Discuss what is autism, use Cohen's Targeting Autism & Sharone Lee's Threshold webpage (15 min)
The Bad News:
Autism is a Pervasive Developmental Disorder that very seriously effects a person’s cognitive development. Autism can delay, distort, or disable the typical growth, change and stability of a person's knowledge, skills and abilities, particularly around critical communication, social and sensori-motor information processing capacities. Autism is a uniquely heterogeneous spectrum disorder that presents across a wide range of mild, to moderate to severe forms in many diverse and highly varied ways. Autism does not have a stable prognosis until after puberty, but it is a stable life-long condition for most adults. People with Autism may or may not have a secondary diagnosis of mental retardation--about half do and half do not--but Autism is most often the greater challenge.
Autism is a neurological disorder of the central nervous system. Therefore Autism is caused by an innate/biological condition of the brain and it is NOT caused by a nurtured parental attachment problem, negative character traits or personality disorders. Therefore Autism CANNOT be caused by poor parenting or inadequate services. Autism typically effects young infants between birth and 3 years old. But in certain more mild forms it may not be detected until after a child is 5 or 10 years old. However, a later diagnosis may often be simply due to inadequate, inaccurate or unavailable early screening and detection services. In some children Autism appears to be present from birth and in other children it on-sets after a period of healthy, typical development. Current research is now studying these differences between our children with Autism. Recent research has shown that Autism is most likely a group of different, but related, conditions that share similar behavioral symptoms and developmental patterns.
This complex syndrome usually has a very significant and negative impact on a person's learning age-appropriate functional behaviors over their life span. People with Autism typically present pervasive developmental disordering in most, if not all, areas of their early childhood development:
RECEPTIVE / EXPRESSIVE COMMUNICATION ABILITIES & SPEECH AND LANGUAGE SKILLS
TYPICAL SOCIAL AWARENESS & RELATEDNESS
SENSORIMOTOR PROCESSING & INTEGRATION
TYPICAL MEMORY, THINKING, JUDGMENT & FUNCTIONAL BEHAVIORS
The breadth and depth of this disorder includes significant to profound disabilities in these functions of the brain, often causing unusually high and low splintering of skills. Developmental and skill learning sequences are often notably distorted. In most cases, the individual’s ability to first learn in typical teaching and training environments are markedly impaired, often making typical parenting and teaching difficult or impossible.
Parents and providers express frustration or concern that they aren’t able to teach skills. (In reality, we actually experience having the effects of Autism ourselves whenever we are working with individuals with Autism.) Typical adults report having trouble giving and getting information, using verbal or gestural communication, being unable to build social rapport or feeling socially “out of sync” with the person with Autism, not having a shared sensory experience of the environment, and that the person with Autism often reacts as if OUR helpful adult behavior is wrong, inappropriate or bizarre. So one "first step" to understanding Autism is to learn how Autism is impacting the child, as well as how it is impacting us too. Because Autism is a mutually shared disorder. This is why training in effective mutual communication and shared social skills strategies are so important.
(This tragic information is usually devastating the first time a family member receives it. Having a sense of tremendous loss is normal for a parent as they must face this reality. So it is very important for families to hear that there will be lots good news in their lives ahead and that it is healthy to have great sense of hope for their child and family too.)
The Good News:
Well-established, family-centered intervention strategies by trained providers can facilitate positive, growth, change and stability and provide sense of relief for both people with Autism AND their family and professional providers.
Therefore, individuals with Autism, as well as their family and professional providers, are able to greatly benefit from both early screening and diagnosis as soon as possible, as well as direct training services using effective individual Autism intervention programs.
Due to decades of research into effective training techniques, Autism is now seen as a disorder that may show improvement for many children, particularly through the use of well-established developmental and/or behavioral strategies that are provided in intensive (20-40 hr/wk) early intervention programs. But it is also important to note that many of these intervention strategies can be learned by parents and incorporated into your daily life AND that they are all still critically helpful starting at any age. Meta-analysis (research about research) has consistently shown that family-centered training and intervention plans have been shown to be the central key to the greatest success with of all methods of Autism intervention.
Discuss Calvin's IFSP goals and Needs to Learn/Knows (45 min) with question and answer
DAY 2:
DAY 3:
DAY 4:
Cover: HOW TO TEACH PIVOTAL BEHAVIORS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM: A TRAINING MANUAL
DAY 5:
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