Below is a general skill sequence for helping learners hold hands with and adult.

Handholding is a crucial skill to teach early learners, as it offers numerous benefits in their development and safety. By learning handholding, children can be protected from elopement into dangerous settings and guided more effectively during the shaping process. It serves as a helpful skill for caregivers as well as it brings about the opportunity for the learner to enter new environments. Handholding can function as a component skill for activities such as waiting in line, walking in groups, walking and talking, and navigating unfamiliar environments, handholding is essential for a child's growth. However, it is important to teach safety skills, ensuring the child knows who it is safe to hold hands with, and to allow the learner to withdraw assent in various situations. This approach ensures that handholding and/or the therapist do not become paired as punishers.

Treatment Plan Goal Ideas

This is a list of treatment plan goals. These are different from the goals you will find in the skill sequence below. Your treatment plan goals encompass any number of goals from the skill sequence. Sometime they will include multiple goals from the sequence (”Learner will label 5 toys”) and sometimes the treatment plan goal will be simply consist of a really important goal from the skill sequence (”Will label caregiver”). An analogy I like to use goes as follows: Each skill sequence goal (commonly known as a “target”) represent each stair in a flight of stairs. The treatment plan goal is the flight itself.

Treatment plan goal ideas for this particular skill area are as follows:

Learner will hold the hand and walk with a familiar adult for 10 feet while engaged with a high value item.
Learner will hold the hand and walk with a familiar adult for 30 feet, changing directions three times without elopement or significant problem behavior.
Learner will hold the hand and walk with a familiar adult for 60 seconds, changing directions five times without elopement or significant problem behavior.
Learner will hold the hand and walk with a familiar adult across a parking lot or on a sidewalk for 60 seconds without elopement or significant problem behavior.

Component Skills

Your learner may need to be fluent in these component skills first before introducing this goal/skill area. Component skills for this skill sequence may include skill areas that are fundamental to other areas. Fluency in the skill areas listed below may increase the likelihood that your learner will succeed in this skill sequence and those afterward.

Intro to Reinforcer/Preference Expansion

Imitates Actions with Preferred Items

Skill Possibilities

Below is a possible skill sequence for working on increasing your learner’s ability to hold hands. Note that every learner is different and that you likely will need to tweak and vary some programming to their needs. Click the triangle icon to view the full description for each skill in the sequence/area.

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#1 Grabs adult hand when it is presented

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#2 Holds hand for 5 seconds

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#3 Grabs hand, get’s up

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#4 Grabs hand walks 10 ft with high value

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#5 Grabs hand walks 10 ft with neutral

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#6 Holds hand 20 ft, change direction 2x with neutral

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#7 Holds hand 30 ft, change direction 3x with neutral

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#8 Holds hand 40 ft, change direction 4x with neutral

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#9 Holds hand 50 ft, change direction 5x with neutral

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#10 Holds hand 60 seconds, change direction 5x with neutral

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#11 Holds hand and walks across parking lot

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#12 Holds hand and walks down sidewalk (1 block)

Concurrent Skills

Working on these skills at the same time could help with goal mastery. Maybe your learner has mastered these skills already. Perhaps they are already listed as component skills above. That’s okay! Targeting other learning channels might help your learner.

Imitates Actions During Familiar Routines

Performs Action During Familiar Routines (LR)

Intro to Sitting

Greetings (Non-Verbal)

Approaching Others When Asked

Composite Skills

These are the possible next steps for learners who have mastered, or are mastering, the skills listed above. Note that new skill areas may require fluency in other component skills not listed above. Also, you can introduce composite skill sequences prematurely to keep your learner progressing, as generativity may occur earlier than expected.