Candyland

Candyland is easy, right? Any three-year-old should be able to play it, shouldn't they? I always thought so. But trying to do something as simple as play Candyland with autistic children often just doesn't work. I've tried it with at least four of our kids. One just didn't want to. "No, not that. No, we not do that." At least he's verbal. Another just didn't get he. Okay, so we drove Thomas the Tank Engine around the colored pathway while I tried to get him to verbalize, "The train drives." A simple enough sentence, but not for a child who doesn't really speak in sentences. Another child was frustrated and didn't want to do anything, so I felt Candyland was as good as anything. The concept of the game was completely lost on him. He kept screaming as I tried to get him to say "The red man jumps." We finally settled for "No more games." My final attempt was somewhat more successful. With this little girl, at least we chose colors (she chose blue man, I was red man). We then established the concept of "Your turn" "My turn". But moving her man vs. mine was confusing, especially if she drew a red card (since my man is red). And moving sequencially along the path was completely hopeless. We were lucky just to be moving to the right color. Of course it quickly became very apparent to me that she doesn't know her colors by name (everything was called green), so okay, that's something we'll definitely need to work on, but she could match the card to a space of that color (but of course not the next space of that color, just some random space of that color somewhere on the board). Which of course made the game pointless, but she didn't understand the point of the game in the first place. Oh well, it was good for practicing turn taking and matching. I never realized Candyland could be such a complex game.