ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a summary of teaching tools and strategies to consider in the intervention phase when agreeing tasks with parents. Reinforcement of desired behaviour is a key teaching tool, so it is useful to help parents to understand how they become reinforcers, generally very early in a child’s life. When a more detailed analysis is made, a more realistic teaching target can be established, probably with independent toileting becoming a longer-term goal. For example, it helped in teaching a child to play the recorder. Successful teaching depends on a number of specific strategies. These include: identifying achievable teaching targets for children, breaking teaching tasks into components or steps that the child can achieve. Imitation supports learning, and parents usually start to teach children to imitate when they are very young. Once children become proficient in language, they start to use it to think and instruct themselves about the things that they are going to do.
