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The Theory of Mind refers to the ability we have to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and understand that each person perceives, feels, thinks, wants or believes in different things. This leads us to a concept such as empathy and the difficulty that some show to put themselves in the place of the other.
I will show you the strategies, training and materials with which to work with people who have difficulties in the Theory of Mind.
What we want to transmit and learn is that not all of us perceive, we think, feel or believe in the same way, that's why we show you some exercises to foster empathy in children with autism.
Before starting I would like to remind you that each case is particular. It is about giving some general lines how to work the Theory of Mind.
I'm going to base myself on the Theory of Mind Manual for Children with Autism by Anabel Cornago, mother of a child with autism who puts at our disposal the enormous work and effort that they have achieved together.
1. The first level of work, is that of the five senses and their associated verbs to make an approach to the way of perceiving the world and of relating to our environment. This is how we will develop exercises for the child to familiarize with the senses, the organs that develop them and the verbs associated with them (see, smell, taste, hear and touch). We will show you a Photography of a person and we will point out the different organs of the senses and point them out in himself and in us.
To work on verbs related to the senses, we will present objects others that can be seen (a toy, a table, a light), others that can be smelled (food, perfume, flower), others that can be savored (chocolate, candy, soup), others that can be heard (musical instrument , the wind, a car engine) and others that can be touched (a cat, a cloth and a ball). With these objects or their images we can ask them what each one is and with what organ we can perceive it. We can see the toy with our eyes, smell the perfume with our nose ...
2. In a second level we will work with the existence of different perspectives. The goal is for the child to understand that people can see things from different perspectives.
We can give the child a sheet folded in half with a different drawing on each face (a dog and a truck). We show you both pictures. We lift the sheet of paper and in each one we will see one of the faces. We ask him what he sees on the sheet and he will answer us: I see a dog and then we ask him what do I see on the sheet? And you should answer us, you see a truck. Later in another sheet with the same activity we will only show him one of the pictures and he will have to tell us what he sees and answer that he does not know what we see because he has not seen it. This example is from a simple visual perspective.
The complex visual perspective refers to the fact that an object can be different depending on the perspective from which we see it. Similarly, if a person looks at it from one place and another person from another they will perceive different views of the same object. It is essential that the child understands this point because the different perception of objects (and facts) is the cause that people have different information and therefore different beliefs.
We can present the child with images of the same image (for example, a table) viewed from different perspectives or positions: from the front, from behind, from above, from below ... and emphasize that it is the same object but seen from different positions.
With these exercises you will discover that little by little the child progresses in his perception of the world around you.
You can read more articles similar to Exercises to foster empathy in children with autism, in the Autism category on site.
