Planning for the future is hard for any of us. Sticking to goals and accomplishing steps to meet our goals can be an difficult and abstract process. When it comes to students with autism, seeing the bigger picture over the course of months and years can be a real challenge. Several years ago I was working with a student who was a sophomore in high school. He wanted to go to college, but we were having struggles every day with things like completing homework, joining in extracurricular activities, and learning how to do chores and cooking. He did not make the connection that all of the things were he encouraging him to do were crucial to him going to college.
To help break down these concepts, I often like to use what I call "visual analogies". In this case, we used the analogy of a house of cards. It is a great visual because the base of the house of cards must be strong in order to keep building up - and if it is not the whole house could crumble. We wrote in the different steps he needed to get to college, and used other visual from there to help him accomplish the smaller steps. But this visual hung on his refrigerator until the time he got accepted and went to college. So, if you have a student that wants to drive, save up for a gaming console, or any other event with smaller steps towards a larger goal, use this free autism resource to help your student succeed!