slowing it down and focussing on the child's needs

First off, at my brother's request to sound a little more professional, I'm going to start referring to all of the kiddos as students. Kiddo is just how everyone at work refers to our clients. So here comes the professional talk.

I have one student that had some trouble focusing. This student needed to have a couple things going on at all time like a preferred activity of puzzles and the option to run over and look out the window to check out the cars driving by. After a lot of time and a variety of intervention plans, this student has really improved on the ability to focus on one task. However, the last month and a half has been a little difficult because this student and the student's family has been sick and I was on vacation for almost a month before this. Nowadays the good days are sparse because of these complications in addition to a developing toddler attitude because this student is engaging better with the surrounding environment. Yesterday was particularly tough because this student would not go through more than two trials of any program at one time. It was almost as though as soon as the student knew that we working on a program, the student would try to escape really quickly or present some sort of aggressive behavior.  Despite these difficulties, we go through most of the programs and still had a half hour left before the end of the session. For this time, we went outside and did some water coloring. Here, the student had two points of focus: the cars and water coloring. Watching cars go by still seems to relax this student. As a result of the option to focus on two preferred activities at one time, the student was able to sit calmly for 15 minutes. At times this seems like a retreat, but I hope that maybe this student just needs two activities going on at one time. It may not always be for the better, but it is something that we are working on for this student and obviously sometimes this student still needs this double focus sometimes. Personally, I know that I struggle with this. For instance, I don't like to just to focus on eating when I'm eating. I either like to watch TV, talk with other people, etc. I also can't stand silence. And although I know there are numerous studies proving that it doesn't help to have music on on while studying, I have always been guilty of that. We also drive and listen to music or talk on the phone or eat. (Be careful with the last two. I have picked up a ticket and got into a fender bender as a result of my multitasking). I guess I find the double focus to be an appropriate need or behavior if it is common among neuro-typicals. The student seemed to be a little calmer after sitting outside and water coloring. Hopefully I can be a little more pro-active for the next session and maybe give the student the opportunity to have some double focus time earlier in the session to take advantage of its calming effect.

slimy tricks

I currently work with one kiddo that did not want to leave the object the kiddo was supposed to match with the other. Instead, this kid wanted to take the object that was put in the kiddo's hand to the correct matchable object directly in front, but then use the same hand to pick up the correct matchable object and hold the two matching objects. The correct answer in this scenario is to take the given object and place it with the matchable object. However, this kiddo did not want to let go. Fortunately, I learned that this kiddo disliked lotion and didn't like lotion on the kiddo's body. I used this knowledge in combination with the kiddo's struggle to match by putting lotion on the object that I put in the kiddo's hand that was supposed to be matched with the matchable object directly in front of the kiddo. The first time the kiddo felt the new slimy object the kiddo dropped the object correctly and gave the best response yet. With this the kiddo got his favorite reward which was being tossed up in the air a couple times. After a couple more trial with the lotion, the kiddo didn't really need it and was very successful. I saw this kiddo again two days later and this kiddo was matching like a pro without any lotion!!!! Before this discovery, this kiddo could not match after nearly two weeks of trying. This was by far some of the most rapid progress I had ever seen.

what I do

More children are diagnosed with autism all the time. Currently the rate is at 1 in every 110 children that are diagnosed with autism. In response, companies have come up with a variety of different methods to help these children learn. I have been trained by one of these companies in ABA therapy and have been working as an early intervention therapist for nearly a year. Early intervention therapy just means that I work with children less than 3 years old. The ABA therapy that I learned is a combination of Discrete Trial Training (DTT) and behavioral techniques geared towards helping children gain well rounded skills for adapting to our society. I understand that this particular method may not be exactly what everyone seeks for their child, but it is the method I have learned and for the purpose of assimilation, I have seen great success. What I wanted to achieve in this blog was to share some of the experiences and in particular, the breakthroughs, that I have had with my clients. I hope that through sharing some of my experiences, I can help individuals connect to children with autism as well as learn from others along the way.