One of the quickest ways to thwart a child from developing independence skills is to verbally prompt him through lots of activities. I am as guilty as the next mom with a learning different child of "over supporting" my son. One of the ways I have done this was by verbally prompting him for virtually everything. What I found was that my son didn't listen or pay attention to the things going on around because he knew I would prompt him through anything I wanted him to do. Does this sound familiar? I bet it does!
My son was high functioning, smart and totally dependent on the adults around him to do anything. I had an aha moment many years ago. We were sitting in a restaurant and it was time to make a decision about a drink. This was usually an I excruciating decision. I had been helping him for years and the routine went something like this...."what would you like to drink? You could have a coke, Sprite, root beer, lemonade. What would you like? " He often said, "I don't know. What should I choose?" "Honey, you can choose anything you would like? What would you like?" The anxiety would rise and he couldn't make a decision so I would tell him what to choose. In the beginning, I thought I was modeling how to make a decision.
I WAS WRONG!!
That day I learned how he could make a drink choice quickly and he did! At the bottom of the menu, there were icons for each type of drink. He looked at the icons and immediately looked at the server and said, "Vanilla Coke." What I learned: I needed to make my son's life more visual. I quickly started making task lists for everything I wanted him to learn. It changed my life and ,more importantly, it changed my son's. He learned routines and skills that I had prompted him through for years.
I am sure there are many ways to reduce prompt dependence but giving visual cues, lists, words, pictures, videos may help. The visuals are a lasting reminder of the steps of a task. Verbal prompts evaporate once they are given. A child can refer back to visuals thus encouraging independence as the adult says" you can do it yourself. Look at you list. Complete it and you can earn some time on the computer."
That will make everyone happy!
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