Spectrum Skillz – Skill 4: Listening

Resilient Martial Arts in Midlothian, Virginia, is proud to announce that we have added Spectrum Skillz to our class offerings! This program was designed to target children ages 7 and up who are on the autism spectrum. The program introduces specialized skill-based training for children who have limited physical, intellectual, social, and emotional abilities. With that said, more emphasis is placed on building fundamental skills training with a strategic balance of Martial Arts.

 

By understanding the needs of these children, we have selected 8 skills that make up the Spectrum SKILLZ Program.  The third skill we cover is Listening.  This is a skill that kids on the spectrum will really be able to benefit from because it is something they can often struggle with.

We have broken the listening skill down into four main types of listening that we’ll be working on with the kids:

1. Active Listening – when working on active listening, the kids will listen to something while they’re actually engaging in it as well.  For example, if we’re talking about blocks and strikes instead of just having them sit there and do nothing, they’ll be actively repeating what we say and, at times, performing the techniques to get them more engaged in what they’re focusing on.
2. Empathetic listening – kids on the spectrum sometimes struggle with hearing and understanding the emotions of their friends and others, so as we work on empathetic listening, we work on not only hearing what people are saying but also understanding the emotion that they’re putting into their words.  This will help them pick up on the cues that indicate emotions like sarcasm or when people are feeling sad or happy.
3. Critical listening – Critical listening has to do with being able to listen to solve a problem.  What we’re going to be working on with this skill is giving them difficult challenges where they have to listen to a bunch of parts and then find a solution for the problem that’s being given to them.
4. Informational listening – This is listening to learn. This aspect of the listening skill will help them get better when they’re in school, martial arts classes, or any situation in which they have to be able to listen to information.  The goal is to help them pick up on the key things they need to work on for different subjects and use their ability in school and martial arts training.

As you can see, we take Martial Arts training to a whole new level! Be sure to check our blog for articles on the other seven spectrum skills.

Ready to get started?  Click here to book your child’s free 1-on-1 session with one of our instructors.