If you are working with a child with Autism or disability and are wondering if you should change strategies consider the following...

1.  Has the person been feeling well? not over tired or hungry when the intervention was run?
2. Are preferred items being used with the intervention-does the person really want that item or attention?
3. Is the intervention at that person's skill level-how do you know? Have you seen them to the steps separately?
4. Is the person who is running the intervention consistent?
5. Is the person who is running the intervention taking data? and does the data say there is no progress or is it "a feeling" that no progress is being made.-sometimes behavior changes in very small amounts but change is still occuring

For more information, free web based child page, and soon to come parent lounge visit. SkillSprout.com

http://www.skillsprout.com/

by: Jen Woyner

http://blog.skillsprout.com/problematic-behaviors/new-problematic-behavior/

Emotional Regulation, Uncategorized Comments (1)

by: Amy Shymansky

Some children with autism have difficulty expressing and responding to their emotions. Sometimes their emotions can be disproportionate to the sitution (i.e. small problem = big emotions). Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders as an Executive Functioning Disorder can be helpful in understanding difficulties with emotional regulation. Many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders must directly be taught emotional regulation skills in order to develop appropriate responding and control of their own emotions.
Consider the following objectives related to teaching emotional regulation:  read more »

Teaching Self-Monitoring Skills to Children with Autism

Emotional Regulation, Problematic Behaviors, Teaching Children with Autism Conversation Comments (0)

by: Amy Shymansky

The ability to self-monitor your own behavior is a necessary social skill. For many children with autism self-monitoring skills can be taught very directly, developing the child’s ability to monitor his or her engagement in appropriate social skills, on-task behaviors, problematic behaviors, etc.

 Developing the child’s ability to self-monitor targeted behaviors can also serve as a last phase of development toward generalization of new skill. Once a child has developed an ability to engage in a targeted behavior, try using self-monitoring procedures to assist in pushing the skill out into the natural environment.   read more »

by: Amy Shymansky 

Many times as young children with autism develop language they develop an ability to imitate language from others to assist in getting their needs met. What a great success to reach this milestone!

Sometimes after language imitation emerges parents report their child uses the language from an inaccurate perspective. For example, if their child wants ice cream, he/she will bring ice cream to the parent and say “Do you want ice cream?”, not because the child is asking the parent if they want ice cream, but because this is what the child has heard from the parent previously before getting the ice cream.

A quick and helpful strategy to use in the home to for parents teach appropriate responding in these situations is to model the language from the child’s perspective. For example, when the child brings ice cream to the parent instead of the parent asking the child “Do you want ice cream?”, the parent can model the appropriate language for the child to imitate (i.e. “I want ice cream.”, “Can I have ice cream?”, etc).

Once your child begins imitating the appropriate response try fading back your prompt (”I want ice cream.”) and adding more natural parent responses (i.e. “What do you want?”, child responds “I want ice cream”) to work toward independent responding with this skill.

 http://blog.skillsprout.com/teaching-requesting-to-children-with-autism/developing-requesting-skills-in-your-child-with-autism-beyond-imitating/

http://blog.skillsprout.com/teaching-conversation-to-children-with-autism/teaching-joint-attention/

by: AmyShymansky

When developing programming for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) parents and professionals should consider spending time on developing core characteristics or skill deficits of the disability. When improvements are made on core characteristics of a disability, the end result is a less affected child.

In many children with ASD, joint attention is a major skill deficit area which contributes to core characteristics of the diagnosis of the disability itself. To assist in developing joint attention skills parents and professionals should consider targeting objectives related to the following:

1) Attending to others

2) Tracking eye gaze of others

3) Sharing eye gaze of others

4) Monitoring and shifting attention 

5) Sharing emotional states with others  

6) Drawing attention too and sharing experiences with others

By AmyShymansky on October 7th, 2009

The “art” of social conversation is a very abstact concept. How do we teach concreate learners, such as children with Autism Spectrum Disorders appropriate social language skills? By making it concrete of course! When developing an understanding of what appropriate social conversation “looks like” there are some rules and structures we can begin to develop to assist children with autism to develop appropriate conversation skills. Consider the following objectives when looking at building conversation skills in your child:

1) Develop rules, examples, and a lot of practice on how to initiate conversations with others. Teach your child to understand the intent of the conversation to assist in developing strategies to initiate the conversation. For example, when the intent is to build a relationship with the person we might consider learning more about the person or talking about things the person themself is interested in. When initiating a conversation in this type of a scenario we would teach a child to develop initiation statements based of interests of the conversation partner, or initiating based-off of asking questions to learn more about the conversation partner.

2) Additionally, consider directly teaching your child strategies to maintain and join conversations. Developing your child’s ability to ask questions and make statements within conversations.

3) If your child has perseverative topics of conversation consider developing his/her ability to monitor engagement in perseverative topics and discriminating when it is “ok” to engage in perseverative topics, and when it is not. Additionally, work on developing other topics of conversations that may be of interest to peers.

4) Developing your child’s ability to ask questions to engage and expand conversations may also be a critical skill when developing his/her social language skills.  read more »

Teaching children with autism to answer wh ?’s questions is an imperative skill for improving comprehension and social language skills. Answering wh?’s can be broken down and taught using rules and concrete concepts. When teaching who, what, and where questions begin first by teaching rules.   

  Rules

• Who =person
• Where= place
• When = time

Person, Place, Time

Once your child can list or describe the “rule” for the targeted wh ? begin developing the concepts of person, place, and time. Make sure you target the questions individually, for example first teach who, then where, etc. To begin developing your child’s concepts of person, place and time ask your child to list, or categorize “banks” of examples of each. For example, child “lists” 5-10 persons (siblings, parents, relatives, friends, teachers, etc). Be sure your child can list unfamiliar and generic (i.e. Mr. Smith, Johnny, etc.) community helpers (i.e. doctor, policeman, etc.). 

Teach in a Sentence

Once your child is able to list or categorize familiar/unfamiliar persons,places, and times, begin using in a sentence and asking questions. You may need to have a visual of the rule present to pre-teach or error correct with your child.

Example:

Give your child a sentence, (example)”Mom when to the store.” , ask your child “who?”

Child responds “Mom”  read more »

Insurance Coverage for Behavioral Services for Children with Autism

By AmyShymansky on October 24th, 2009

Many state and federal initiatives are in place to end insurance discrimination for families with children with autism. The following link shares current information on your states current and pending legislation as well as prospective federal legislations.

http://www.autismvotes.org/site/c.frKNI3PCImE/b.3909861/k.B9DF/State_Initiatives.htm

Even if your state has laws in place to mandate insurance coverage for children with autism the process of getting services covered can be involved.

Below are some suggestions for simplifying the process:

1) Find a primary care physician who is supportive and understands the benefits of behavioral interventions for your child.

2) Contact your insurance company to find providers in your area, develop an understanding of the provider approval process.

3) Be persistent! Many insurance companies are just beginning to identify providers for these services.  Find people within your insurance company who can answer your questions related to obtaining coverage. If necessary, identify billing codes to share with your insurance company related to your requested behavioral services to assist in quickly communicating your families needs.

Check out this link as an additional resource to assist in the process of obtaining insurance coverage for your child:  read more »

By AmyShymansky on October 26th, 2009

Quick Strategy: To assist children with autism in learning to answer and ask “why” questionsdevelop your child’s ability to understand cause and effect relationships.

Try using sequencing picture cards initially to assist in developing your child’s understanding of cause and effect relationships.

Purchase or develop sets of 3-5 pictures representing a sequence of events (EX: child running to school because he is missed his bus, etc.) Pair “why” questions with the sequenced events. EX: “Why is the child running to school?”, etc. Use pictures from the sequence to prompt appropriate responses. Use many examples of picture sequences to develop your child’s understanding of cause effect relationships.

http://blog.skillsprout.com/teaching-conversation-to-children-with-autism/teaching-children-with-autism-to-answer-and-ask-why-questions/