Blog — Autism Support

For students with disabilities, consistency is key. Using the same tools and strategies at school, home, and in the community can be incredibly beneficial, as it provides a sense of familiarity and predictability that can help students feel more comfortable and confident in their abilities throughout multiple environments. 

One of the best ways we can provide consistency between school, home, and the community is to use the same tools in all environments for a seamless transition.  For example, if a student is using a visual timer to help manage their time and stay on task at school, it can be incredibly helpful for them to continue using this same exact timer at home. This way, the student is already familiar with how the timer works and can easily integrate it into their daily routine. 

Before we jump into how to use a visual timer throughout a variety of environments, let’s talk overall about why using a visual timer can be so helpful! By providing a visual representation of time, timers can help students better manage their time, stay on task, and even help with transitions between activities. Incorporating visual timers into daily routines can provide structure and support for students with disabilities, helping children to succeed in both academic and independent living skills, all while reinforcing time management. 

Ideas for Using Visual Timers at School 

• Visual timers can help students understand how much time they have to complete an independent assignment during class time. 

• They can be used during transition times, such as between classes or activities, to help students understand how much time they have to get ready for the next task. 
• Visual timers can be especially helpful during recess when children need to understand how much time they have to play before returning to class. 
• Teachers can use visual timers for various activities, such as classroom cleanup time or group work. 

Ideas for Using Visual Timers at Home: 

• Visual timers can help children (and adults!) manage their time and stay on track with daily routines at home. 
• They can be used to help children understand how much time they have to complete their homework or chores. 
• Visual timers can also be used to help children understand how much time they have left before bedtime or before they need to leave for school. 
• Incorporating visual timers into home routines can provide structure and help students feel more in control of their time.

Ideas for Using Visual Timers in the Community: 

• At the playground: A visual timer can be used to help children understand how much time they have left to play before it's time to go home.  
• At the library: A visual timer can be used to help children understand how much time they have to read or complete an activity at the library. (Silent, visual timers are great in quiet environments!) 
• At the grocery store: A visual timer can be used to help children understand how much time they have to shop or wait in line at the checkout. This can help reduce anxiety and improve overall outcomes in situations that can often be overwhelming. 
• At the doctor's office: A visual timer can be used to help children understand how much time they have to wait before seeing the doctor. This can help reduce anxiety and improve the overall experience of doctor visits. 

More Tips for Using Visual Timers at School, Home, and in the Community: 

• Be consistent with your use of visual timers in multiple rooms around the house and settings within the school. 
• Display the visual timer in a visible location so that a child can easily see it. 
• Encourage children to use the visual timer independently, once they become comfortable with it. 

And, when you find that a visual timer is effective at school, at home, and in the community, please discuss with your IEP team to have the visual timer written into the accommodations section of the IEP.  This will ensure the visual timers are listed as a required support for your child’s or student’s day. 

About our Guest Author

Catherine Whitcher, M.Ed. - Founder of Master IEP Coach® Certificate and Mentorship programs, host of the Special Education Inner Circle Podcast. Helping parents, teachers, admins, and therapists become the Idea Bringers, Solution Finders, and Team Builders at the IEP table by providing IEP Leadership & Strategy trainings nationwide.  

www.catherinewhitcher.com

www.masteriepcoach.com  

For children with cognitive differences, time perception can be a challenge.  

Many of us take time for granted, having become so used to the system of seconds, minutes, and hours, as well as their typical symbolic representation on traditional clock-hand clocks, or as numbers on our phone. When we look at the top right of our phone or laptop screen and check the time, we tend to immediately “understand” what, say, 1:30 PM means.  

We will not launch into a deep discussion about the philosophy of time here, but we could easily say that time perception is indeed subjective in many ways. To understand what we mean, just think of the phrase “Time flies when you are having fun.” Or, think of, say, doing a bunch of paperwork, which can make seconds feel like hours, and you will feel the truth in the idea that time perception can be subjective.  

Just as fun and boredom can alter how we experience seconds and minutes and hours, so can confusion and anxiety, which are common feelings that children with autism feel when having to deal with a time-sensitive task.  
 

Why Individuals with Autism Struggle with Time Perception 

An individual with autism sometimes struggles when it comes to telling time because of their learning differences in areas such as working memory or planning, making it hard to remember passing durations during a given interval.  

In addition to the above-mentioned problems that individuals with autism face in time perception, they also typically have multitasking issues, which can make it doubly hard to perform a task that requires you to have a precise idea of just “how long” is passing. 

A reduced ability to recreate time intervals is one of the key setbacks here, so being able to easily remember when you began a task, and how long it has been since starting, is something that a useful time-telling tool or strategy will offer for a child with autism.  

One way to do this is to help children with autism visualize time passing, which we will go into below.  

Visualizing Time: How the Time Timer Can Help a Child with Autism’s Time Perception 

Being able to immediately “feel” time is something very valuable for a child with autism, who struggles with the task of having to mentally grasp just what it means for five minutes to pass. We here at Time Timer have just the tool for accomplishing that.  

What makes the Time Timer visual timer such a success with a child with autism is its visual representation of time with our patented red disk that elapses as the set time, which in the Time Timer Original 8” allows for up to an hour, the red disk like a fraction that represents time.  

When a child with autism sees just how much of the red disk has elapsed since starting, they can readily feel “how much” time has passed and is left in the activity. It is a visual communication that is not told in the language of numbers and digits but rather in a more immediate and universally-understandable symbol, where less work is needed to remember “how much” time has passed in each interval.  

However, we also have Time Timer products that cover other durations of time. For example, our Time Timer PLUS can go up to 120 minutes, and is additional more portable for children on the move.  

Children with autism can also have a Time Timer visual timer readily available everywhere they go with the Time Timer Watch, which not only tells the time in a visual way, but offers a Time Timer that is digitally represented and can be set up to 99 minutes, along with a timed alert feature.  
 

The Best Time-Telling Tool for Children with Autism  

Our Time Timer visual timer is the best time-telling tool for individuals with autism, which is a claim that has been recognized by many professionals and organizations involved in the autism community, such as the Autism Awareness Center.  

For more uses of the Time Timer in special needs, click here.  

If you are interested in other Time Timer visual timers, check out our page for them here.  

Any other questions? Be sure to contact us if so!  

Whether you are in a classroom or home, visual communication can be instrumental in increasing productivity and understanding, which is why you should consider implementing a visual schedule into your children's routine.