Transactional Supports

This part of the SCERTS® Model focuses on supporting the TEAM: the child, their family and all their therapists to maximize positive social experiences across avariety of settings.  Transactional Supports help our children remain emotionally regulated so that they may perform at their optimal level within all areas of understanding and verbalizing their social communication abilities.

The following is just a little peek of a few of the Transactional Support Tools that the SCERTS® Model gives us:

1)    Songs:  Most children do great with songs allowing us to use them in a variety of ways.  We can use songs to help them transition from one activity to the next such as a “Clean Up Song”, “A Sit Down Song”, “A Line Up Song” and more.  We can use songs to help us learn about Pre-Literacy and Early Math Skills such as: “ABC Song”, “All The Letter’s Make a Sound Song”, “The Numbers Rumba”, “Five Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” and more.

2)    Phrases:  Using the same phrases each time you do something specific is a wonderful Transactional Support.  This is wonderful within everyday life such as “time for bath”, “waiting”, “first bath then book” and more.  In addition this is great for playing games “waiting”, “mommy’s turn”, “I’m gonna get you” and more.

3)    Routines:  All children learn by using routines.  We use routines throughout our whole day.  For example, most everyone has a bath or goodnight routine and don’t even know it.  Sticking with the same routine and using the same phrases will help your child not only understand but also communicate.  You can even have play routines such as a routine for Chase, Tickles, Hide and Seek and more. Once they have that routine down then it is time to make a few changes.  Routines are wonderful and should be constantly changing.

4)    Visuals:  As we know some of us are visual learners and some of us are auditory learners; making it very important for us to give our children both visual and auditory aids to learn.  We can use visuals in a variety of ways: schedules, routines, activity boards, turn taking, core vocabulary, how to sheets and more.

Within each of the above goals it is important to stay child centered: using the most appropriate social communication and emotional regulation to help your child.  It is very important that as your child increases their understanding and verbal expressions that you continue using their transactional supports.  Remember that skills will be easier with you then with their peers.  So it is important that you still use their supports so that they continue to have practice with them.  In addition, transactional supports may serve one purpose at the beginning and then a different purpose later.  For example, at the beginning a visual schedule may help your child see what is coming next and help decrease their anxiety, later it may help them plan and organize their day and then even later it may help them talk about past or future events.

If you would like to discuss Transactional Supports in more length, how it relates to your child and how we can as a team help your child with this process, please feel free to contact your KidSpeak, LLC therapist to set up a time to discuss this at an additional charge. 

If you would like to learn more about the SCERTS® Model and Social Communication please visit www.SCERTS.com, www.barryprizant.com, www.commxroads.com, or www.amy-laurent.com.