Preparing for inclusion of children with special educational needs (SEN), including autistic children, means the acquisition of those skills that will help them fully integrate into the educational process. These include everyday skills, self-care, communication, self-organization and learning skills.
The coordinated interaction of parents and professional teachers on the basis of an individual approach to each special child will help. Such a practice, for example, is demonstrated by a kindergarten for children with autism “Child with future”.
Experts emphasize that the main thing that a future pupil should be able to do is to communicate with other people. It is about the necessary vocabulary, the ability to start a dialogue and maintain it, know the necessary gestures and understand in which situations they should be used, as well as voice, including adjusting the volume and timbre.
Rehabilitation experts add that preparation for inclusion is a child’s understanding of his body, its feelings and signals. At the right time, he must adequately respond to the events taking place around him, which is impossible to achieve without understanding his own body.
In addition, to be ready for school, a child must be able to imitate peers and work with notebooks and textbooks. During the lesson, he should focus on the learning process. By the way, a child’s assistant can help with this, he often accompanies autistic people in an inclusive learning space.
However, it is important to remember that preparing for inclusion is not just about working with children with SEN. The school itself, future classmates of a special child, and their parents should be properly prepared. These are elements of the compulsory complex, without the combination of which the school process will not give the desired result, and the principle of inclusion will not work in full.