Anger Management Social Skills Video
By B. Jordan

People with autism often have a hard time expressing their feelings and controlling their angers.  Social stories provide autistic people with the tools necessary to communicate in social situations. Many people who are diagnosed as autistic have deficits in social cognition.  They may have difficulty determining how another person may feel by their behavior or how there behavior will make another person feel.  They may also be unaware of socially acceptable behavior and how their behavior may negatively impact other's perspective of them.

I have created a video on anger which is a song and video explaining what to do when a child is angry.  It incorporates the picture exchange communication system (pecs) for non-verbal students.  While the video is being played, the students or child should be given an angry picture.  It could be a picture of him when he is angry with the words 'I'm Angry" written on it and taught to give it to the instructor or parent when angry.  He can also be given other pictures showing different emotions, be it happy, sad, tired, fine, and be taught to give the different pictures when appropriate.  The child with autism needs to be taught the different range of emotions and how to respond appropriately with each emotions.  By learning this method of expressing anger, it should reduce the number of temper tantrums and unexplained outbursts as the child will have an alternative mechanism to express his angers.  Of course for this method to work you must reinforce it positively and teach it constantly.  When the child is showing his anger incorrectly you will need to guide him to get the angry picture and give it to you and then you verbalize that the child is angry and try to assess the problem, resolve it or do something to take his mind off of the issue by redirecting them to some new activity that they find pleasure in.

This video was used in my class and it was extremely successful with the verbal autistic students in that they would request the video and use words from the video to express how they were feeling.  When they were angry, they would ask to see the video and it distracted them from the problem and gave them a way to react.  It was also an excellent way to teach the PECS in action and positive reinforcement.  When the students handed me the correct angry picture I would give them a small snack to reinforce the positive behavior and let them know they were doing the right thing.  This is also shown in the video that when they do there work then they get there perk.  Their perk could be computer time, music, snacks, sensory ball, or whatever activity they enjoyed.

To preview the video click Here.