Making decisions every day is part of what we do quickly but have you given much thought to what goes on and is behind that final decision you make? There are often multiple factors to consider that helps you get to the final decision. Taking in all the information you need can be overwhelming but is also necessary to get to a good decision. Dynamic intelligence is what we are using when weighing up multiple factors and coming to a decision. Dynamic intelligence is a challenging area for autistic individuals in many real-life scenarios. In order to enhance and develop this ability the brain needs to experience opportunities for growth and practice this, so that it gets efficient at making decisions. You will have experienced yourself that there are still decisions to make that can be particularly challenging.
Here are two things to STOP doing if you want to improve dynamic intelligence with your child:
1 – Making choices and decisions for your child.
- When we do this we are robbing our child of their opportunity to exercise dynamic thinking and therefore develop their dynamic intelligence.
2 – Giving just 2 (or more)
options to make a choice from.
- When we do this there isn’t much thinking that goes on for the child – they just have to pick one.
Here are two things to do instead:
1- Spotlight whenever there is an opportunity to make a decision and guide your child through it.
2- Verbalise your thought process when making a decision as this will help your child experience how to come to a decision when considering all factors.
Developing dynamic intelligence is one of the big areas that we work on in an RDI programme through the guiding relationship, if you would like to learn more about this then please contact Elisa at elisa@thinkautism.co.uk