The Smiley Chart

With the help of Darren's second grade teacher and our therapists at Autism Journeys, we came up with a way to track Darren's behavior at school. The color system they use at school it's not really the best for Darren and we know, from experience, that he struggles to keep up with the rest. Sometimes he would come home extremely discouraged thinking he would never be good enough and getting "greens" and "pinks" became almost impossible. We knew he was having bad days at school and we were hopeful that there were still good moments during the day but we couldn't really tell and Darren couldn't remember most of the time...how could he when he's experiencing anxiety all day long?!!
After brainstorming, Darren's teacher came up with the idea of the "Smiley Chart". We requested that the school day was divided into 4 parts  (3 on Wednesdays) were Darren could earn a smiley face if he didn't have any outbursts. A line on the paper would mean he had cried or screamed. This really helped all of us including Darren to identify when he had made good choices and what things trigger unacceptable behavior. This chart has been a life saver for us, even Darren can see that he had good moments throughout the day and he can stop thinking he's a "bad boy" all the time. At the end of the week certain amount of smileys turn into cash (at home) and his reward at school can vary (things like passing homework, organizing the lunch cards, etc). Over the past few months we have tweaked  the chart a little bit, we asked Darren to write a few key words when he doesn't earn a smiley so that we know what happened at school and sometimes he also writes down when he made a good choice... Makes me sad that sometimes we focus so much on things that we need to fix and sometimes we forget to celebrate his great achievements.
The chart has no miraculous power, but it does give us a clear picture of his days at school and the areas we need to focus on, we still have rough days but Darren has made a TON of progress and just last week  he decided he wanted to try as hard as he could to earn smileys at school. On Thursday (April 26) and Friday (April 27) Darren had all smileys and this kind of motivated him to see how far he could make it (and he also asked if there would be a prize at the end of the week....very clever Darren!).
Here I give you Darren's Smiley Chart for the week of April 30-May 4 :

ALL SMILEYS!!!!!!!!!

HECK YES!

*Note: This is the first time he completed 7 days (I'm counting that last Thursday and Friday in April) with no tantrums at school since November 2011! and that my friends it's a HUGE thing for us to celebrate!!!!

I have to add that the last days Darren even had 2 different substitute teachers and all that change in routine could have affected him but it didn't...at least not this week...tomorrow Monday we start all over again :)

The big "X" you see on Wednesday only means "early out" and the smiley below with the initials "A.J." means that he didn't have tantrums at Autism Journeys (therapy).

I also have to say that in the end he never asked for a "prize" but we did take me out for dinner and he was the happiest little boy EVER.