Category Archives: autistic spectrum disorder

Modified Instructions for Shopping List Memory Game

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We’re excited to bring you the fourth installment of our series of Modified Instructions, created by Sam Blanco, BCBA.  Sam’s Modified Instructions present 3-4 additional ways to play a mainstream game to make it most useful and accessible for our students with special needs.  These alternative instructions break down each adapted game by:

  • Age/Skill Level
  • Number of Players
  • Object
  • Skills Required
  • Materials Needed
  • Prep
  • Instructions
  • Considerations

In this installment, we’re introducing Sam’s Modified Instructions for Shopping List, one of our favorite memory games. Shopping List is an adorable memory game that also develops personal and social skills.

The goal of the game is to be the first to fill your cart with all of the items on your shopping list.  It is designed with the objective to have players fill a trolley with the items on their shopping list. However, there are multiple games and activities that can be played with these materials to meet the specific needs of your learners.

Included in the game are 4 cardboard carts, 4 shopping lists, and 32 beautifully illustrated items with dry-erase surfaces. Don’t forget to download our free Modified Instructions for Shopping List today!

Tips for Traveling with Kids with Autism

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Taking any long trip when you have a child with autism can be daunting, especially when it involves long periods of time in the car or on an airplane. Below are a few tips for reducing stress during travel time.

  • Create a visual or textual schedule for your child.  Because trips don’t always go as planned (e.g. planes are delayed, you get caught in traffic), it’s probably not a good idea to list specific times that activities will be occurring. But it is helpful to show the order in which they will be happening.
  • Prepare your child for potential problems.  If possible, talk about coping methods ahead of time and practice them if possible. What can you do if you’re stuck in traffic that isn’t moving? What are your choices if we experience turbulence on the plane?
  • Provide information for your child.  Show photos, books, maps, etc. of the locations you’ll be traveling to. You can also read books or show photos of activities you’ll be participating in, such as swimming or skiing.
  • If possible, pack more than one activity bag.  Bags filled with a few favorite activites or small toys can be useful for keeping kids entertained on trips. For long trips, your child may get bored with items in an activity bag. It’s useful to keep a second one stashed in a suitcase or other bag if you’ll be on a very long flight or car ride. It can also be useful to have a separate activity bag for the return trip if you know your child may lose interest in the first one.
  • Provide options when possible.  Access to choices can go a long way in keeping kids calm. Choices can include what videos to watch, snacks to eat, etc.
  • Check in advance with guest services at hotels, resorts, or theme parks.  Ask what modifications and accessibility options they may offer. Many places offer special accommodations and are open to any unique requests you may have.
  • Prepare in advance for any sensory concerns.  Bring noise-cancelling headphones, ear plugs, fidgets, etc. to have available, as needed.

Remember that long trips are difficult for all children, and many of the tips listed above are beneficial for siblings who do not have special needs.

Urge U.S. Congress to Cover ABA for Military Kids with Autism

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A new bill was introduced requiring TRICARE to cover Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for all military children with developmental disabilities, including autism. The Caring for Military Children with Developmental Disabilities Act of 2014, sponsored by U.S. Representatives John Larson (D-CT) and Tom Rooney (R-FL), marks the latest effort in Congress to improve and standardize medical coverage of ABA therapy for military families affected by autism and other developmental disabilities.

It is estimated that 23,000 military dependents, including children of active duty, reserve and guard families, are affected by autism.

Excited returning soldier hugging her son

Given frequent duty station changes and social turmoil of military service, military children affected by autism often face additional challenges that their civilian counterparts do not necessarily face every day. “Our common sense bill helps ensure that the children of our troops and military retirees have access to the health care services they need,” Rooney said.

The bills, HR.4630 and S.2333, would provide access to ABA for all military children with developmental disabilities, improve coverage to address medically recommended treatment levels, and allow for coverage of the ABA tiered service delivery model which includes Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts and ABA Technicians.

TRICARE now has three different programs delivering ABA services in three different ways, and not one of them is permanent.

Please urge your U.S. Representatives and Senators to pass the new bill to make ABA coverage a permanent medical benefit under TRICARE for all military children affected by autism and other developmental delays. Visit Autism Speaks and take action by sending an email with your message of support for these military families in need.

Introducing Little Mixers: A Weekly Social Skills Playgroup in Brooklyn

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Little Mixers BklnStacy Asay, one of our wonderful and beloved consultants, is launching the Little Mixers series, a social skills group based in Brooklyn! Headed by Stacy and Sharon Alkalay, this weekly Little Mixers series will be a special mix of fun, food, and friendship for young children between the ages of 3 and 7. Sessions will be held at Beansprouts at 14th Street and 6th Avenue in Park Slope.

Each meeting will consist of a guided lesson, group discussion, interactive games and a cooking activity, all thematically focused around a particular social skill. Each week a new social skill will be introduced with the session, culminating in an expanded repertoire of social skills and perhaps a new friend!

Parents will be provided a hand-out with suggestions and strategies to practice throughout the week in order to facilitate carry-over of a target skill.

Little Mixers will be holding 2 sessions for Spring/Summer 2014:
Mondays: 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. (ages 5-7)
Thursdays: 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. (ages 3-5)

For more detailed information, please visit the Little Mixers website at www.littlemixersbrooklyn.com, or email Stacy Asay at littlemixersbrooklyn@gmail.com.

About the Group leaders

Sharon Alkalay, MS, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist with over 8 years of experience working with infants, toddlers and children. As a classically-trained musician, she enjoys incorporating multi-modal/multi-sensory techniques into her therapy sessions through use of music, art, movement, sensory integration and dramatic play. She believes that successful engagement with a child should be accomplished gracefully with creativity, humor and compassion. Her special interests include working with children with social-language difficulties, apraxia of speech, autism spectrum disorders and language/learning disorders.

Stacy L. Asay, LMSW, is a licensed social worker, providing home and school based services to children and their families in the New York City area. With nearly 16 years of experience, her work with special needs children integrates a strengths-based, holistic approach to child and family augmented with the tools of Applied Behavior Analysis, a methodology that allows for reliable measurement, objective evaluation of behaviors, and the systematic teaching of language and learning skills.  This results in an individualized curriculum that equips children with the tools they need for learning and living while honoring their unique spirit.

Teaching Functional Living Skills to Children with Autism at the Grocery Store

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We hear over and over again how children with autism may need hundreds or even thousands of opportunities to practice a skill before acquiring it. It’s important to keep this fact in mind when it comes to functional living skills (e.g. making the bed, cooking a meal, etc.). Many of the parents I work with prefer to focus on academic skills rather than functional living skills. Some feel that by focusing on functional living skills, they’re giving up on larger goals for their child, such as being placed in a general education environment, having the opportunity to go to college, and/or having the opportunity to have a career.

I always encourage parents to focus on both academic and functional living skills. While it may seem unnecessary to start thinking about teaching a nine year old how to grocery shop, it’s really just providing them with many, many opportunities to practice the skill. Typically developing children “practice” grocery shopping from a young age by watching their parents and playing “store” with friends, but children with autism are unlikely to observe their parents while they’re shopping or to play such games as “store” without explicit instruction. By practicing the skill with your child early on, you’re promoting future independence.

You can practice these skills when you are in the grocery store with your child, and you may just find that your child enjoys shopping. (Grocery shopping is a favorite activity for two of my current students.) It may be beneficial for you to just start out with one skill, choosing the one you think your child is the most likely to experience success with or that your child will be the most motivated by.

 BEGINNER SKILLS
  • Choosing if you need a cart or a basket (Is our list long or short? Do we have big or small items?)
  • Using a grocery list (reading the list, crossing off items already placed in cart/basket)
  • Using supermarket signs to find items (understanding categories, knowing where to look for signs)
  • Greeting cashier
 INTERMEDIATE SKILLS
  • Choosing good fruit or vegetables (looking for bruises, identifying ripeness)
  • Giving money to cashier
  • Accepting change from cashier
  • Taking bags when it’s time to leave
 ADVANCED SKILLS
  • Comparison shopping (looking at unit price, comparing prices of two brands)
  • Making sure you received correct change
  • Returning an item that is damaged

You shouldn’t limit these skills to just the grocery store either. All of these skills are useful in department stores, pharmacies, book stores, and more. Your child may be more motivated to use these skills at the book store or a toy store. You can help your child learn the skills there, then generalize them to other types of stores.

If you need help getting started, you should ask your child’s teacher or therapist to accompany you on your first trip. They can help you identify the appropriate steps to put your child on the path to independence.

Here’s What Was in YOUR ABA Toolbox

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Thank you to all who participated in our ABA Toolbox giveaway last week! We’ve received some wonderful responses and feedback from parents, teachers, and therapists on their favorite products from our catalog and how they are using it with a special child, and we are thrilled to be sharing them with you!

Our biggest goal in this endeavor was to share with you the unbelievable wealth of experience and knowledge our community of parents, teachers, and therapists have in using our products in innovative and creative ways for their ABA programs.

 

Continue reading →

Interview with Ron Suskind, author of “Life Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism”

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A few weeks back, we shared the wonderful article in the NY Times by Ron Suskind titled Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney. 

This week, CBS Sunday Morning profiled Ron and his son Owen, sharing their journey and experiences. It’s an incredible, moving story and we hope you’ll find the time to watch their interview as they share Owen’s story of reconnecting with his family and finding his voice through the movies of Disney.

On the Need for Crisis Intervention Training: A Guest Article by Bobby Newman, PhD, BCBA

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Last week, we discussed a comprehensive checklist for parents in placing their children in the right school environment. Service providers in special education programs play a vital role in students’ daily lives at school and are expected to understand certain protocols when behavioral difficulties arise. We couldn’t think of a more appropriate article than that of Bobby Newman, PhD, BCBA to shed light on this need for crisis intervention training in order to ensure the best learning environment for students.

On the Need for Crisis Intervention Training
by Bobby Newman, PhD, BCBA-D

It was one of those moments in life that seemed scripted. A colleague and I were being given a tour of a public school, a prospective placement for a student of my colleagues. The student in question had a history of aggressive behavior towards staff and bolting from the classroom towards the street. How such physical crises were going to be addressed was thus a major concern of mine. I asked the tour guide, the principal of the school, how such matters were handled and whether staff were formally trained in any crisis intervention philosophy and techniques. She informed me that they were not, but that there were “informal things that staff had taught one another.”

As if on cue, at that very moment a student came sprinting past us, with a staff member in pursuit. The staff member reached out and grabbed the sprinting student by the back of the collar, effectively stopping him by choking him with his shirt. My usual flimsy professionalism couldn’t survive this seemingly scripted moment, not to mention the loud choking noise, and I asked, “Is that one of the things staff have shown each other?”

Further questioning revealed that when students had serious outbursts, 911 was called. My mind went to Chicago where in 2012, police were called to the home of a child with autism during a behavioral crisis with tragic results. Very little else needed to be known to determine that the student’s parents would never agree to this school placement, and I couldn’t say that I blamed them.

Crisis intervention is one of those very sensitive issues in the field of developmental disabilities. There are people who want to ban the physical portion of crisis intervention training, either due to liability concerns or perhaps due to abuse concerns. I will agree that the potential for abuse exists if staff are allowed to put their hands on students/consumers. I will argue, however, that the possibility of abuse is much greater if we do not train and if we do not have formalized systems in place, or at least for mass exclusions of people from less restrictive settings due to the inability to maintain them there safely in such environments. Let me develop my argument:

  • Due to the nature of some developmental disabilities (e.g., difficulty in developing communication skills or sensory defensiveness), behavior that is not typical of same age peers can occur.
  • This behavior may sometimes take forms that can be dangerous to the person engaging in them (e.g., running into hazards or self-injurious behavior) or dangerous to those around them (e.g., aggression towards others or environmentally dangerous behavior such as object destruction).
  • At such times, we may be facing a “crisis,” when injury to self or others is imminent and probable and “crisis intervention” (verbal and possibly eventually physical) may be necessary to keep everyone physically safe. The guiding idea behind crisis intervention is to keep everyone safe. This includes the person engaging in the behavior, peers, and staff.

I wish to emphasize that a crisis is NOT an everyday occurrence. A crisis should not be routine, it should arise as a relatively infrequent occurrence that needs to be dealt with via crisis intervention protocols at that moment. I wish to distinguish crisis intervention from “behavior treatment plans,” which must be in place for behavior we often see from the individual in question. If you’re doing crisis intervention frequently, then this a matter for discussion of alterations to behavior management plans or resource allocation/availability. Crisis intervention is not a consequence meant to change the probability of behavior via a punishment contingency, and any physical interventions where one must put their hands on a student should be a last resort.

Even with this caveat in place, some would make the argument that crisis intervention training should not be provided, that it gives staff permission to be overly physical with students. While I will grant such a possibility exists, as I always tell my ethics classes, the argument about what you are not willing to do is not enough. One must be prepare to answer, “and then what?” Suppose staff were not trained. When a crisis occurred, they would be left with “doing the best they can” or otherwise improvising in the moment. Given this set of circumstances, staff would respond in their own ways to crises and injuries and abuse become probable, not just possible, as staff panic or lash out with whatever self-defense techniques they can think of or act in keeping with a faulty knowledge of body mechanics or physical hazards (witness the “choke stop” described above).

To summarize, the implications of the “do not train” argument are:

  • I know there will be crises due to the behavioral history and repertoires of the students in the program
  • I’m concerned about liability or staff becoming heavy-handed, so I’d rather not train people to safely deal with the crisis, I’d rather trust to their natural impulses or an “unofficial” policy/procedure that has grown up within the program.

What must be appreciated is that good crisis intervention training systems are based on sound behavioral principles, providing the supports the individual needs, rather than on controlling the behavior of the individual physically. The vast majority of crisis intervention training is based upon preventative measures that aim to teach the individual self-control and alternate behaviors, and to create settings that are not likely to create crises in the first place, rather than sheer physical intervention. Should a physical intervention be needed, safety is a foremost concern. Techniques are performed in such a way as to attempt to minimize injury. No technique, for example, is meant to cause pain, is meant to scare, uses impact for behavior control, or moves a limb beyond its normal range of motion.

To sum up the basic argument:

  • We know behavioral crises that can lead to serious injury may occur
  • If we do not train people, we are trusting the staff member’s individual reactions or “unofficial policy’ that cannot be traced or analyzed as it is unofficial.
  • If we do train people, however, we can create standards of conduct and accountability and we can aim at program design that avoids the need for physical intervention.

This seems to me to be our best bet for creating programs that are humane, not emotionally reactive, and encourage the development of effective problem solving strategies that rely on behavioral interventions, rather than relying on physical intervention by staff to keep everyone safe. This seems to me to be most consistent with ethical practice of Applied Behavior Analysis.

About the Author

Bobby Newman is a doctoral level Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Licensed Psychologist. Bobby is the first author on twelve books and has published over two dozen articles in professional journals, as well as numerous popular magazine articles and has hosted two series of radio call-in shows. Bobby is the Past-President of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment and the New York State Association for Behavior Analysis. A popular speaker, Bobby also provides direct treatment, staff training and consultation around the world, and has been honored for this work by several parents and professional groups. Bobby is a SCIP-R (Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention, Revised) instructor and has published a manual to accompany crisis intervention training (Gentle Redirection of Aggressive and Destructive Behavior). In addition to his other clinical work, Bobby teaches non-violent crisis intervention philosophy and techniques for schools, agencies and families.

Pick of the Week: A Step-by-Step ABA Curriculum for Young Learners with ASD (Age 3-10)

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Ensure the appropriate ABA program for your young learner with A Step-By-Step ABA Curriculum for Young Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Age 3-10).  This curriculum uses the proven principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to monitor the progress of children on the autism spectrum and make sure they reach their full potential. And this week only, you can take 15% off* your copy by entering in our promo code STEPABA when you checkout online!

This curriculum gives a clear outline on what to teach and how to teach it in order to ensure your young learner is reaching his or her developmental goals at crucial stages. The book’s three sections – Assessment, Curriculum, and Mastered – each include built-in data collection, which can be reproduced on the accompanying CD.  All three sections cover 10 pivotal areas of progress for children ages 3-10, including reading, writing, math, conversation, and social skills.  The Assessment section records the child’s initial level of learning and then tracks their progress over time. The Curriculum section provides the lesson plans for the skills which need to be developed, and the Mastered section is a tool for checking that learned skills are being retained over time.  It is also possible to record whether the child has adapted to using the skills in a variety of social settings, such as in the home or in the classroom.

This curriculum provides a solid foundation for working with a child with an autism spectrum disorder to ensure an appropriate ABA program for young learners.  Don’t forget – you can save 15%* this week on your copy of A Step-By-Step ABA Curriculum for Young Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Age 3-10) by entering our promo code STEPABA at checkout!

*Offer expires at 11:59pm ET on May 6, 2014.  Not valid on past orders or with any other promotions and offers.  Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code at check out!

 

Safety, Wandering and Emergency Planning for Individuals with Autism: An Interview with Gary Weitzen of POAC and the Autism Shield Program

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The safety of individuals with autism is an enormous concern for parents and caregivers across the country. POAC Autism Services consulted with Dennis Debbaudt to pioneer The Autism Shield Program providing safety training for police, fire fighters, and EMTs. More recently, POAC has developed a companion workshop designed for caregivers, teachers, and child study team members.

Sam had a chance to talk with Gary Weitzen, Executive Director of POAC Autism Services. Gary is an excellent source of information and has been incredibly generous and proactive in sharing his experiences and knowledge with the community. POAC has now trained more than 15,000 police officers and first responders on autism recognition and safety. We’re sure you will find Gary’s insight and suggestions exceedingly helpful and applicable to children and adults of all ages.

***

Fifteen years ago, Gary Weitzen’s five-year-old son with autism went missing. The first place his parents looked was the lake, because like many children with autism, they knew he was drawn to water. Fortunate to find him in time to save him, this experience and many similar stories Gary would hear over the years, were the impetus for creating the Autism Shield Program. Gary is now the Executive Director at POAC, an organization in New Jersey that provides free resources for the autism community.

“The Autism Shield Program is a comprehensive program really designed to keep our children safe in their schools, homes, and communities,” Gary said. “It originally started training police officers. Multiple FBI studies have shown that if you have autism or any other developmental disability you’re seven times more likely to encounter police than if you don’t have autism.  We’ve expanded it to the current program which also includes firefighters, EMTs, emergency first responders, school nurses, prison guards, and parents.”

One thing that Gary stresses repeatedly is the need for children with autism to learn how to swim.

“I lived with the fact that my son almost drowned. [Fifteen years ago] it was just huge numbers of children with autism drowning. Like every week another child with autism died, another child with autism died. It was overwhelming,” Gary said. “We thought, we have to do something here. We have to let parents and police know exactly what’s going on here.”

Eight years ago, POAC started training police departments on how to respond to emergency situations that involved individuals with autism.

Wandering Child

“I always tell the first responders the same thing: individuals with autism are never lost. Ever. They’re always going somewhere. They didn’t wander out of the house like someone with Alzheimer’s would or even a small child would. Our guys are going somewhere so you want to try to get the information right away about where you think they might be going from the caregiver. If you get that information beforehand, you can try to search there. Always start a search with bodies of water. Always. If the child is missing from a specific location, start with concentric circles out and hit every body of water,” Gary said.

Two more suggestions have been extremely beneficial for law enforcement and first responders in dealing effectively with individuals with autism. The first is to speak in short, direct sentences telling the individual what TO DO instead of what NOT to do. The second is to provide a prompt if the individual is without identification and not giving contact information upon request.

“Let’s say, you ask Charlie his phone number, he doesn’t give you a phone number. Ask his phone number again, but this time prompt it with the area code for that area. ‘Charlie, what’s your phone number, 9-7-3…’ Ninety-nine times out of 100 our guys with autism will finish their phone number.”

Gary also suggests families complete an Emergency Planner and to register with 911 in order to assist with improving safety and emergency response efforts. He urges families to utilize services such as Project Lifesaver.

“[Project Lifesaver] has been in existence for over 15 years. It’s LoJack for our kids who wander off. It was designed for Alzheimer’s patients and expanded to individuals with autism. There are now more individuals with autism that are on it than people with Alzheimer’s,” Gary said. “The success rate in 15 years nationwide: 100%. There’s never been a case of an individual on the program not being found alive ever, ever, ever. Hundred percent success rate. And the average time it takes from the time mom calls up ‘My child is missing’ until the sheriff’s officer has their child in their hands: 14 minutes.”

For individuals who may not tolerate the Project Lifesaver bracelet, Gary recommends creating a rule about cell phones and using the cell phone to ensure the individual is safe.

“If the rule is I always have to have my smartphone with me, in my pants pocket, guess what, they will always have that smartphone with them in their pants pocket. And it doesn’t have to be turned on,” Gary said. “It just has to have power and with iPhones and Androids you can get free apps like the Find My iPhone. There’s also programs out there with Verizon, AT&T, and other providers for $10 a month to put a family locator on the phone, set up a location, so if the phone moves 50 feet away from wherever the location, work, school, home, mom or dad gets a text instantly. The phone is on the move. And you can track it in real time. So there are so many things that are out there that people need to take advantage of and could take advantage of. They just have to be told about them.”

Beyond wandering and encounters with police, POAC also works with fire departments and with parents to increase safety during house fires.

“Very often, individuals with Asperger’s will hide in a house fire. And look, regardless of their age—face it—our guys and girls will re-enter a burning building. This happens all the time. All the time, firefighters come, they save the child, the child’s with mom, with other kids, and in the confusion of the fire, especially if there’s somebody still in the house they’re trying to save, we’ve had so many individuals with autism walk right back into the burning house in front of the police, firefighters, and their family and burn alive and die in the house.”

Gary recommends running fire drills at home with clear rules, such as, “Stand by Mrs. Smith’s mailbox.” It’s also important to identify who will be responsible for the individual with autism during an emergency. But Gary cautions that even with supervision, an individual with autism may be dangerously insistent about re-entering a burning building.

“So, where’s the best place to put a child at the scene of a house fire? Locked in the back of a police car. They’ll potentially scream, bang their head, maybe hurt themselves, but they’re alive. They’re alive,” Gary said. “We have videos of a child wandering off and the firefighter actually trying to hold them and the kid just runs across the street back toward the building.”

POAC has also provided many trainings for both parents and professionals about sexual education for individuals with autism. Gary describes sexual abuse as a major problem for individuals with developmental disabilities that people are afraid to address.

“Unfortunately, the sexual abuse rate with our guys to sexual predators is through the roof. The numbers for females are, close to 70% of females with autism were sexually assaulted by predators. Seventy percent. Seven out of ten of our girls are sexually assaulted before age 18. And the number’s around 40% for males. And I go into why that is, they’re the perfect victim. They don’t understand intent, they don’t understand the social rules.”

“You have to start sexual education with our guys in preschool,” Gary said. “That shocks people when I say that, but Sex Ed in preschool is, ‘What a bathing suit covers no one’s allowed to touch.’ That’s Sex Ed in preschool. So it’s not as scary as people think. But you know when most Sex Ed is taught to individuals with developmental disabilities? After something happens. After someone gets assaulted or after someone masturbated in class or someone touched someone inappropriately. You know, we better do something! No, they’re fifteen! Start early.”

“A big problem for parents of children with autism, and I say this as a parent of a child with autism, is that you’re thinking it’s not your kid. Parents on the lower end of the scale always think, ‘Nothing’s ever going to happen to my child because somebody’s always with them—it’s them kids with Asperger’s who are running willy-nilly off by themselves all the time—those are the ones getting into trouble.’ And then right across the room, the parents with the higher functioning kids think, ‘Well nothing’s ever going to happen to my son because my son tells me everything, it’s those low-functioning kids who can’t speak that everything’s happening to.’ But, it’s happening to all of our kids equally, wherever they fall on the spectrum, and the problem is the parents always think ‘Well, not my kid, it’s somebody else’s.’  No, you’ve got to think, this definitely could be my child so what do I have to do to increase his safety?”

POAC continues to provide free workshops and resources to residents in New Jersey. And Gary will continue with that effort for a long time yet. “I always joke that the Irish in me wants stuff to be meat and potatoes. I want it to be real. I want it to be real for the families. I want it to be real for the officers. Any one of our trainings, I want the person to walk away with something that they can use that day to make a child safer.”

TipsForParents_4.16.14

If this story has touched you or you feel you can use it, Gary asks that you please consider making a tax-deductible donation to POAC.

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