Systems: At the Heart of the Miller Method®

A typical 15 month old may get caught up in repeatedly loading a can with different items and then dumping them out. Children with ASD also get caught up in such ritualized activities. The difference is that children with ASD get “stuck” in these activities and seem unable to readily detach from them. This “stickiness” gets in the way of learning and forming relationships.

A therapist using the Miller Method®, rather than attempting to extinguish a child’s aberrant system, will carefully introduce changes in the system that the child can tolerate thus creating a new, more interactive system. Therapists also introduce the child to new systems, based on the child’s interest and developmental status.  Miller Method® systems are characterized by the following:

• They use actions and materials the child is interested in, from dropping rocks into water, to complex systems involving problem solving.

• They involve interaction with at least one other person.

• Therapists couple the child’s actions and attention to objects with spoken and signed language.

Children with ASD who receive Miller Method® work with systems are able to be more interactive, have greater flexibility in coping with changes in systems, and develop more extensive repertoires of organized behavior.

Following is a video example of intervention with systems.  Jack is a child who first came to LCDC with no language and an inability to cope with any change.  His relationship to objects was also a problem, as the following clip will show.

Jack guards his objects.

More expansions lead to significant gains.

Systems can also be established with gross motor activities.  In the following clip, taken from the early days of C-D systems therapy, Dr. Miller shows how a step-slide system can work on cognitive development and body awareness simultaneously.