Howdy everyone,

I’m sorry that some of you have not heard from me for a little while. Things have been crazy busy!!!

Not only am I due to have our second child any day now but I have also been running some training workshops here in Sydney for other speech pathologists to share my knowledge and experience in working with children with autism.

I really enjoyed doing the workshops and the attendees got a lot out of them, which was great!

One of the main aims of running the workshops was to help shift the way that speech pathologists work with children on the autism spectrum. I figured that if I can help fellow speech pathologists work more effectively with these kids then I will indirectly be helping many more families because they will have greater access to speech pathologists who are trained with the unique knowledge and skills that are needed for treating children with autism.

The title of the workshop is “Effective Speech Pathology… what works and what doesn’t”. Some of the key messages that I shared were:

1. It IS possible to treat the social part of the triad of impairment
2. When we use a developmental approach to treatment we are treating the core deficits of autism
3. We must get to know the ‘individual differences’ of the child if we are to achieve greater therapy outcomes
4. Parent training and empowerment is an essential part of effective treatment
5. Practical and meaningful speech pathology is a must

I then went on to practically explain how I carry out ‘effective therapy’ with the families I treat, using lots of client examples and video footage etc.

In a nutshell….
As speech pathologists I strongly believe that we need to be carrying out a ‘relationship building’ and ‘developmental style’ of therapy rather than sitting these children down at a table, drilling them with specific, isolated skills that are often not meaningful or motivating for the child.

After specialising in the treatment of autism for over 12 years and consulting to many different programs, I’ve treated enough clients and seen the case history of enough families to know that this structured style of teaching does not address the core deficits of autism or lay the foundations for even more effective learning.

I am a very open-minded therapist and certainly not ’stuck in my ways‘ but I still continue to practice a relationship building style of therapy today for one very simply reason… because I find it get results.

My plan now (after our baby is born!), is to travel around the other capital cities of Australia to carry out the workshops there, then head overseas to do the same. Towards the end of the year I’ll be running more advanced training days for speech pathologists to increase their skills even further.

So along with continuing to manage Connect Therapy and creating more Training Resources I’m very excited to now be training other therapists in autism as I know that it will reach so many more families and quite possibly indirectly assist each one of you in your journey as well as other families that will follow in your footsteps!

So that’s what I’ve been up to… how about you guys?
How effective have you found Speech Therapy to be in your child’s treatment? What type of therapy approach has worked for you? I’d love to hear your experiences from a parent’s perspective.

Please leave your comments in the boxes provided below.

best wishes
Monique

Happy New Year!

My first blog entry for 2010. I hope it’s a great year for everyone.

This is Part 2 of how to help children with autism maximise their learning and connection using picture books. It’s a follow on from Part 1 which we did last week. If you missed Part 1 please watch it first, otherwise this may not make much sense to you.

You can watch Part 1 here http://www.autism-essentials.com/blog/maximising-learning-with-picture-books/

So as promised, in Part 2 I walk you through some real examples of exactly how I use picture books to connect powerfully with children with autism and explain the various techniques I use during the process that will really help to maximise their learning and connection throughout the activity.

There’s some really valuable tips in this, so I hope you enjoy it!

I really hope that you trial some of these techniques with your own child or those that you treat. Please let me know how you go.

P.S: As always If you have any thoughts or stories to share about this week’s article please leave your comments in the box provided below.

Wow! Only 4 more sleeps until Christmas!

I thought I’d squeeze in one more autism tip to help get you through the holiday period.

This week’s video is about getting the most out of your interactions with your child with autism while reading picture books with them. And because this is an activity that almost all children and parents enjoy doing together quite frequently, I’m sure you’ll find this one very helpful.

Take a look…

Duration – about 10 min

Here a little peak inside this weeks video…

There are essentially 4 types of interactions a child with autism can have whilst reading a book.

Which one does your child experience the most?

1. They enjoy the physical, visual experience of turning the pages ad looking through the book and it’s usually an activity they prefer doing on their own.
2. They don’t mind if you sit with them, but they like to control the reading of the book and don’t really involve you in the experience.
3. They enjoy reading books because they like the process of rote learning, the sequence of events and knowing what is on the next page. They don’t mind if you get involved but they are really only using you as a tool to help them get from page to page and it is not a true shared experience.
4. Your child genuinely enjoys reading books with you and it is usually a highly interactive experience with lots of back and forth conversation and emotion sharing.

If you said number 1, 2 or 3 that’s fine. However number 4 is the type of interaction we want to aim for. This is where your child is going to get the most out of the experience and will get the most opportunities to maximise their learning and their ability to really ‘connect’ with you and eventually other people too!

So I’ve really tried to focus this video on giving you some simple steps that should really help improve the quality of your interactions with your child whilst reading together. So what are you waiting for. Go back up and click play now!

Stay tuned for Part 2 – which I’ll be releasing next week.
Until then, stay safe and have a really great holiday break.

Part 2 is now available here – Watch Part 2

All the best
Monique

Often toy libraries can be a very underutilised service in many communities… but they have a lot to offer, particularly for children with autism, aspergers or pdd-nos.

Many families say “We have so many toys at home…the last thing we need is more toys”

But let me give you a little bit of food for thought….

I saw a boy named Oli on the weekend for a session who will be going to a mainstream school next year.

He is doing really well with his play and interactions at home with his parents and his brother. This family have done an incredible job at building their relationship with Oli, helping him realise that they are heaps of fun to be around and can add so much value to his life. In fact, when I recently analysed some video footage of Oli playing with his family at home it really was not apparent that he had autism!

Yet aside from all of his wonderful progress at home his parents report that he is having significant trouble forming relationships with his peers.

One of Oli’s challenges is that he experiences a considerable amount of anxiety which is getting in the way of helping him develop friends. The thing that triggers this anxiety for Oli is new and unpredictable things. For example when he has play dates with friends, away from home, there is soooo much unpredictability (new home, less familiar people and of course new toys!).

So we needed to focus on helping Oli become more comfortable with new situations. Therefore I recommended that this family create more unpredictability in their play time at home, where Oli already felt very safe and secure.

One excellent way to create this unpredictability is by introducing different toys into your child’s play sequences.

But as you no doubt know, kids can get bored of the same toys very quickly. So if you’re child is no longer motivated by the toys you have at home, an excellent source of new and interesting toys can be your local community toy library… just like a plain old book library but instead you can borrow toys! Plus what’s also great is that as soon as your child gets bored of them you can simply return them!

Just do a Google search for toy libraries in your local area. Obviously some toy libraries are better equipped than others but it’s definitely worth checking out! And if you can’t find any toy library in your area then you could always organise to swap some toys with friends or family members.

Even if your child is not up to the same stage as Oli, toy libraries can also be a great way of trialing toys or equipment (e.g: mini trampolines) to see if your child likes them before purchasing. Because we all know how much money we can waste on toys that we think our child is going to like!

Til next time

Monique

This week’s video tip is self explanatory really.

Again, this is another strategy I use regularly with my private clients that can work quite nicely.

Particularly suitable for higher functioning children with autism (typically 3-6 years old) who are up to the stage where they ‘get’ the basic meaning of situations, but who are then challenged by real life situations where they are required to interpret the complex feelings and thoughts of other people through their words, facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice, then put all of that information together to really understand a deeper meaning of a particular situation.

If this sounds like your child, then you could really benefit from this.

You’ll have no problems doing this at home with your child and all you’ll need are a few of their favourite DVDs

Running time : 15 mins

Brief Overview

1. When is the right stage to introduce DVDs as a tool for building comprehension with your child
2. Why DVDs are such a great tool for doing this, compared to books and other resources.
3. Why it’s so important to choose DVDs that are ‘pitched’ at the right level for your child’s development.
4. How to use both familiar and unfamiliar DVDs with your child to maximum effect
5. To finish off, some insider tips to help you get the most out of this technique.

Question Time

If you have any questions or stories to share about this particular technique please leave me your comments below.

Monique

P.S: If your child isn’t quite up to this stage but you would like to learn more about building them towards piecing together all of the information in DVDs, there are SO MANY other visual strategies you can use. Please take a look at DVD 7 from my Autism Essentials Training Program. It goes for over 2 hours and covers virtually all of the other visual strategies you can use. http://www.autism-essentials.com/shop/products/Volumes-6%2C-7-%252d-Learn-Part-1-and-2.html

Hi everyone,

I have to say I’m finding video to be a great way of explaining all of the concepts and techniques that I have to share with you and also for bringing to life many of the examples that will help with applying these tips to your own situation. So I hope you’re enjoying them too!

This week’s tip focuses on how you can improve your child’s articulation and speech clarity skills using a technique called Video Modeling. There are many ways to improve articulation, but Video Modeling is one technique that I’ve found to be very effective over the years with the children I treat.

So anyway, I created a quick, step-by-step guide to show you exactly how you can use Video modeling to help your child’s articulation and speech development. So if your child is struggling with this then I think you’re going to find this video tip particularly helpful.

It goes for about 10 minutes.

P.S: Please share any thoughts or stories you may have about this video by leaving your comments in the box provided below.

Last week I promised to do Part 2 of Why Play is SO Important for Children with Autism. (If you missed Part 1 you can find it here).

But the thing is, we decided to try video blogging, which I’m really excited about! However it took us much longer than expected to get Part 2 ready.

So anyway, I’m sorry it’s late, but here it is as promised…

Part 2 in shiny new video format!

The first video below looks at the importance of stage 3 of play development – Imaginary Play, while the second video gives you some great tips on how to use Imaginary Play to help your child (or those children that you treat).

Stage 3 – What is Imaginary Play? (18 min)



Tips on How to use Imaginary Play to Help Your Child (10 min)

I’m excited about creating my weekly tips on video because it will just bring everything to life! And now instead of reading through long pages of text, you will be able to see and hear me in person, which I hope you will find far more personable and easy to digest and no doubt sometimes even a little entertaining.

But as with anything new…
I’d really love to get your thoughts on the new video format.
Do you like it? Did the video play ok for you? Should I do more videos or stick with good old text and links??

Either way, please have your say and let us know so we can keep producing more of what you like, how you like it.

Till next week
Monique

P.S: If you have any thoughts or stories to share about this week’s article please leave your comments in the box provided below.

One thing that you need to understand is how important PLAY is for the thinking, language, emotional, problem solving and creative skills development of children with autism. So many people underestimate the importance of PLAY.

Ok. So how does play develop and what should your child be able to do in play?

Stage 1

From birth to 18 months of life, much of your child’s play will revolve around Sensory Play.

This means feeling different textures, learning about how their body feels when it is moved in different ways, listening to interesting noises like birds tweeting, the clock ticking and how different people’s voices sound different and can make interesting noises etc, etc. Their sensory play will continue to develop and become more complex during the first 18 months.

Stage 2

As your child gradually learns to ‘make sense’ of the world around them they then learn to engage in Exploratory and Manipulative Play.

This means that they begin to work out the properties of objects (round, soft, hard, small, large) through their senses and work out how they can play around with them to do different things.

For example; if we take a ball there are many things that we can get to know about a ball… it is round, it can be big or little, heavy or light, you can throw it, kick it, catch it, bounce it, roll it… if I drop it from my high chair it bounces really high, if I put it in water it might float or sink… if I put it down the ramp it will go very fast etc, etc.

This kind of exploration and thinking is very important for a child to develop so that they can go on to learn how to use objects in many different and more complex ways.

Children develop some of this sensory and exploratory play on their own, but they also learn it through interacting and watching their parents, siblings and other children. Once children have built a warm and trusting relationship with certain people they become curious to learn more from them and gain a great deal from watching and copying them.

Stage 3 – Imaginary Play

Sensory play and Exploratory play will continue to become more and more complex. However, once your child has started to really explore objects for their physical attributes they will then be curious to learn about the different functions of objects.

…OK WAIT! Let’s just stop there for a moment.

Many of you might be thinking… “Hold up, my child is stuck at Stage 1 or 2!!”

Your child may be engaging in Sensory play for a good part of their day (playing in the dirt, mouthing objects, running back and forth, wanting to play crashing games, making noises for self stimulatory purposes, playing with objects to create fascinating visual effects, etc) OR they may be using Exploratory play with toys/objects in a very repetitive way rather than exploring all the different properties of the objects.

Challenges in the first two stages of play development are largely the result of poor sensory motor development and/or immature social skills. Since I have already talked about these topics in previous blog posts, I will simply say that if you would like further advice on how to improve these areas of development please check out the following resources…

Sense part 1 and 2 of my Autism Essentials DVD program

and the audio 7 steps to unlocking your child’s social skills.

OK. Back to our discussion of play development and Stage 3 – Imaginary Play…

What does Imaginary play look like?

Let’s take a toy car for example. A child will learn that you can push it just like the cars you see on the road, you can also put people in it and carry them to different places (like the park, or the shops, or to grandmas house etc), you can also put seat belts on the passengers, beep the horn, put things in the boot to take to the beach etc. As a child gains a greater and greater comprehension about what happens in their day and their life experiences continue to expand it endless what they will do with their play. This type of play is called imaginary or symbolic play and typically starts developing at around 12-18 months and becomes more and more complex as the child gets older (ie to six/seven years of age), until they reach a point where they can even act out things that have never happened in their life (eg going to the moon, pretending to be a fairy, etc).

There is SOOOO much that can be taught through Imaginary play and it is a wonderful way of developing your child’s thinking, language, emotional, problem solving and creative skills. However many families are not sure of how to effectively develop these imaginary play skills in their child. If you are interested in how to do this please look out for my next post because I am going to explain this in more detail for you.

See Part 2 here

Until then best wishes.
Monique

P.S: If you have any thoughts or stories to share about this week’s article please leave your comments in the box provided below.

Hi all,

Last week I attended the Asia Pacific Autism Conference and one of the big take-home messages (which I am always going on about) was “how important it is to fit the therapy to the child rather than the child to the therapy”. This is incredibly important and also a great way of distinguishing good quality therapy from more generic approaches that may not be effective, or sustainable.

As you may know, I strongly believe that every child’s intervention plan needs to take into consideration the unique and individual differences of the child with autism. But what is equally important and often overlooked, is that the intervention must also take into consideration the values, circumstances, and lifestyle of the FAMILY for it to be most effective and sustainable.

This is why I love carrying out sessions in my client’s homes, because I get to know the family dynamics very quickly and how I can help incorporate therapy that respects the core values of the family, into their day-to-day activities.

This is important so that the family is strengthened and motivated by the therapy, rather than feeling like it is putting too much strain on the family unit, which can often be the case where families are also caring for other siblings who also have very individual needs. If therapy can be incorporated into your normal daily activities rather than being thought of as something else that you have to try to fit into your day, you will be much more motivated and inclined to do it regularly and consistently.

I chose to write about this today because I went to see a lovely family on the weekend who live in a two bedroom apartment with their four children and two grandparents. One of the children, Oliver, has been diagnosed with ASD. It is often not possible for this family to carry out extensive one-on-one therapy with their son because of the simple day-to-day demands of raising four children. Therefore it is critical that the therapy with their son is organised in such a way that fits in with the whole family.

They love to go to the park as much as possible so that the kids have an opportunity to run around and to get some fresh air and sunshine. The father told me that he tries to work on Oliver’s social and communication skills while they are playing on the swing, which is great. However as Oliver gets better at expressing his desires on the swing, saying things like ‘more’, ‘push’ and ‘higher’, he will eventually reach a limit of things he can talk about that relate to swinging on the swing. So in order to keep building his vocabulary and language skills he needs to be doing a range of different activities.

So I suggested that the father take a bag full of toys with them that he could use to play some simple interactive games (e.g: bubbles, balloons, a sheet/blanket, musical instruments) at he playground so that he can create some more opportunities for Oliver to expand his language. The father thought that this was a great idea and it would also take some pressure off the family by incorporating the new games into their time at the park.

I give you this example because it’s important for therapists and families to be creative and to ‘think outside of the square’ when working out how to incorporate therapy into the child and family’s everyday life. If doing therapy at the same time and in the same place on the same days every week is difficult or simply isn’t happening, then get creative and take your therapy with you! There’s no right or wrong, just endless possibilities!

Best wishes on your journey
Monique

P.S: If you have any thoughts or stories to share about this week’s article please leave your comments in the box provided below.

One of the main autism symptoms or characteristics of children with autism is their language delays and slower speech development.

The ability of a child with autism to talk well is not just dependent upon having the motor skills to be able to shape sounds into words and words into sentences. But more importantly the child needs to have thoughts, ideas and feelings that they want to ’share’ and communicate with others.

The reason that I want to talk to you about this today is because I had a session with a little girl named Sasha on the weekend. She is a delightful little girl who has many of the pre-verbal skills necessary to be able to talk and in fact she has already started to appropriately use some important words in her life e.g. more, go, biscuit… which is a wonderful start.

However it is very obvious that the area of development that is going to get in the way of Sasha’s language and speech development is going to be her ‘limited interests’ in her life. Sasha’s world currently revolves around food, lining up objects, food, some simple sensory play and MORE food. If we do not keep expanding Sasha’s world of play and new/motivating experiences then I can already foresee what is going to happen with Sasha’s language development…

She will get very good at requesting for her basic needs and wants with words, but then she is going to plateau with the different ways that she can use her language because she will not have a desire to speak about anything else!

I have come across so many kids with autism and asperger’s syndrome over the past 12 years where the parents have been desperate for the child to start talking and then have been so disappointed that when they finally start talking that it does not amount to much!!

Because of this I am training Sasha’s parents to really work on improving Sasha’s play skills. They’re also following the tips in my audio “7 Steps to Unlocking Your Child’s Social Skills‘.

In our therapy sessions I remind them that whilst we are working on increasing the number of words that Sasha can say, it is really vital that we keep expanding her world and interests so that she will not be one of those kids who’s language plateaus out shortly after they start talking.

The key to doing this successfully is by taking small steps and introducing new things very gradually so you don’t overwhelm them. You want to help them see the value in trying new things. The trick is to take something they’re familiar with that motivates them and combine it with something else that they like.

The first obvious step is that you need to know what they like and what already motivates them. This will make your job much, much easier.

As an example, lets pretend that your child likes jumping on the trampoline, singing songs, blowing bubbles and playing with balls…

So the next time they’re jumping on the trampoline… rather than simply jumping, try singing a song or blowing some bubbles whilst they are jumping, or put a few small balls on the trampoline and watch them bounce everywhere as they jump! You could even try just adding one ball at first, then adding more as they adjust to the new experience.

By introducing new things in this way they can focus on the new experience (the songs, bubbles or balls) while being comforted by the familiar and motivating sensation of jumping on the trampoline. This technique can be applied to just about anything your child likes to do. You’re only limited by your imagination!

If it’s obvious that your child is not enjoying a new experience, go back to what they like and then try again later or try another idea.

Using this technique will gradually expand your child’s world over time, and it will really encourage their expressive communication because they will have so many more things that they really want to share with you!

How does your child cope with new experiences?
Have you tried any particular strategies? How well did they work??
Please share your experiences and feedback by leaving a comment below

Happy connecting!
Monique

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