Parents as a Team: Mother, Father, a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and a Spinning Toy

This paper is a single case study involving a visit to a diagnostic clinic for autism spectrum disorder. A young boy finds a toy that he can hold with one hand and spin with another. In order to retrieve the toy and leave it in the clinic, the parents engage in a team effort. We describe this achievement in terms of two styles of practice or interactional routines with differing participation frameworks. We examine not only how the parents work as a team using these styles, but also how they improvise to extract the spinning toy from their son’s grasp with minimal protest on his part.