Your child may get frustrated or move away from you when you imitate him, especially at first. Remember, this is a new experience for your child and he may need some time to adjust. Don’t give up! You can start by imitating him for 30 seconds at a time, and then add more time as he becomes more comfortable. You can also try sitting next to him in front of a mirror as you imitate him. Many children find this easier than face to face imitation at the beginning. Finally, remember to set up physical and visual boundaries to help structure the environment for success.

Your child may get frustrated or move away from you when you physically help him complete an action, especially when you first start using this technique. You are using Mirror Me Online because your child struggles with social imitation and social turn taking, so it will take time for him to get used to being required to provide a response during social interactions. Don’t give up!

• You don’t need to help your child complete the action perfectly, so try giving quick physical help—even if it doesn’t result in an exact imitation of your action.
• Be sure to keep a warm tone and praise your child as soon as she has attempted the action (even when it is with your help).
• This will keep the interaction fun and will motivate him to stay with you the next time you decide to model an action for imitation.

By adding a little bit of extra time to your daily routines, you can create a number of learning opportunities for your child without having to completely change your daily schedule. Teaching within daily routines and activities is also helpful because it allows your child to learn new skills throughout the day within activities that are meaningful to him.

There are a number of different daily routines that you probably already do with your child that might be a good fit for using what you learn during Mirror Me Online. Here are some examples of how to use the strategies during different daily routines.

• Story: When reading or looking at a book with your child, take turns imitating your child and encouraging your child to imitate you acting out or interacting with the characters on the page. For example, if there is a picture of a bird, model pretending to be a bird (flap your arms like wings, “Chirp, chirp”). If there is a picture of food, pretend to eat it off the page (“Yum, yum!).
• Meal Time: Try imitating your child during snack. Place the food in your mouth at the same rate as your child. Provide a description of how the food tastes. Encourage him to imitate you pretending to feed a toy puppet or person. If your child enjoys cooking, have him become part of the process. For example, have your child imitate you pour the ingredients in, mix the ingredients, or measure the ingredients.
• Bath Time: If your child enjoys baths, imitate his actions in the bathtub. If your child splashes the water, splash the water with him. Imitate your child’s play with water toys, such as water wheels, cups or other containers, strainers, rubber toys that float, wind up tub toys, bath crayons, scrubbers, or bubble bath. Then encourage your child to imitate you as you show him a different way to play with the toys. For example, if your child likes to pour water, model how to pour water over a toy person and say “it’s a shower!”
• Gross Motor Play: Imitate your child’s vocalizations, gestures, and body movements as he moves through your home or yard. Exaggerate the fact that you are imitating him. Then encourage your child to imitate you as you spin around, fall down, jump, or dance.

The [USING RIT DURING DAILY ROUTINES HANDOUT] can help you identify the best care‐giving routines to teach within. On the handout, write down the daily routines that you use with your child. Include when they typically occur and how long they typically last. Then write a brief description of what the routine looks like. For example, “At wake up, I go into my child’s room and turn on the lights. I get in bed with my child and rub his back until he wakes up. Then, I get him up and bring him to the living room.” You will notice just how much time you already devote to interacting with your child during the day. Then, think about ways in which you can use the strategies from Mirror Me Online during the routines that your child enjoys.

Remember, after you structure your environment, there are five main steps: 1) Imitate your child, (2) Describe play, (3) Model an action or gesture, (4) Ensure your child imitates the action, and (5) Praise your child for imitating. This same procedure can be applied for teaching actions with objects, gestures, or activities during daily routines. See [RIT DIAGRAM OF STEPS HANDOUT].

You want to begin by modeling actions that your child naturally wants to imitate. This includes actions that your child already performs on his own (familiar actions), as well as actions that are at, or slightly above, your child’s developmental level. If you model actions that are too advanced, your child may not understand the action and may not imitate you. To decide good actions to model, watch what your child does with toys on his own and model similar actions. If your child likes to explore toys by banging, throwing, and dropping them, model these types of actions as well as nesting one object in another, putting objects in containers, lining, stacking, or ordering toys in certain ways. If your child uses most common toys appropriately, such as pushing cars, putting people in cars, and throwing and catching balls, model these types of actions as well as some basic pretend actions. The actions you model do not have to be functional or meaningful; the goal is to increase your child’s motivation to imitate your behavior.

Once your child is imitating familiar actions consistently with the toy she is playing with, you can begin to focus on expanding your child’s play skills. It is important to continue to model interesting actions at or slightly above your child’s developmental play level. However, you may begin to increase the complexity of the actions you model. See [EXPAND YOUR CHILD’s PLAY SKILLS HANDOUT]