Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays, from our Different Roads to Learning family to yours! We wish you all good health, peace, and happiness in the New Year.

We get a bit reflective here around the holidays and wanted to take the opportunity to tell you how thankful we are for all of you and your incredible efforts.

Our worm celebrates with you!

We’re so proud to be part of this community of wonderful parents, teachers, and therapists.

We’ll be operating on limited hours between December 24 and January 2 to give everyone here a chance to rest and regroup and come back in 2014 with a bang. You can still reach us at (800) 853-1057 and via email at info@difflearn.com. It just may take us a little longer than usual to get back to you. Orders will still be processed and shipped within 24-48 hours.

Enjoy your holiday, and we look forward to connecting with you in 2014!

Warmest regards,
Julie, Abigail, Natasha, Hannah, Stacy & Sam

Hints for the Holidays: Christmas

Christmas has its own set of unique stresses that may affect your child and make it difficult to uphold holiday traditions with the whole family. Here are eight tips to help ease the stress for everyone.

Create a visual or textual schedule
A lot of anxiety and confusion can be avoided by creating a schedule of the week or the day of Christmas. The schedule can be created to meet your particular child’s needs and can utilize pictures, texts, or an actual calendar. When possible, have your child participate in creating the schedule, and try to ensure that highly preferred activities come directly after less preferred activities.

Provide choices
This is a huge part of assisting your child in achieving success in any endeavor. As described above, you may use visual, textual, or verbal cues to provide choices. Choices can be between large activities, such as “Do you want to go see Santa or do you want to go shop for this year’s ornament” or can be between smaller activities, such as “Do you want to listen to Christmas music with the family or watch a Christmas movie with the family?”

Make an accessible safe space away from lights, music, or crowds
You may need to do this in the home where you are celebrating the holiday or in public spaces as you prepare for the holiday. It is important that your child have a way to appropriately communicate his/her need for a break and that need is respected.

See if there is a Quiet Santa or Sensitive Santa event available in your area
In many places there are now days in which visiting Santa has been organized to be more accessible for children with autism and other developmental delays or sensory needs. This is a good option if your child struggles with tolerating long lines, loud noises or music, or flashing lights.

Give a job/task
Leading up to the holidays, try to find tasks that your learner will enjoy such as decorating cookies, stringing the lights on the tree, or putting stamps on the envelopes for this year’s card. Having a meaningful and enjoyable job will improve the holidays for both your child and the rest of the family.

Find Christmas-themed activities your child can enjoy with the whole family

While your family may have many traditions that are important for you, it may not be necessary for your child to participate in all of them. It can be beneficial to create new traditions that are of high-interest for your child, such as a Christmas puzzle, Christmas bingo, or a round of 20 questions with Christmas-related answers. You can include these as part of a schedule, with the highly-preferred activity placed after a less preferred activity.

Pair Christmas activities with things your child enjoys
There are likely activities most people enjoy that your child is unable to tolerate. Try to pair these difficult activities with activities/items that your child does enjoy. For example, if your child is unable to tolerate the sounds and energy level of the whole family unwrapping gifts, you can pair that activity with something highly desirable that is frequently unavailable such as a specific toy or listening to his/her favorite song on headphones. You can ensure greater success if you have a few pairing sessions before the big day. For this example, you might have family members unwrap one box while your child has the preferred item/activity, then have family members unwrap 3 or more boxes while your child has the preferred item/activity.

Acknowledge your child’s successes
Let your child know when they’re participating in activities in appropriate ways. This can be verbal praise, physical reinforcement such as high fives, or access to preferred items.

Finally, remember that while you may need to make modifications, over time you can change those modifications to meet the changing needs of your family and your child. Changing or removing one or more holiday traditions this year does not mean they are gone forever, and reducing the stress of Christmas this year will increase the likelihood of happier Christmases in the future.

Pick of the Week: Sorting Suitcase

We’re delighted to share one of our favorite products with you as our Pick of the Week – the Sorting Suitcase!  This wonderful activity kit allows learners to practice matching and patterning skills, as they learn to sort shirts, shoes, shorts, and socks by one or two attributes.

Order the Sorting Suitcase this week and save 15% off the usual price of $19.95.  Just enter the Promo Code BLOGSORT3 at checkout to redeem your savings.

The suitcase comes with 40 double-sided clothing cards and 10 double-sided activity cards that ask children to “find all the blue items” or “find all the shirts with stars.” Even better, the cards are all write-on/wipe-off and can be used over and over again with dry erase markers. Finally, 5 blank write-on and wipe-off cards in the kit allow you to customize the activity to your student’s needs. This kit is perfect for easy clean-up and portability for those on the go.

Don’t forget, this week only, take 15% off* your order of the Sorting Suitcase by entering in our code BLOGSORT3 at check out.

*Offer valid through 12/24/13 at 11:59pm EST. Not compatible with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in the code at checkout!

Helpful Holiday Tips for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Kelly McKinnon, co-author of the invaluable book Social Skills Solutions, put this helpful post together for the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Kelly is currently the Director of Behavior Intervention at The Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Santa Ana, California.

Helpful Holiday Tips for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The holiday season is a joyful time of the year, but it also can be stressful for kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Preparing and planning early for the holidays can help you relieve some of the holiday stress. Here are a few helpful tips.

Provide concrete information for your child
• Provide a visual schedule of each day’s expectations. Include start times and end times.
• Use your smart phone or iPad when possible to find free apps including visual timers, “First This Then This” schedules, and personalized “social stories.”
• Explain what is both expected of your child and not expected.
• Provide opportunities to reward your child for expected behavior.

Provide information visually
• Take pictures of relatives and friends you will visit, and practice names.
• Video modeling is considered an evidenced-based way to teach your child. Take videos of how to unwrap a gift the right way, thank a family member, or greet new people. Role play with your child and practice ahead of time.
• Use pictures to help your child communicate or make choices of what they would like to have or say.

Reduce anxiety
• Compile a list of activities that can help your child fill his or her time wherever you go.
• Use rehearsal and role play to give children practice ahead of time in dealing with new social situations, or work together to write a “social story” that incorporates all the elements of an upcoming event or visit to better prepare them for that situation.
• If you are going to visit family or friends, make sure there is a quiet, calm place for retreat.
• Try to relax and have a good time. If you are tense, your child may sense that something isn’t right.
• Don’t shield your child from the extended family. Family members need to understand the challenges you face.

Product Demo: Tiggly Shapes

We thought you might like to see a product demo of the Tiggly Shapes & Apps by BCBA Sam Blanco. She’s been happily using the Tiggly Shapes and Apps with her students and we thought you might be interested in some of the uses specifically for learners with autism. Check out our brief demos to get a closer look at Tiggly. And read Sam’s Review on the product here.



New Feature! Sample Pages & Excerpts

Our little elves here have been hard at work updating our website to make it as comprehensive and informative as possible. We’ve added Sample Pages and Table of Contents to the majority of our books so that you can get as much information as you need to make a decision on choosing the right product for your child or student.

You can download and view these sample pages within each product page by clicking on the Table of Contents or Sample Pages Tabs and downloading the content right to your desktop. We hope you’ll find this new feature to be a helpful tool.

ImprovingSB

Pick of the Week: Tiggly Shapes (with Free Shipping!)

We’re really excited to share Tiggly Shapes with you: the first interactive iPad toy designed for toddlers. You have to see it to believe how cool and versatile this new product is.

Tiggly Shapes combines the essential educational benefits of physical play with the learning potential and fun of the iPad. This simple set of four geometric shapes interacts with three free apps to create an ideal learning environment for children. Tiggly Shapes melds the best of what the digital world has to offer with the developmental importance of manipulative play in toddlers and preschoolers.

Our Board Certified Behavior Analyst Sam Blanco just put together a review for Tiggly and how she uses it with her students. Read it in full here.

This week only, we’re offering FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING on Tiggly Shapes. Just enter the Promo Code TIGGLY at checkout and simply select FREE UPS or USPS Shipping. This makes a perfect holiday gift for the child in your life.

Seventy years of academic research has demonstrated that manipulating physical objects is essential to early childhood development. Tiggly enables parents to bring this critical component of early learning to the “digital sandbox” today’s kids inhabit. The product consists of a simple triangle, circle, square, and star that become interactive when used with the three Tiggly apps to create a robust learning experience.

Tiggly Shapes and apps are designed for children ages 18 months to 4 years old.

The Apps, available for free on iTunes, are:

Tiggly Safari
Use the shapes to construct friendly and adorable animals for the jungle, farm and sea.

Tiggly Safari Screenshot Learn basic shapes with Tiggly Safari!

 

 

 

 

 

Tiggly Stamp
This app has a great voice record and camera option that allows you to create an image, tell a story and record it. Use the shapes in this app to build seasonally-themed scenes using everything from jack-o’-lanterns to igloos.

Create animals, fruit, and other characters with Tiggly Shapes.Create a story with Tiggly Shapes and Stamps!

 

 

 

 

 

Tiggly Draw
Channel your inner artist and use the tablet as a blank canvas to create your masterpiece.

Tiggly Draw Screenshot

Exercise creativity by taking and saving photos!

 

 

 

 

 

Remember, this week only, get free domestic shipping on your order of Tiggly Shapes when you enter in the promo code TIGGLY at checkout!

**Offer expires 12/17/13 at 11:59pm EST. Not compatible with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces in the promo code at checkout!

Product Review: Tiggly Shapes

First, let me go ahead and admit that I’ve played with Tiggly Shapes even when none of my students were around. This simple set of four geometric shapes that interacts with three free apps is one of my favorite additions to play time.

So many of my students are highly motivated by iPads, but I find them hard to integrate into lessons because it’s easy for the learner to avoid social interaction while the iPad is out. Tiggly Shapes provides opportunities for interaction with both peers and adults because it adds a physical component to the activity.

I tried this app out with two learners with autism, one five-year-old boy and one nine-year-old boy. For the five-year-old, Tiggly Shapes was a useful tool for practicing shape recognition (one of his current IEP goals), then receiving unique and powerful reinforcement when he touched that shape to the screen. Though he doesn’t have strong fine motor skills, the shapes are designed in such a way that he was easily able to grasp them. He especially loved to see the animals appear in the Tiggly Safari app.

The nine-year-old loves to draw on paper and on the iPad, so Tiggly Draw was an automatic hit for him. The shapes allowed me to participate in the drawing with him in a different way that encouraged more social interaction while still being highly reinforcing for him.

Although the Tiggly Shapes were initially designed for toddlers and preschoolers, the Tiggly Draw app can definitely be used for a variety of learners of all ages (and also happens to be the app I was playing with on my own.) It is the only app for this product that is easy to modify to meet your learner’s specific needs.

If you’re a teacher working with young learners or a parent looking for unique and interactive ways to use the iPad, I wouldn’t hesitate to snap up Tiggly Shapes. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll see more apps to go along with this fantastic new product!

Introducing a New Support for the Child with Autism: The Acoustical Support

This week, we bring you a guest post from Martha Gabler. She’s going to share her experience with using an acoustical support to mark desired behaviors known as Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach). The sound made by the acoustical marker (the click or ping) is sometimes referred to as a “tag.” TAGteach is based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and uses positive reinforcement and reinforcement schedules to build functional behaviors.

Hello. My name is Martha Gabler and I am the parent of a nonverbal teenage boy with autism. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to another type of support for children with autism that is coming into practice, and to ask you to consider it. There are many “supports” available nowadays for children with special needs. Most people are familiar with the adaptive equipment for children with physical disabilities: special chairs, grips, work platforms. In the autism community, most people are familiar with visual supports: picture systems, schedules, token boards, and so forth. These visual supports play a crucial role in educating children with autism and have proven to be extremely useful in both home and school settings.

Introducing Acoustical Support

Box ClickersI would like to introduce you to another type of support: the “acoustical” support. An acoustical support is a neutral sound: a tap, click or ping. The acoustical support plays a crucial role in delivering positive reinforcement to a learner. The purpose of the sound is to inform a learner that he has done something right. The sound says, “YES, you did it.” The instructor, therapist or parent makes the sound at the exact moment that the child has performed a desired behavior. This behavior may be pointing to a picture of a cat, putting a puzzle piece into place, or, one of those rare beautiful flashes of meaningful eye contact or comprehension. As soon as the child has performed the task and the instructor has produced the sound, the child receives a treat (reinforcer). After a few trials, the neutral sound becomes a “conditioned reinforcer.”

Why is the Conditioned Reinforcer Important?

“A conditioned reinforcer is some initially meaningless signal—a sound, a light, a motion—that is deliberately presented before or during the delivery of a reinforcer,” explains behavior scientist, Karen Pryor. After a few experiences of hearing the sound and receiving a treat (reinforcer), the sound itself becomes meaningful for the child, and he starts to watch out for it. After the child is paying attention to the sound, he starts to pay attention to the behaviors that produced the sound. When he realizes that his own behaviors are producing the sound and the reinforcer, he learns to produce those desired behaviors more often. At that point, you have learning and communication. This use of a sound to signal success to the learner is called Teaching with Acoustical Guidance or TAGteach.

As a parent, when I started using a neutral sound (a click) to indicate to my son which behaviors of his would earn treats, he started doing more of those behaviors. My son was loud, chaotic and wild in the early years. He had self-stimulatory and aggressive behaviors. With my conditioned reinforcer (sometimes referred to as an “event marker” or a “tag”), I was able to tag my child every time he did something good. “Good” things were behaviors like Quiet Mouth, Both Feet On The Floor, Hands Still, or Eye Contact. The procedure is: Observe child, press clicker (tag) when child performs the desired behavior, then reinforce child (give a treat or token).

Tantrum Busting

The first time I ever used TAGteach (acoustical support), my son had just erupted into a tantrum, complete with shrieking, stomping and storming about. I tagged every split second that he had “Quiet Mouth” or “Both Feet On The Ground, and handed him a tiny piece of candy with each click. Twelve minutes later he was sitting quietly and calmly on the sofa, and we were able to go about our day. It was an incredibly empowering experience for me, compared to all the previous tantrums when I always felt panicky, demoralized and helpless. I never feared a tantrum or meltdown again because I had a powerful tool to help him calm down.

My Son Became More Skilled and Happier the More I Tagged

The more I communicated with my son via tags and positive reinforcement, the more skills he gained and the happier and better behaved he became. Despite the lack of speech, despite the sensory issues, the click rang loud and clear and told him he had done something good. He loved it and responded beautifully. He had many difficult behaviors, but I was able to tag a split second of a good behavior whenever it occurred, with the result that the split second became two seconds, then three seconds, then four seconds of the desired behavior, plus it occurred more often. Gradually I was able to “shape” disruptive behaviors into positive learning behaviors, and he gained many useful skills.

The Tag is Clear and Precise with No Emotional Baggage

The reason the tag (conditioned reinforcer) works so well is because of the precise information it provides to the child. It tells the child, in real time, exactly what he did that was right, at exactly the moment he did it. From the viewpoint of a child with autism, he receives precise, timely information from a neutral sound; there is no emotional burden, language processing or sensory issue to deal with. Thus the child is free to focus on the priceless information he is receiving: the wonderful knowledge that he has done something right.

The Time has Come for TAGteach

The time has come for the use of acoustical supports in the autism community. There are many reasons: this methodology is based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis; it is effective, easy to learn, easy to do and low cost. It is flexible, portable and wonderful for teaching in the natural environment. It is an invaluable tool for weary, dispirited parents, and for over-burdened instructors in the classroom.

Thank you for reading to the end of this article! In the beginning of the article I asked you to consider this method. I hope you are now interested in learning more about using acoustical supports for a child with autism. There are links below with more information. If you have questions, please contact me via the website below. Best wishes to you all.

Martha Gabler and her husband are the parents of two sons. When the younger son turned three, autism entered their lives. The method described above, using an acoustical support to mark desired behaviors, is known as Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach). The sound made by the acoustical marker (the click or ping) is sometimes referred to as a “tag.” TAGteach is based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and uses positive reinforcement and reinforcement schedules to build functional behaviors. Martha’s book describing how she used TAGteach with her son is entitled Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism.

For more information about using acoustical supports with autism, see www.autismchaostocalm.com.

For more information about Teaching with Acoustical Guidance, see www.tagteach.com.

Tip of the Week: Scanning – Best Teaching Practices

Scanning is one of the first skills we teach learners with autism. This skill, (looking at each item presented and using that information to make decisions,) is essential for almost every other skill we teach children in early childhood. Historically, we have taught scanning skills through matching and listener responding activities by lining up 3 pictures or objects, then having the learner choose the correct match out of the three items or point to the item we have named. However, this is not representative of the way scanning skills are used in the natural environment.

Toddler boy reaching for carrots in grocery storeConsider how you use scanning in your own life: searching a row of books on a shelf to find a particular title, trying to find your favorite tomato soup in a supermarket aisle filled with soups, or looking through a box of Legos for one blue square Lego to complete a structure. None of the ways we scan in the natural environment present materials in a field of 3 neatly lined-up items.

There are steps you should take in order to help prepare your learner for scanning in the natural environment. When working on matching items or identifying items, you should quickly reduce prompts (as discussed in this previous post) and increase the difficulty of scanning. There are two ways to do this: (1) increase the number of items in the field and (2) make the array of items messy.

If we take a look at matching, here is a sample of the steps for a matching program you might use to help teach the skill:

  1. Match an object to 1 of 3 objects placed on the table
  2. Match an object to 1 of 5 objects placed on the table
  3. Match an object to 1 of 5 objects placed in a messy array on the table
  4. Match an object to 1 of 8 objects placed in a messy array on the table
  5. Match an object to 1 of 10 objects placed in a messy array on the table
  6. Match an object to 1 of 5 objects with similar but non-matching items in the messy array (example: you’re trying to match a red car, in the array there will be a red car as well as a blue car and a red truck.)
  7. Match an object to 1 of 8 objects with similar but non-matching items in the messy array

As the learner masters each step, he/she is getting closer to what that skill looks like in the natural environment. Lastly, here are a few examples of how children use scanning in the natural environment. These can be used to practice the skill in ways that are motivating to your individual learner:

  • searching for all the pieces to a costume for dress up play
  • finding a specific piece to complete a puzzle or block structure
  • looking for his/her favorite candy or snack at the supermarket
  • finding a specified item in a picture (for example, if I have a learner that loves Elmo, I’ll find many pictues with Elmo shown and have the learner point him out)
  • retrieving shoes from a shelf or closet
  • picking out a nail polish color
  • choosing their favorite tv show from a DVR or computer menu
  • playing “I Spy”
  • finding the right tool from a messy utensil drawer for a cooking activity
  • retreiving his/her favorite train from a bucket of trains