Passport to Friendship: Facilitating Peer Play for Children with ASD

Passport to Friendship—a successor to Embracing Play (VL-9/00), which focused on parent-child interactions for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder—addresses the subject of children with ASD playing with friends. While making a new friend can be disorienting for children with ASD, this kind of interaction at an early age is critical in building lifelong social skills. Offering very specific guidelines for planning and leading a play session with a friend, the program emphasizes the need for both structure and predictability, while also encouraging parents and caregivers to keep three main goals in mind: 1) the child needs to stay in the designated play space, 2) the child needs to accept the peer, and 3) the child with ASD needs to learn to express his/her preferences for what will be played. Three types of activities are recommended for each hour of playtime: sensory/motor (physical play, often easiest for ASD children), turn-taking games, and “construction play” (i.e., open-ended play that doesn't depend on speech). As with the previous title, real parents and kids are featured throughout the program's vignettes, which are supplemented by expert commentary from Hilary Baldi of the Behavioral Intervention Association. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Reagan)