Managing behaviors: start with understanding communication In a very great number of conversations with families the issue of behaviors (or lack of) comes up when we speak about their autistic child. What I'm speaking about here is the behaviors that crop up in social situations like going shopping or eating out. The kind of thing [...]
Autism and getting out and about with your child. With the summer arriving, and the children soon finishing school many parents are speaking to me about getting out and enjoying the summer with their children. This can be somewhat more complicated when one or a number of your family are autistic. In many [...]
Sports activities and the autistic child. For anyone who is a frequent reader of my posts on the development of autistic children, they will know the importance I place on sports activities and the use of the great outdoors in the development of our children. And right from the get go, just as with [...]
Can I take my autistic child on a flight? As we are coming to the summer I thought I would write some posts speaking to our experiences with the boys traveling, on vacation or generally out and about. With all the recent discussion over the United flight and overbooking, a particularly pertinent experience came to mind. [...]
Behavior management and the summer months. When it comes to an autistic child one of the aspects that strikes the greatest fear in parents is the whole conundrum of behavior management. And what is behavior management? In its broadest sense managing behavior is a lot about getting your autistic child to engage in society [...]
Autism: understanding and setting expectations One of the most important yet least understood areas of special needs parenting is the area of setting expectations. Here Enda and Val talk about some of their experiences getting the balance right. For me the whole area of assessments, schools, special services, sports and expectations is an incredible conundrum. [...]
What autism services do I need? Today I'm going to speak about diagnosis and autism services in a clinical way. I will leave the enormous emotional aspect aside for another time. However I will say this, as I write here my son Conor is working across from me. He was diagnosed as autistic, intellectually disabled and profoundly [...]
We offer a FREE Child Assessment Overcoming language disorders in the most unexpected places. For millions of children to world over, language disorders and deficits are a major obstacle to just about everything. I remember Conor's teacher saying to me once that 'he was so intelligent but fundamentally unteachable'. Imagine saying all that in just one [...]
School and the Autistic child. A lot of families in our group connected with me over the summer about choosing a school for their special needs child. So I thought this would be a good topic for my next post. One of the most important decisions any parent of a special needs child will make [...]
Using Disney to Encourage Communication and Engagement By Rebecca Eisenberg “Affinity to Capability to Possibility” –from “Life Animated” by Ron Suskind I recently read the inspirational book “Life Animated” (by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind) about Owen—a boy diagnosed with autism at a young age. After reading a newspaper review of the book, I wanted [...]
