Creating Strategy for Autism Therapy Education

Autism therapy education is very expensive, how can we manage this?

Ideally, therapy for children with autism should be conducted for 30–40 hours per week. With hourly therapy rates reaching hundreds of thousands of rupiah, this can be extremely challenging for many parents, especially during the current pandemic. However, there are several strategies that parents can consider to help manage these costs:

1. Determine the most urgent and important skills your child needs to master, such as eating, bathing, or dressing independently.
2. Decide who will be involved in teaching these skills, for example, the mother, father, older siblings, grandparents, or caregivers.
3. Search for information on how to teach these skills. Many free resources are available through social media platforms and the internet.
4. Focus on simple but essential daily living skills that children need throughout their lives and should be able to perform independently.
5. Provide rewards for both the child and the person teaching them when these skills are successfully achieved.

Teaching independent living skills is crucial for everyone, regardless of location, and can be done without the direct guidance of a therapist.

If the eight basic independence skills, bathing, eating, defecating, urinating, putting on clothes, taking off clothes, and putting on shoes, can be mastered, parents can then move on to teaching enjoyable and meaningful activities that will be useful for the child’s future, such as cooking, washing clothes, participating in sports, and other practical life skills.