My mother is a teachers aid at a school and works with an autistic child. Whenever he completes his work she offers him free time for five to ten minutes before class break and he often plays with toy cars. She wants to know how she can stop the child throwing himself onto the floor and screaming when told free time is finished.
A couple things she may try: One thing would be to use a timer to set the amount of time. They timer then is the thing to say “stop”. The other thing is to do warning time. You say, “you have 3 more minutes”,
“you have one more minute”. It makes it less stressful to have a transition and have something the child expects. He won’t know exactly what “2 minutes” means but it gives him some idea that the time is ending. Another thing would be to give the child a bit of a “ritual” for cleaning up. I would get a box and say this is the parking lot (or house for the cars, or whatever is in the kid’s vocabulary), then at the end say “It is time to park the cars( or put the cars to bed, or whatever)”. Then let the kid line them up. Autistic kids find lining up a relaxing thing (allow time for it). So you end on a positive thing. A last thing she may try is exchange the end of the car time with somethign like a cookie or whatever the kid likes (you don’t do this while of if the kid is tantrumming of course). “Hey you did a great job putting the car away”, and give the treat.
A last thing, she can just wait out the tantrums, however, usually there is a reason, and to get yanked out of a pleasant activity is a good reason as any.
—des