Making the Most of Therapy Sessions at Home: Part 1 - The Environment

Today during my afternoon session with a boy I've worked with for over a year, I thought about the number of distractions we encountered. During our one hour of work, the windows were open, filling the room with the sounds of traffic and passersby. The boy's younger sister, who just learned how to walk, kept coming into the living room to see what we were doing. And sometime over the weekend, the boy had placed stickers all over the table we work at. Today, it seemed all he wanted to do was peel the stickers off the table. Near the end of our session, his father's cell phone started to vibrate on the kitchen counter: too loud not to be a distraction, but too quiet for his father to hear it in the bedroom.

Summer Camps

There's no doubt about it: summer is upon us. Kids are more antsy than ever as the weather outside has turned from gray skies and freezing temperatures to blue skies and warmth. And as this school year begins the process of wrapping up, there is frequently a big question mark about summer plans.

Five Questions Your Typically Developing Child May Not Be Asking

Being the parent of a child with autism can, at times, be an intensely stressful experience, one in which you feel there is no roadmap or guidance to help you through as you try to make the best decisions for your child. An issue that is frequently overlooked, however, is the intense stress being a sibling of a child with autism can cause. Here is a brief look at five issues that many children may be dealing with but not discussing.

Verbal Behavior

Many parents I meet tell me that they do not want ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) but the Verbal Behavior approach. It seems to be one of the new catch phrases, and when parents hear about it’s success they automatically want it for their children. So let’s clear up a common misconception immediately. Verbal Behavior is ABA! The two are not separate approaches, but are actually inextricably linked.

Successfully Creating Routines

I had been waiting for 30 minutes already when one of my students and his mother finally showed up for class. “Is everything okay?” I asked, worried because it was not typical for them to be late. His mother, who looked exhausted already at 9:30 AM said, “I was just trying to get him out the door. I had to carry his socks and shoes in my bag, force him into the stroller, and run out the door because he wouldn’t quit playing with his trains until he had gone through the whole storyline of the video we just bought.”

Positive Behavior Supports

Parents are naturally the most important advocates for their children, and their attitudes towards their child’s needs permeate the attitudes of all who are working with the child. With this in mind, it is essential that, as a parent, you understand positive behavior supports.
Positive behavior support is a set of strategies designed to change the environment in order to produce positive behaviors in the child(ren) supported in that environment.

The Must-Read Book about Advocating for your Child

Recently, a parent described to me her first IEP meeting. She had been worried about her two-year-old son for several months, and after bringing it up to her pediatrician several times she was finally able to have him evaluated. In the weeks leading up to the IEP meeting, she had started noticing a serious regression in her son’s abilities. Walking into the meeting, she felt very unlike herself: nervous, disorganized, and unprepared. During the course of the IEP meeting, the IEP team discussed her son’s case, asking her questions along the way. She was worried about some of the questions, uncertain if her answers were helping her son receive more services or making her son sound like he was doing better than he actually was. When the IEP team made their recommendation for 5 hours of in-home Special Education services for her child, she jumped at the chance to receive any help. It wasn’t until later, after the nervousness wore off and she learned more about her rights, that she started to feel these services weren’t appropriate for her son.