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Self-Help Skills

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Definition

Self-help skills are a subset of a larger repertoire of daily living skills, sometimes called activities of daily living (ADLs). Specifically, the term “self-help” usually refers to the following basic areas of independent behavior:

  • Eating/Feeding and Drinking: Skills may include holding and using utensils properly, drinking without spilling, eating a variety of foods, proper use of a napkin, table manners, and other mealtime routines.

  • Grooming: This area includes skills such as brushing hair, shaving, and dressing (e.g., selecting clothing, putting clothes on and off without assistance, and managing fasteners).

  • Personal Hygiene: Skills include those such as bathing, brushing teeth, washing hair, and applying deodorant.

  • Toileting: Skills related to toileting include managing clothing, cleaning oneself, as well as overall bowel and bladder management.

These may be considered the primary critical skill areas in the first 10 years of life and form the foundation for other...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Rebecca Edmondson Pretzel, Ashley Durkee Hester & Sue Porr

Authors
  1. Rebecca Edmondson Pretzel
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  2. Ashley Durkee Hester
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  3. Sue Porr
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Correspondence to Rebecca Edmondson Pretzel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA

    Fred R. Volkmar

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Pretzel, R.E., Hester, A.D., Porr, S. (2019). Self-Help Skills. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_943-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_943-5

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