Turn Taking: Aisha's turn, Daddy's turn

  “What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.”

 - Lev Vygotsky

If you are a parent of a child who learns differently, then you already know how closely you watch every step. As a child grows up in their early stages we do not always appreciate how much she learns. At least I was blind to that for the most of my life till Aisha came.

From looking at interesting objects to describing them, from holding toys to writing their first words, from throwing LEGO blocks around to building complex architectures using those same blocks and so on and so forth - these are just some of the many examples that the child does and learns as she grows up. When I reflect on these now, I simply marvel upon the fact that how much a child can achieve. Thanks to Aisha, she is the reason why I have truly started looking & appreciating these wonderful moments - bursts of development and progress which one day will make her successful in life.

Aisha was diagnosed autistic at the age of 2.5 years. For her, whatever I mentioned earlier about kids, it was different. It still is because her developmental trajectory is different - In plain words "She is different". She learns differently, creates differently, expresses differently and sometimes I am fascinated by watching her - the way she handles her life and goes along.

While growing up, in fact even now, Aisha finds it extremely difficult to mingle with other kids of her age and adults. This is typical of Autism. Her speech is delayed, she is semi-verbal. Her therapists and school do a wonderful job in education and developing her skills. But a question keeps on eating me inside - Can we do more? Can we make her progress faster in social, speech, motor skills etc? If we can, then how can we do it? Is there any research out there which I can leverage? Has this been done before? 

You see - these are the direct advantages that I feel Aisha will have if she is able to progress faster - She can get ready for mainstream schools and universities early, mix with other people, learn from her surrounding and most importantly integrate into society. She starts to lead life on her own terms! And that's why - I had to give this a try by all means.

And I started. 

In this post, I will describe what I did from September to November 2025. At the end I share results and decode them so that it is clear what was achieved and what changes were visible. I researched how a child develops. To be precise what are the stages a child goes through and are there specific criteria that need to be met for those stages? And the answer to that was Developmental Domains & Developmental Milestones.  Now the question was which developmental domain does social skills fall into? Answer - Its Joint Attention(JA). And which developmental milestone is Aisha in currently? The answer was - Squarely between 

1. Points to an object to share interest &
2. Looks between object and caregiver to share focus.

After some more research I found out that these are some of the skills to work upon with Aisha so that she attains these milestones fully - 

1. Pointing
2. Showing
3. Engagement
4. Turn Taking
5. Awareness
6. Shared Focus

Now the question was how was I going to do this? The therapists were also working on joint attention. But can I do something at home? I do not want to do the same thing that the therapist does at home for couple of reasons - 

1. I am not a trained therapist and honestly do not want to get myself trained now.

2. The house should not become another therapy center for the child 😆.

3. I, as a parent, do not have time to sit with the kid and do 1 hr of therapeutic activities daily and neither does the kid want with all her routines. After her sessions, school she gets tired and so am I after my office.

So is there any other way? To my surprise! There is.. Its all there! God I have been living under a rock!😂

NDBI (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions) & Joint Attention Mediated Learning (JAML). 

NDBI (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions) - It is an intervention philosophy. The interventions are designed and defined by these criteria - 

• child-led
• play-based
• embedded in daily routines
• focus on social communication
• not drill-based
• not table-top therapy
• not scripted

Joint Attention Mediated Learning (JAML) - I concentrated on the words Mediated Learning - that's key to this research. It focuses on mediated learning — the caregiver acts as a bridge between the child and the world. The parent or caregiver becomes the mediator who helps the child build joint attention skills through shared experience.

And the best part - this does not need to be session based, this does not need to be based on creating a therapy environment and most importantly it can be embedded in everyday routines and life! Now that's GOLD to me. This is because new possibilities just open up, I can do it while serving & eating food, while playing with the kid, while driving, while walking, while reading books with her, while cooking! - endless possibilities..… and that too anytime anywhere!

By now you must be thinking that I have become obsessed with doing JA all the time with Aisha 😂. But hear me out, its as easy as it can get and in a while I will tell you how I implemented NDBI & JAML without turning my house into a therapy center.

Turn Taking Example:

Aisha did not know it, so she had to be taught what it was and what it actually signified socially. Hence I searched and built out this intervention- Rolling ball back and forth between me and Aisha. Easy right? Unfortunately not for Aisha. She did not understand that she has to roll the ball back at me, or whose turn it was. This is a core social construct. She would just hold the ball and then in all her wisdom wander off with it 😆. So how do I teach it? This is where I leveraged NDBI and JAML. Here's a step by step process on how I performed the activity -

1. We sat facing each other for rolling a ball back and forth.
2. First I pause for her to look at me before I roll it to her.
3. Once she does look at me, I immediately encourage her for the eye contact and roll the ball to her.
4. She grabs the ball and then I pause for 5 to 10 secs. The moment she looks at me again, I immediately say Aisha's turn and roll ball! I encourage the look from her as well - Good Looking!
5. She rolls the ball to me and then I pause for her to look at me again.
6. Once she looks I say Daddy's turn and roll the ball to her again.
7. I continue this back and forth couple of times.
8. I leave it while engagement is still high.

Now notice the pause I make? According to the research, this is where the communication happens. During the pause, the child learns that this is the moment where she needs to signal, look, or respond in some way. At first, I model what should happen after the pause. After a few days, Aisha began to understand what was expected and started responding on her own.

This was just the beginning. The real breakthrough came when I stopped using the pause only in the ball game and started using it everywhere. I introduced the same pause during building towers, puzzles and other play activities. Slowly, Aisha began to understand that turn-taking was not just a game — it was a rule of interaction that applied across activities.

Then something even more extraordinary happened! The skill started to carry over into daily life. I found myself pausing while picking up groceries, while folding clothes, while pouring water - everywhere, and Aisha began responding in those moments too. That is when I knew the learning was generalizing. Turn-taking was no longer tied to a single activity, it had become part of how she interacted with the world. The same approach worked for Choice Making, Awareness and the other primary skills that I mentioned above.

Now, just to test the efficacy of NDBI and the interventions that I created for the skillset, I wanted to see if there really was progress or it was just me fantasizing about it. So I took daily progress notes and readings on how Aisha was doing across November. Plotting them on the graph was eye opening -

This is the graph which I plotted at an interval of every 7 days. It captures how Aisha did every week. All the data points went in.

Key Observations : Milestone - Looks between object and caregiver to share focus.

• The meaningful logging started from Oct 27th onwards. You can see that based on the readings Aisha did not start from 0. She already had a base of some sorts for this milestone.
• From Oct 27th to Nov 3rd she responded pretty well. Her response was excellent. She was learning, her brain was like a sponge.
• From Nov 3rd to Nov 10th the responses start to get a little bit low. Sometimes she would not be interested at all or else she would be tired. She also had fever as well during this week. All of these contributed to the dip.
• After Nov 10th she rebounds. The skills she has learnt keep on getting better and better till Dec 1st. That is when I considered that she has mastered the milestone. 
• During this period, I tried to do 15 to 30 min play sessions for the skills that were needed to attain the milestone.

Her Key improvement areas during this exercise were in - 

• Turn Taking (Eg. Turn taking during eating snacks.)
• Choice Making (Eg. Choosing which shirt or dress to wear.)
• Awareness (Eg. Responding to unknown sounds and searching them hidden in the house)
• Shared Focus (Eg. Pouring water from a bottle together in a glass. I pause while pouring water and she has to join in.)

The changes in Aisha are undeniable. We still have much to work on, but this showed me something powerful - indeed we can create better conditions for growth, right at home - in daily life.

Next, I have plans to work on the next JA milestone which is Initiation - A higher order milestone where Aisha will need to initiate like - Daddy, come here. More on this in the next post. 

Thanks for reading. I will keep on sharing as I work and learn with Aisha. See you again in sometime.