it is a stim you can try giving him a really simple command that he can always do and preferably enjoys. For my son it is "touch your nose and touch your ear" in a sing/song voice. It was a the first command his ABA supervisor asked him and he thought it was really funny. He will always stop what he does and do it for you. When he is stimming out or having a tantrum(not a meltdown), I can often bring him back with that. Sometimes he will go back to the stim, but it usually work by itself. If he goes back to the stim I do it again and in the 20-30 sec I do have his attention, I can redirect him to some very preferred item and then go back to whatever it was that we needed from him. Even in ABA we let him stim, but they do curb it during worktime. We refused when they asked if we wanted stim reduction as a program goal. He flaps, jumps, and looks very closely at something when stimming. For the most part he stims when he is very excited. At home unless I really need him to do something right that moment, we let him stim all he wants.

Lights are probably tricky to find replacement stims for. Does he like certain colors? You could try to see if he likes florescent versions of those colors. He might focus on them instead of lights if they are bright enough.

I know you are worried that he is not focusing on what you want him to, but your child probably needs the stim time to modulate energy level and self-calm.

If you are doing a particular thing that you want focus for, you could try using florescent/brightly colored materials if you child will accept it as a substitute. Alternately, you could try to be creative and add lights as part of your play. They do make "flashlights" for toddlers with a frosted plastic end, so the light is not excessively bright.

You also might try using toys with lots of colorful lights to engage in joint play with or whatever you are working on.

Thank you for helping me realize its a stim. In my mind I thought it was because he was having trouble with vision processing. We just started Aba and they encourage us to interrupt the behaviors but in a fun way like picking him up and swinging. It seems to work because of the way we do it. We'll try to figure out a way to interrupt this one. Thanks!

ABA has done wonders for our little guy and he really enjoys it. Best of luck with ABA.

Recognize that he is motivated by visual stims and use that motivation to connect and practice communication.

Toys for kids who have visual stims:

Spinning/light up tops ($1 section at Target!)
Kaleidoscope
glow sticks
Oil/water toys
water wand (those sticks w/ water & glitter)
Bubbles
pinwheel

Most of these items require an adult to use, which makes for a great opportunity to work on requesting and other skills such as joint attention. It is also a great way to practice switching attention from object to person.

He does like toys with lights. I understand the stim helps him to calm down. The problem is that he can't spend all his time stimming. At this point we try to redirect him. For example he used to like to mouth toys. He would have his shirt full of slobber and his hands were always busy because he would need them to hold the toy in his mouth. The ABA teacher took it away. First he cried, but within a week he stopped mouthing toys. Now he can play with toys more because his hands are free. I understand that on the one hand stims help to calm people down. On the other hand they are distracting. The lights are very tricky to deal with. If we are near we cover his view, but we cant do that all day. I will try different colors. I think he is attracted to the contrast. Maybe we need to make the light more even in our house.

Thanks. Glad to know its helping. We have a wonderful teacher and it actually seems fun after the crying stops.

Thanks. We tried bubbles but he isn't interested in tracking those. Will try the others.

I understand that you want your child to do other things. I would try really hard to integrate lighted/colorful objects into the play itself. Whenever we want my son to do anything, integrating the special interest seems to help us. My son is 8 and we still do this.

My son (almost 3 yrs) isn't in ABA yet, but he likes to do this side glancing thing. Likes to look at reflections or something. Really likes shiny things. I took him to the eye dr. and his vision is fine. In about a year, my son's eye dr. is going to have a test for kids with autism. They think maybe it takes a longer time for some of them to process what they see? I guess it would be interesting to find out if this is the case or not.

Interesting I will try to add that to his play. Right now we're working on tracking so maybe we can use lights. By the way I absolutely love ABA if it's done the right way. My thought is that it's up to us as parents to give our kids the right tools to use, to teach them to speak etc. I feel that my son wants to learn, wants to speak , wants to understand us but he doesn't know how to. He is stuck in a repetitive self contained loop. ABA breaks that loop and it gives him something that doesn't come naturally to him.