Autistic Home Decorating: Make Your Home Autism-Friendly
http://blog.friendshipcircle.org/2012/04/10/autistic-home-decorating-make-your-home-autism-friendly/
You know you’ve entered an autism-friendly home when….
- The toilet paper is not where you expected it to be, and the paper towels are locked up.
- There’s a swing in the middle of the living room, and instead of chairs or a sofa, there are piles of pillows everywhere.
- Instead of family photos, there are pictures of mathematical equations on the wall.
- One room is all white or all beige, and another room is filled with bright, mismatched colors and artwork.
- The bedroom has wall-to-wall mattresses with lots of body pillows and no bedframes.
- A wide range of art supplies, children’s books, musical instruments and educational toys are packed onto open shelving in every available space, making it difficult to walk through the home.
- Everything is labeled with a word and a picture.
- There are rules and instructions posted in the bathroom, dining room and closet.
- There’s a separate room just for the Legos and marble runs.
OK, we don’t have a swing in our living room. We have a mini-trampoline, balance board and a small climbing structure with a slide in the living room, along with a beat-up sofa. But I do know someone at the Friendship Circle who installed a swing/trapeze in her living room and arranged the rest of her home around it.
Families in the autism community do what they have to do to make their homes livable, as stimming, special interests and sensory integration become a huge part of family life.
How can we make our homes accessible to an autistic lifestyle?
Start With The Sensory Environment
A healthy sensory environment provides opportunities for movement, stimulation and lack of stimulation.
Every person has different sensory needs and levels of tolerance. Soft, natural lighting is better for mood and attention than artificial lighting; pillows on soft furniture and quilts on walls absorb and soften sounds.
Research has repeatedly found associations between color and mood - for example, some shades of blue may help with creativity and calmness.
It may be advantageous to have one area of the home filled with bright colors and activities that the family enjoys, including a television and stereo, and another area of the home with blank walls, soft colors, soft textures and quiet activities such as books or puzzles.
Exercise, vestibular input and proprioceptive input are also key to an autistic lifestyle, so space must be made for these as well. If space is limited, a balance board or mini-trampoline can be stored in a closet and brought out when necessary. Here is a list of 26 sensory integration tools that you can incorporate into your home environment.
Work Space
One of the most impressive features of autism is the ability to become consumed completely by a preferred topic or activity. In several of her books including “Thinking in Pictures” and “The Way I See It,” author Temple Grandin advises caregivers to use these “special interests” to steer individuals with autism toward academic or career goals.
For this reason, it may be necessary to devote a small area of the home to the pursuit of special interests and goals. Right now my son’s special interest is math, and his work table is littered with papers, flash cards and workbooks.
Space For Life Skills...
In the past 15 years, studies in the USA, UK, Ireland and Sweden have all found that more than 95% of individuals with autism are unable to live independently as adults – including those with high IQs and those who received intensive early intervention...