I am a newly single mother. I have a 6 month old daughter, and my son will be 4 in April who has autism. I have recently decided to go back to school and I want to get my degree in something where I can help. I was wanting to see if anyone knew how I can get a list of all the different job choices out there where I could help kids with autism. Anything from medical things to teaching. I just need some diff fields that would be possible so I can look into them more and decide which I would like to do. I just know I love to help ppl and I am a very caring person. And with the autism hitting so close to home what better way then to find soemthing where I can help my child as well as others? If you could please get back to me and let me know if you know of anything that would be great. Thank you all so much and I am glad I joined this site.

Need some inspiration?  Do you know someone with autism and don't know how to interact?  Are you a parent struggling to navigate the "simple things" like potty training or teaching your autistic child the alphabet?  Let me direct you to my blog about my son Matt.

Matt is 24 years old and has been autistic since age 2 1/2. He has overcome almost every autistic behavior - no drugs, no expensive therapies, and I don't sell anything.  Matt is now very high functioning and an inspiration to many people.  I have taken the stories of his childhood and our own growing pains and put them down in short stories on my blog.  Learn more by reading the daily stories of the "World According to Matt" website.  The address is http://autismrevealed.webs.com 

I have links to autism information so everyone can learn the basics.

Parents, teachers, family, friends and those wanting insight into the mind of an autistic individual will all find something useful here.   

http://autismrevealed@blogspot.com

Here is a link to some photos of real classrooms organized to bring out the best in students with autism.  These classrooms mainly primary level classroom photos at this time.  Please pass the link on to any educators new to autism or those who may just be looking to redesign their room or increase the visual supports that we know our students can benefit from. 

 Autism Classroom Organization Photos at the link below:

http://autismclassroom.ning.com/photo

Our youngest benefits a lot from visualizing tasks. So I created a application to create such sheets in with drag and drop. More examples can be found at my site.

Combined with a lot of PECS it has become a very easy to use tool.
www.PECSforAll.com

Hi I am not sure if I blogged about this already, but here it is anyway.  Here is a link for some ideas related to choosing objectives and goals to work on.  I have been out of the loop for a while. A two week old baby will do that to you!!!! However, I know this is the time of year when new goals and objectives are being created for each child's Individual Education Plan/Program.

 http://autismclassroom.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=72  

More and more research is coming out showing us that the quality of early childhood interactions significantly impact all areas of a child's development. This month's issue of the journal Child Development was dedicated to this topic. One interesting study looked at the impact of Maternal Autonomy Support on a child's ability with Executive Function. You may have heard the term [ Executive Function in relation to autism before. Over the years it has been proposed to be a causal issue in autism. We now know that the causal issues are brain based but nonetheless see that children with autism are very challenged by Executive Function - essentially the higher order cognitive processes underlying flexible goal-directed behaviors (such as impulse control, working memory, planning and set shifting).

Most significantly for children with autism it is implicated in Theory of Mind or the ability to understand that other people have a different perspective to you. This recent study (from researchers at the Universities of Montreal and Minnesota) found that a strong predictor of a child's Executive Function (EF) ability at 18 -26 months was their mother's degree of Autonomy Support when they were 12 - 15 months.

The researchers defined Maternal Autonomy Support as involving these four strategies by the mother:  read more »

Hi everyone! Here's a hello and a little about me and Zachary:

When my son Zachary was born, he was the third boy and clearly different. Club foot, colic, esotropia, were the 1st apparent issues. Oh, yea his APGAR score was 2.

Still, I looked at each one of these diagnoses as 'problems to solve' and like most parents began tackling what interventions would best treat Zachary. As we seemed to be making progress with these issues my gut was tearing away at me. It was clear Zachary was not happy. He was in fact acting like his environment was constantly provoking him into hysteria, which he had no ability to control or come down from.

I began experimenting with environmental controls, and finally after months of trial and error I discovered that a low light, 66 degrees, organic cotton diaper and organic cotton blanket swaddled with soft classical music, very low was his happy spot.

We spent a considerable amount of time in this cocoon. I breast fed Zachary here, had his brother come in his room rather than him leave it for interaction. The range of what Zachary could tolerate in this environment improved greatly and for the first time since he was born, he could relax and trust.

I leapt on this foundation of trust. Without language and highly sensitive, I needed Zachary to trust that if he was with me, he was fine. Thank goodness for the mild California climate, it gave me courage to take Zachary out in 'just a onezie’! So we began, venture after venture, within the house, out of the house, in the car, stretching Zachary’s tolerance of his environment. One day when Zachary wasn't doing well at one of his brother's baseball games, a friend asked me why I didn't go home.  read more »

Location(s)

The Basic Course on the DIR®/Floortime™ Model, taught by child psychiatrist, Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. comes to you online.  This annual conference features an overview of the Developmental, Individual Difference, Relationship-Based (DIR) Model and focuses on Assessment, Diagnosis and Intervention for Developmental and Learning Disorders, including Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

For the third year, the course will be offered online, allowing participants to participate from the comfort of their own home.  It is presented as a series of 15 video lectures, each approximately one hour long, and will be available for an eight-week period, from March 12 to May 9, 2010.  Participants can view the segments sequentially at their own pace, any time during the eight week period that the course is offered.   Dr. Greenspan will be available to respond to questions from conference attendees and participants will have a chance to interact with parents and professionals from around the world through an interactive bulletin board.

For more information on the course and workshops, visit www.stanleygreenspan.com .

To download a complete brochure  read more »

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