Triumphant Kids

We Have Moved!

2012-11-14T05:27:00.001-08:00

The Triumphant Kids' Blog has moved to a new website ourautismblog.com!

Our Autism Blog: A place where information is provided for everyone who needs them. Everyone is you, everyone is us, and this, is a blog of ours to share. Whether you are a parent of a child with autism, a professional who is working with children on the spectrum or someone who just wants to understand more about the autistic world, you will always find a place for you in Our Autism Blog.

So come on over to ourautismblog.com and gain more perspective and understanding about all thing autism.

Regards,
Daven.

www.triumphantkids.com Email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com

Finding the Right Autism Therapy Program or Service for Your Child with Autism.

2012-09-22T22:09:00.003-07:00

One of the most stressful tasks that a parent of a child with special needs is finding the right therapy service or program. Very often parents are presented with quite a few options out there that seem and sound effective for the treatment of children with autism. However, usually things may not be what they seem or sound like. And when the seemingly most effective program doesn't work out as expected, many parents become despondent and stressed out. In fact stress is the number one factor affecting many parents of children with autism. So what should you look out for when choosing a suitable therapy program for your child?

Here are some suggestions that you may consider when selecting an autism therapy service for you child. Or if you are already engaging your child in a therapy program, you may just want to make sure that some of these factors continue to be in place so that you continue to receive the results you would expect from the autism therapy program you hired for you child.

Is the centre, company or therapist providing the autism therapy service reliable? Does the company have a good track record with its clients. Have there been positive referral from parents who have accessed their services for autistic children before?
While you may have good reviews from other parents and professionals about a particular centre or company, you may want to enquire about the therapists available as well. Again, do parents generally have good reviews of any therapists in that centre in particular? How will the therapists reccomended to you be experienced and professional in dealing with your autistic child's learning needs and goals?

Are you involved in the program delivery to your child with autism? In other words, are you being kept constant inform of your child's development and the progress of the program. Are you being consulted on the various issues that you may be concerned with? Do your therapists and/or consultants take your opinions into considerations and work out soultions based on your concerns and feedback? Are the therapists and the service providers consistent and regular with their reports on your child's progress and learning goals and in their correspondence with you?
Are the therapists working with your child able to build a good and trusting rapport with your child? In other words, does your child feel comfortable working with the therapists or does your child feel intimidated by the therapists' presence? Of course there are children who just do not like to work with other adults but parents should pay attention if the discomfort is of extended periods of time with the therapists are not trying methods to ease things for the child.
Do your child's learning needs and issues match the services that you are accessing? Do the service provider's goals set for your child match his learning needs and issues?
Do the programs of the autism service complement with other programs you are accessing? In other word, do services that you access encourage a holistic approach to learning? At times we have professionals who claim that their programs are the only effective services provided, discouraging parents to seek other professional opnions or to do away with any existing services that they are accessing. Be very wary of claims such as "scientifically proven", "clinically proven" or "only therapy with scientific evidence" because to date nothing is proven that autism can be totally treated by any one approach. Furthermore, while there may be researches with promising results, they do not represent a significant sample size of the autistic population. Researches done on less than a hundred (or even less than that!) of children do not represent enough the numbers of autistic children around the world. In fact, National Research Council (a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, NRC, 2001), concluded that the current state of research in ASD suggests that there is no evidence that any one approach is better than any other for children between 1 and 8 years old.
Finally, the one most important aspect is, are you observing any significant gains and progress in your child after accessing the service for a period of time? Are your concerns being addressed and given solutions that worked for you and your family?

What are some of the challenges you face when seeking a suitable autism therapy program for your child? I would like to hear from you! Email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com to share with me your many concerns regarding providing education for your child with special needs wherever you may be. Maybe you can provide some suggestions for other parents on what to look out for providing an educational structure for their children with autism. Whatever it is, your opinions and feedbacks are greatly appreciated. :)

Till the next post, with deepest regards.

P.S: You can also leave me a message through my website www.triumphantkids.com!

References:
National Research Council (2001). Educating children with autism. Committee on
Educational Interventions for Children with Autism. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. (www.nap.edu)

The Many Benefits of Play for Your Child With Autism

2012-09-18T23:24:00.003-07:00

There are many benefits associated with play. Here are some examples of gains your child with autism may achieve through play -

It encourages two way communication. As play is a shared experience between at least two people, a child is motivated to establish or to respond to interaction with his peer or another adult. For example, when blowing bubbles, the adult withold from blowing the bubbles until the child initiates desire to see more bubbles by saying "bubbles" or by tapping the adult and looking intently at him or the bubbles.
Play helps build meaningful relationships. Play allows a child to have a common goal with the person he is playing with. Also, play gives the adults the opportunities to find ways and methods to draw the child into a shared world so that they can teach him skills through common interests.
It teaches language skills. Doctor Stanley Greenspan, the founder of Floortime Therapy, urged parents and professionals to reap the benefits of the value in playing with their children with special needs. The Floortime Therapy focuses on observing the autistic child's playing patterns and how we can follow the child's lead so as to try and draw him into a shared world with the adult who is then able to impart more complex language skills in a calm and assuring environment provided to the child. Doctor Greenspan explained that emotions are the gateway to intelligence development. As play is a tool to help understand the child's behaviour and therefore, emotion, the adult will have better success in teaching complex langauge and communication skills to the autistic child through play.
It motivates joint attention. Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. The focus can be done through following a gaze or by pointing and gestures. As joint attention is shared focus, it also means that there is the intention of sharing with each other, be it in a form of object (a toy), activity (a game) or an idea (let's find a way to get that cookie in the jar!). When someone lacks joint attention, meanings of objects and events could be lost due to the lack of focus on the surroundings. When something does not mean much to a person, the motivation to carry out an activity based on the context of that surrounding will be absent. Thus it is crucial to teach and develop joint attention skills for children with autism as it will aid greatly in their social growth. Other benefits of joint attention intervention include improvements in language and communication skills.
Play motivates children with autism to express their emotion in a comfortable and less stressful environment. Children are able to learn to express their emotions in an environment that they feel safe and around people that they can trust. Play also enable to child to be reinforced in a more natural manner such as feeling of joy and happiness when engaged in an activity with another adult. Play therefore build meaningful relationship with people whom the child can feel comfortable relating to.
Play motivates problem solving. Children are more willing to find ways to achieve states of positive emotion such as joy and happiness when they constantly experience the plesasures of play. Thus, they will find solutions to problems that deter them from gaining such states of happiness. For example, a child who is excited by the moving train on the track will try to engage the attention os the adult who is holding onto the train.

What are some of the benefits of play that you can think of? What are some games you play with your child to teach the many functional skills and knowledge in life?

Email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com for further discussions and feedback.
Visit my website www.triumphantkids.com to find out more about the services I provide in Singapore.

Videos: TED Talk by Temple Grandin

2012-09-14T08:07:00.005-07:00

This is one talk not to be missed. Temple Grandin speaks about autism and being autistic. Not just that, but also why this world needs autistic people. Children with autism can achieve and not many people can express that as succintly as Temple Grandin. Enjoy and be engaged!

I do not own this video, TED does.
:)

To learn more about Temple Grandin, visit her Bio Profile page on Ted.

To watch more inspiring TED videos, visit the official website.

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism: Dealing with Challenges 4

2012-09-10T22:01:00.004-07:00

This post, we look at the final scenario brought up in the Social Behaviour series. Let us recap:

"Jessica is often being teased by her classmates for talking weird. Whenever she tries to initiate a conversation with them, they will try their best to shun her. These incidents lead to her possessing very low self esteem . She loses confidence in keeping up with her social skills as she reasons that people are going to make fun of her anyway if she tries. She begins to keep to herself more not just in social settings but also at home. This has resulted in other behaviours such as fear and anxiety attacks to be in new surroundings or when surrounded by new people".

We have talked briefly about how the lack of common knowledge in what autism is may have contribted to the absense of understanding towards the autistic child's social behaviour in public and around others. This common knowledge while is teachable, is often not shared with the public and people involved in the lives of children with autism. When other children and even adults are unaware of what being autistic entails, these people generally inteprete their assumptions of others based on their own mental models. In other words, if the general public (you and I included) sees someone not behaving according to the norms accepted by the general public, he or she is considered as 'weird'.

The school and classroom should be a supportive and encouraging environment for learning and equipment of life skills. How then can we make it so for our children with autism?

Teachers could seek out more information about autism so that they can be equipped with the knowledge about the issues faced by people with autism. Geared with the relevant information, teachers could then deal with their autistic students in a more empathic manner.
Teachers who hold the information about autism can then share what they know with their students so that everyone in class understand more about autism.
There are parents who are at a loss as to help their children who are not coping well in school as well. Thus, parents should also seek out more information on how to cope with the issues relating to school for children with autism. They can then impart the knowledge and strategies to their children who may be able to adopt these strategies to deal with the challenges they face in school.
Parents and teachers could meet up for a short session of sharing and discussion about the challenges and issues faced in school by the child with autism and everyone involved in his learning environment. They could also exchange ideas and opinions on what they have gathered and learned from the information that they have read up on. They may then be able to cooperate in areas on how to relay such information to the younger children to develop their understanding of their role as classmates and peers of children with autism.
Parents of other children and classmates should also be informed about autism so that they too have a better understanding of what autism is about. Parents should be encouraged to help impart these knowledge to their children as well, inculcating a sense of understanding and respect towards their peers and learning buddies.
Parents of children with autism on the other hand, could also teach their children more about social rules and understanding and following social cues. Effective communication is a two way street. Having autism is no excuse for not learning to paying attention to other people's social needs and expectations.

Everyone has a role to play in making the learning environment a safe and happy place for the children to be in whether they are autistic or not. While it may be a lot harder to make it so for children with autism, it is not impossible. Mindsets have to change and public education has to be in place. Very often, every adults believe that everybody else is responsible to make the right things happen. What results from this is the lack of empathy and understanding between schoolmates, classmates and peers, leading to cases of bullying and social outcasting of individuals deemed as 'weird' or socially inept.

Betrand Russell expressed this phenomenon adequately - "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” If we do not educate ourselves, and then the younger generation about autism or about any other special needs, then bullying and social discrimination will become more commonplace in time to come.

Recommended Readings:

My Friend with Autism: Enhanced Edition with FREE CD of Coloring Pages!

My Friend with Autism is the exceptional result of parent Beverly Bishop’s determination to educate her son’s classmates about autism, thus helping her son fit in at school. A peer narrator explains that his friend with autism is good at some things and not so good at others—just like everyone else! In an informative, positive tone, he addresses issues such as:

Sensory Sensitivity
Communication Differences
Unique Ways of Playing
Insistence on Routine

The Autism Acceptance Book: Being a Friend to Someone With Autism

The Autism Acceptance Book is an interactive, educational, and character-building book that introduces children to the challenges faced by people with autism while also supporting their personal journey toward appreciating and respecting people's differences. This book offers educational information, conversation-starters, and engaging exercises that invite children to "walk in someone else's shoes" as they learn to treat others the same ways they would like to be treated themselves.

Ten Things Your Student with Autism Wishes You Knew

Winner of an iParenting Media Award and Finalist in the 2006 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards! Ellen Notbohm’s first book, Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, was a shot heard throughout the worldwide autism community. The unique perspective of a child’s voice is back to help us understand the thinking patterns that guide their actions, shape an environment conducive to their learning style, and communicate with them in meaningful ways.

Helpful chapters include:

Learning is Circular: We are all both teachers and students.
We are a Team: Success depends on all of us working together.
I Think Differently: Teach me in a way that is meaningful to me.
Behavior is Communication: Yours, Mine and Ours.
Teach Me “How to Fish”: See me as a capable adult and hold that vision.

The New Social Story Book, Revised and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: Over 150 Social Stories that Teach Everyday Social Skills to Children with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and their Peers.

Winner of an Outstanding Literary Work of the Year Award by the Autism Society of America, this 10th Anniversary Edition of The New Social Story Book offers over 150 of the most requested Social Stories, each one professionally written by Carol Gray. But it doesn't end there Carol also teaches you how to write Social Stories yourself! Years of experience and trial-and-error have led to updated Story guidelines. Carol explains her fine-tuned process in the included ten-step learning module The Social StoryTM 10.1 Tutorials perfect for parents and teachers!

If you have any questions or feedback, please email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. Also, do visit my website www.triumphantkids.com to find out more about the services I provide.

Till the next post, best regards,
Daven. :)

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism: Dealing with Challenges 3

2012-09-01T10:32:00.001-07:00

In the third scenario of the Social Behaviour series, Henry is a boy who is contented playing by himself. Any attempts from peers and other young children to engage him socially are usually met with non response.

To recap in this case, the child basically has little social awareness and no clear understanding of the benefits in social interaction. Play is also mostly basic and self directed.

What then can be done to encourage more awareness in the social setting and the people around him? And what skills can we help develop so that social interaction becomes more of a natural event for the child?

1:
Joint Attention and Eye Contact
Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. The focus can be done through following a gaze or by pointing and gestures. This diagram illustrates simply but clearly what joint attention means. http://eigsti.psy.uconn.edu/jt_attn.html
As joint attention is shared focus, it also means that there is the intention of sharing with each other, be it in a form of object (a toy), activity (a game) or an idea (let's find a way to get that cookie in the jar!). When there is little or no joint attention, sharing becomes a concept alien to the child.
When someone lacks joint attention, meanings of objects and events could be lost due to the lack of focus on the surroundings. When something does not mean much to a person, the motivation to carry out an activity based on the context of that surrounding will be absent.
Thus it is crucial to teach and develop joint attention skills for children with autism as it will aid greatly in their social growth. Other benefits of joint attention intervention include improvements in language and communication skills.

How Do We Teach Joint Attention?

We can teach joint attention in a one to one setting, at the table top by encouraging the establishment and maintanence of eye contact. The purpose of the eye contact is to develop the awareness of the person, the person who is going to share the information of an object or activity with him. There is no need to insist on eye contact by telling the child to look at you. Instead, find ways to engage the child so that eye contact becomes a prerequisite before something interesting happens. For example, in order for you to release the top from the spinner, the child has to at least gaze in your direction. Once the child is able to initiate that gaze consistently, then increase the demand of the prerequisite to a brief eye contact and ETC. Another example will be tickles. Some children who are not sensitive to touch enjoy being tickled. Press your thumb and second finger gently together and then ask the child, "Where is the bee?" Make a flying motion with your "bee" while making a buzzing sound. For the first round, give the child a tickle without any expectation. Subsequently, wait for the child to establish eye contact before delivering a tickle.

We can teach the child to respond spontaneously to 'look' at an object that might be of interest. For example, using the tickle example, after you made your "bee", tell the child, "Look! What is this?" or "Look! (Pause and wait for child to direct his attention to your fingers) A bee! Buzzzz....".

We teach the child to respond to his name. Once he's able to respond to his name spontaneously on a consistent basis, include the 'look' drill. Make the learning incidental by bringing the drill away from the table top. We can always do this while outside whenever we see something that might be of interest to the child.

Games and Activities
Games and activities are always a great way for tool to teach social awareness and interaction. Couple these with joint attention intervention and you may be able to see results soon. Children with autism need constant reminder to be engaged with their surrounding and the people around them. Here are some references that may give you some ideas on what activities you can get your child involved in together:

101 Games and Activities for Children With Autism, Asperger and Sensory Processing Disorders by Tara Delaney is divided into10 chapters covering such areas as engagement, communication and social sense. It is a book that supports learning through play with loads of creative ideas.

Play to Grow! Over 200 Games Designed to Help Your Special Child Develop Fundamental Social Skills by Bryn Hogan provides additional ideas that put fun and education together in an equation. Acquistion of social skills and understanding has never been more exciting! Click on the link for a sample read.

3:
Play Dates
Once your child is at least comfortable with being engaged in activities with you and other family members through joint attention intervention and games play, it is time to introduce some playmates to mingle around with in the child's own turf, that is, in the comfort of his own home. Of course, an adult or two will have to be the facilitator/s for the play date so that the children will not lose engagement. Getting the children involved is fundamental in making the play date a success. Do not fret if the children are not interacting or really playing spontaneously with one another during the first few sessions. Getting them warmed up to the idea of having one another's company is the key priority beofre anything else. I suggest getting more ideas from other parents or professionals on what activities can be organized for the children during the play dates. You can also turn to references such as:

Peer Play and the Autism Spectrum: The Art of Guiding Children's Socialization and Imagination by Pamela J.Wolfberg. This is a comprehensive guide to creating a interactive and fun learning experience for your child and his peers. Lots of ideas for organizing activities in a peer group setting. Click on the link for a sample reading of the book!

Well, that's all for this post on dealing with the challenges in the Social Behaviour series.
Do you have any questions regarding the suggestions listed above? Or do you have any comments as to how to provide some tried and successful solutions to the challenges listed by the above scenario? Please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

In the next post of the social behaviour series, we are going to carry on providing suggestions for the problems brought up in the fourth and last case scenario. So please do come and visit soon!

Regards,
Daven
www.triumphantkids.com

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): What is it?

2012-08-16T02:31:00.002-07:00

What is Autism?

Autism, also know as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD, sometimes also referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder) is a form of complex development disorder or delay. People with autism have difficulties with social interactions, language and communication, both verbal and non verbal. Activities that include elements of play and communication are at most times, challenges for people with autism. Because of impairment in the understanding of language, acquisition of skills are also impeded as a result as most learning requires language.

It is believed by experts within the field that Autism is prevalent during the first three years of a person's life. It is argued that neurological disorder having an effect on normal brain function affects development of the person's communication and social interaction skills.

Autism varies in severity. Individuals with severe autism conditions may experience serious cognitive disability and sensory issues. Behaviours such as tantrums, self-injury, defensiveness and aggression caused by an inability to communicate are also more prevalent and pronounced in individuals with more severe form of autism.

However, as autism is a wide spectrum disorder, no two people with autism will have exactly the same symptoms. However, there are still some common characteristics prevalent among individuals with autism.

What Are Some Common Characteristics of People with ASD?

1) Social Skills and Communication:
Some people with ASD prefer to keep to themselves and show little to no interest in the people close to or around them. They may also not notice when other people are talking to them.

Interaction is often awkward for people with ASD. They might be very interested, but not know how to talk, play or relate to others. Interaction can be very stressful for them as they have difficulty understanding other's emotions and thoughts. People with ASD are usually very literal in their interpretation of things. Thus, they often lack the imagination and inference skills needed in effective communication and interaction with others.

As people with ASDs often have trouble talking about their own feelings or understanding other people's feelings, difficulty in controlling one's emotion and excitement can thus affect social interaction.

Many individuals with ASD can be unresponsive to eye contact. Children are usually fleeting with their eye contact.

2) Verbal and Non-Verbal Interaction
Speech and language skills are usually delayed. Without proper early intervention, speech and language development could be greatly impeded.

Some people with ASD when without appropriate intervention, do not speak at all. There are other means of communication other than speech for these individuals such as typing (facilitated communication) and signing.

One of the common symptoms is echolilia where the person or child may repeat what is being said to him. The person might also repeat what was being heard over the TV or radio in the past.

People with autism have the tendency to confuse the use of pronouns such as 'I, 'me', 'you', 'your' and my'.

Most people with ASD find it difficult to initiate or maintain meaningful conversation with others. They might have a hard time focusing and listening to others. They might also go on continuously about something they really like, instead of having a back-and-forth discussion with someone.

3) Behaviours
People with autism may have ritualistic actions that they keep repeating. These actions include spinning, rocking, staring, finger flapping, hitting self. However, depedning on the severity of the autism and the level of stress these individuals are undergoing, the rate of these these behaviour differs from person to person.

Anxiety, fear and confusion may result from being unable to "make sense" of the world in the usual way. This might lead to behaviours that are overactive or overtly passive.

They might rigidly depend on routines and want things always to stay the same so there are no surprises. Small changes in the environment or in daily routines such as going home by a different route or having new people around in the house might trigger acute distress or fear. These negative emotions might at times lead to big upsets and meltdowns that baffle others around them.

People with ASDs often have a pattern of interests and may have seemingly odd habits. They may talk about or focus obsessively on a particular thing, idea, activity or person. Sometimes these habits or interests are unusual or socially inappropriate.

4) Sensory Responses
People with ASD may experience heightened sensitivity to the senses. For example, high-pitched intermittent sounds, such as fire alarms or school bells, may be painful. Some children will seek to avoid situations or places that they know will produce such sounds. I have students who get really upset and nervous during assembly period because the playing of the national anthemn actually causes them very much distress!

However, sensory sensitivities vary in autism, from mild to severe hyper and hypo-sensitivities. For example, some individuals with ASD have very high pain thresholds (i.e. insensitive to pain) or very low pain thresholds.

4) Learning and Acquisition of Skills
Many people with ASD have short attention span leading to inability to focus on tasks and learning. They may also be easily distracted by their overt interest in particular items or subjects.

As they are very literal in their intepretation of things and events, they have difficulty understanding abstarct ideas. For example, symbolic play. This will also lead to lack of spontaneous or imaginative play. This is especially of concern in children with autism and therefore early intervention might be able to address the issue.

Individuals with ASD will also have difficulty grasping the concept of time and sequences of events.

Individuals with autism may experience difficulty imitating others. As many things in life require imitation to ensure acquisition of knowledge, this difficulty therefore impedes learning to a great degree. The difficulty in imitation may be due to fine and gross motor difficulty, lack of focus or lack of hand- eye coordination (joint attention).

Finally, on a final note, remember that while there are many common characteristics prevalent among people with autism, every individual is unique. Thus not all people with autism will possess all characteristics and they vary in severity from person to person.

If you have any further questions or feedback, please email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

Till the next post, here's wishing you a great week ahead.
With deepest regards,
Daven. :)

www.triumphantkids.com

Learning & Motivation: Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)

2012-08-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing from the last post (Behavioural Therapy for Children with Autism) in this series, let us now look into a learning methodology evolved from behavioural therapy, Appled Behavioural Analysis, commonly known as ABA.

What is ABA?

Borrowing the concept from Operant Behavioural Conditioning, ABA claims that behaviours can be taught or modified through a system of reinforcements, punishments and consequences. As it is a form of behavioural therapy, ABA functionally assesses the relationship between a targeted behaviour and the environment in order to modify a behaviour or to teach it.

As reinforcements and responses to these reinforcements are components of ABA, Classical Conditioning is also considered as one of the concepts in ABA other than operant conditioning.

Lovaas, a psychologist, first applied ABA to autism at the Psychology Department at UCLA in 1987. He suggested that social and behavioural skills could be taught, to children with autism, through the ABA method.

Read Understanding Applied Behavior Analysis: An Introduction to ABA for Parents, Teachers and Other Professionals by Albert J Kearney for a clear, precise introduction on ABA.

How does ABA work?

One of the main components in ABA is the discrete trials therapy. A discrete trials session uses repeated presentations with each trial having a clear, specific instructions and distinctly identifiable results. In discrete trial teaching, a very small amount of information is given and the student’s response is immediately reinforced or not reinforced.

Every trials have 3 parts to them. There are the ABC - Antecedent, Behaviour and consequence. The antecedent is the instruction (also known as Sd - (Discriminant) Stimulus, because the instruction helps the child to discriminate the purpose of the stimuli presented) that leads to a response which is the behaviour and the consequence is the response to the behaviour that resulted from the instruction. For example, "Pour juice" is the antecedent, the child proceeds to pour juice into a glass is the behaviour and the child being praised by you for pouring the juice is the consequence. (ABC is also used in other components of ABA such as the assessment of undesirable behaviour in order to mofidy it. This is known as Functional Behavioural Analysis. We will look more into it in a future post in this series.)

Reinforcement, in this case, like classical conditioning, plays a very crucial role. Timimg and frequency of delivering of the reinforcements are important in the effectiveness of discrete trial training. Differential Therefore, reinforcement techniques are employed in ABA to combine the frequencies of reinforcements with the effectiveness of the discrete trials. For example, when a child first learns a new concept, reinforcements should be immediately after every correct response so that the child can effectively pair the reward with his most recent behaviour. However, the frequency of delivering the reinforcement may decrease to encourage higher steady rate of responding when the child is motivated by receiving a reward but has no idea when it will be given. We will explore more about reindorcement schedules in future posts in this series.

Read A Work In Progress by Ron Leaf and John McEachin for a more detailed and comprehensive explanation of discrete trials.

The video below may also better help you understand more about what discrete trial training is and how it is being carried out.

Of course, discrete trials training is only one of the many components of ABA. However discrete trials training remains the most crucial element of ABA to date. In upcoming post of the series, we will look further into the various elements of ABA such as Verbal Behaviour, Functional Behaviour Analysis and Reinforcement Schedules.

As ABA is wide ranging in topics and its approach, here are some suggested readings that will help you understand it better -

Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph over Autism by Catherine Maurice is a mother's illuminating account of how one family overcomed the difficulties of autism through ABA. It is an absolutely unforgettable book, as beautifully written as it is informative.

Behaviorspeak: A Glossary of Terms in Applied Behavior Analysis (Volume 1) by Bobby Newman is an invaluable resource for parents, giving its readers the tools necessary to understand articles in professional journals, presentations, and books. Deliberately written in a humorous and easily understood style, this book will prove to be of great help to you in understanding ABA in greater depth.

Behaviorask: Straight Answers to Your ABA Programming Questions by Bobby Newman is a collection of answers to over 100 of the most common ABA programming questions, discussed in rich detail. The authors are Board Certified Behavior Analysts with many years of experience providing ABA-based programs in schools, homes, and private clinics.

Applied Behaviour Analysis and Autism by Mickey Keenan and his colleagues gives detailed guidance on how to develop a tailored ABA programme that includes the key features of ABA. The well laid out information is mixed with inspirational stories of success, making this book a holistic reference guide to ABA therapy.

If you have any further questions or suggestions, I look forward to corresponding with you via email at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

You can also find me on Facebook!

Till the next post, I wish you a very wonderful week ahead.

With regards,
Daven :)

www.triumphantkids.com

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism: Dealing with Challenges 2

2012-08-09T00:13:00.001-07:00

Picking up from where we left off the last post in the series -' Dealing with Challenges 1' - we are going to look at the strategies and approaches that can be employed for the next case scenarios illustrated previously in the 'Challenges in Communication' post.

Scenario 2:
John has many episodes of temper tantrums and meltdowns resulted from various instances such as losing in a game and sudden changes in the games' objectives or rules when playing with his peers. As a result of these episodic meltdowns, John's classmates are at times apprehensive of including him in their activities.

Strategies and Approaches:
1) John has difficulty expressing his frustration through words. Teaching him about emotions and providing him the language skills necessary to talk about his feelings may be helpful. Parents and caregivers can help him label his emotions and make him aware of them whenever they catch him in certain moods. For example, when he is showing that he is angry or upset, the adults can tell him in a matter of fact tone, "John, you are feeling upset right now. You did not get the ice cream you wanted and now you are feeling upset". Even when he is feeling happy or excited about something, the adults can help him label those emotions. It's not just those lousy moods that need labeling but the great ones as well so that the child can discriminate between different emotions, facilitating understanding of the different stages of emotions experienced.

The child must also have enough understanding of what each emotion means, feels like and look like. Sometimes, although they may act out of anger or frustration, they do not realize that it is anger. To them it's just a feeling that they act upon. It may also be due to imitation - they see someone act out of anger and they do the same when they feel that they are in similar situation. They are not taught to label the emotion that they observe. Thus exposing the child to visual representations of the various emotions may help them understand how people feeling different emotions look like and thus facilitate empathy which is essential in social interaction with others ("It is not a good look when i get angry and shout at people. They will feel scared of me").

Make use of picture cards or flashcards that target the understanding of emotions to develop good understanding of emotions and their functions.

2) Get the child to label his own emotions. We can do this step by step with combination of suggestion one above -

"John, you are feeling angry. You are angry because you lost the game to your sister."
"John, tell me how are you feeling right now?"
"Yes you are feeling angry. Why are you feeling angry?"
"Yes, you are feeling angry because you lost the game to your sister."

Over time, as the child is more adept at describing his own emotions, we would leave out the initial prompts and ask him based on observation of his behaviour within a situation, "You are not talking nicely, John. How are you feeling?"

Check out "Let's Talk Emotions: Helping Children with Social Cognitive Deficits" by Teresa A. Cardon. It is a great resource book to have as it is a collection of easy-to-use activities for children ages 4-18, providing a wide variety of experiences for the children to learn about identifying and responding to their own feelings as well as the feelings of others -

"How does your sister feel when you shout at her?"
"What happens when your sister feel sad/scared after you shout at her?"

3) Provide solutions to the problems. Once John is informed of the emotion that he is experiencing, there has to be a solution to the problem that caused the emotion in the first place. Since acting out should not be a choice and is taken out of the equation, other healthier alternatives have to be offered in order to address the emotion felt at that situation. So, we tell John, "John, you are feeling upset now. You are feeling upset because you did not get the ice cream that you wanted" and then what next? We should not expect John to calm down right after that information. Thus, we have to provide solutions. depending on the situation the child is in, solutions can differ as the adults may offer different alternatives based on the circumstances.

Describe the emotion (Angry).
Explain cause of emotion (lost game).
Inform approprite behaviour (calm down/ stop swearing).
Pull child out from setting (somewhere quiet away from the antecedents).
Provide solutions/alternatives for child to choose from (quit game and do something else or try again?)

Make the above steps as clear and systematic as possible so that it appears concrete and easy to follow to the child. As the steps becomes a system you and your child adhere to, it becomes easier for your child to adopt the steps on his own as he gradually picks up the skill of getting himself out of a situation after he is able to identify and label his emotions.

However, this will need practice within the home or teaching setting that is more safe and less obtrusive for the child to master these skills. We could manipulate a setting at home to create a situation that lead to the unfolding of the above steps, creating opportunities for the child to learn the skills. Alternatively, we can role play with the child and go through the above steps. Incidental learning will be helpful as there will be time when the child will get upset over certain matters at home. These will be wonderful times to practice the steps.

Check out "Incredible 5-Point Scale Assisting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Understanding Social Interactions and Controlling Their Emotional Responses" by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis - "This book shows how to break down a given behavior and, with the student's active participation, develop a scale that identifies the problem and suggests alternatives, positive behaviors at each level of the scale".

4) Using situational stories and games to teach about emotions and reasoning. Create stories with pictures to illustrate a setting and circumstance. Then ask the child for opinion regarding the story. Relate the story to the child to help understanding from a first person level.

"How does Jane feel because her toy is broken?"
"What is she doing because she is feeling sad?"
"What do you think she should do?" (Povide prompts when needed. Do you think she should ask her dad for help?)
"What would you do if your toy is broken?"

This can also be done through role playing games or pretend play. For example,

Mummy is the chef of a new restaurant set up.
Mummy scalded her hand while cooking.
How does mummy feel?
What should mummy do?
Can you help mummy?
What would you do if your hand got scalded? ETC

Need some ideas for what games to play with your child to teach about emotions? The "Guess How I Feel Game" provides 50 situations, each shown with vivid photographs for players to develop skills in self-expression and empathy. Understand that communication is a two way street and so is the expression of emotions. The child has to understand that his expression of emotion has effects on the emotions of others around him and that consequences, good or bad, are the results of these emotions evoked.

And that's all for now but please come back for more posts in this series as we continue to explore more strategies and approaches to the other two challenging scenarios brought up.

Do you have any suggestions or questions that you would like to share with the other readers? Please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

www.triumphantkids.com

Suggested Readings:
Incredible 5-Point Scale Assisting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Understanding Social Interactions and Controlling Their Emotional Responses - Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis

Let's Talk Emotions: Helping Children with Social Cognitive Deficits Including AS, HFA, and NVLD, Learn to Understand and Express Empathy and Emotions - Teresa A. Cardon

Suggested Resources:

Guess How I Feel Game

Understandng Emotions: Flashcards for Visual Learners

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism: Dealing with Challenges 1

2012-08-07T22:16:00.003-07:00

In the last post of the series, we came up with 4 case scenarios of challenges faced by children with autism when it comes to communication and social interaction. Upcoming posts, we are going to make use of these four scenarios to come up with some strategies and approaches to teach some social skills to help deal with the difficulties faced by your child.

For the ease of flow in this post, we will first recap each of the scenarios briefly and then look into the strategies suggestions.

Scenario 1:
Jeff, a boy of 7 years old always has difficulty initiating conversations with his peers. They think that he is weird as he is always talking about things that don't make sense to them or he will be regurgitating the same comments everytime he tries to strike up a conversation with them.

Strategies and Approaches
1) Increase the child's understanding of social situations. Social stories might help in exposing the child to various social settings that children might find themselves in. As social stories provide a concrete visual intepretation of social situations, the child is able to grasp the concept of social interaction more adequately. Social stories also provide a platform for parents and caregivers to explain to much better effect than explaning it verbally as many children with autism are more visual than auditory learners. If you are thinking of what social stories to use regarding social settings and interaction, The New Social Story Book by Carol Gray and Tony Attwood may be helpful in helping you get started in finding stories that address issues such as social understanding and friendship skills.

2) Improve on the child's comprehension skills. Use stories that focus on social comprehension themes. For example, stories that contain themes such as

Children with shared interests playing together
Sharing common goals (such as during play)
Saying hello and talking to new friends
Good and not good ways to talk to friends
Things some people like and dislike

While being read to, the child may be taught to answer questions using the 'wh' questions such as

What is the main character doing?
What does the main character want?
How does the main character feel?
Why does the main character feel this way?
What happened next?
How would you feel if you are the main character?
What would you do if you are the main character?

By doing so, you not only help improve your child's comprehension skills, but also train him to think from another person's perspective. Indeed, in order for effective social interaction and communication to take place, thinking from the other's perspective is a very important skill to master.

3) Teaching specific kinds of behaviours is crucial. As known from the scenario, Jeff is having difficulty maintaining conversations with his peers due to his lack of topic in engaging their interests. While stories can help the child with identifying emotions through comprehension, it is also important for him to have the skill to begin and maintain communication with his peers through language.

Discrete trial learning may be helpful in this case. For example, the adult can teach the child in a one to one setting, some conversation starter. These may include

Asking the adult a question about what the activity he is engaged in.
Complimenting the adult
Ask a question about what the adult likes doing
Make a comment about something that the adult might like such as movies, music or games.

Once the child is adept at using these conversation starters with an adult, the skill is then generalized across different people. Also, role playing can be carried out. The adult and child may take turns to pretend to be the friend being approached for a conversation. With the role reversal task, the child not only has to try and engage the other party with a conversation starter, but also be engaged in a two way communication when he is being appraoched.

As a resource to teach specific social behaviour, Jed Baker's "The Social Skills Picture Book Teaching play, emotion, and communication to children with autism" is a great book to have as it uses photographs that illustrate children engaging in real life social situations. It also includes practice questions pertaining to the pictures to target specific appropriate social behaviour and communication skills.

4) Engage the child with play and games. Games are great ways to teach social cues and rules. Start off with just one adult and the child. Then increase the number of adults over time. Once the child is adept at following the rules and cues with the adults, bring in an additional child and so on. Teach the child basic courtesy rules such as asking to join in and asking another person to join in the game. Games are a great way for communication between persons as they are all involved in one goal - having fun. Games encourage interaction in less obtrusive and less demanding manners through turn taking and sharing. There are many books out there that provide various different ideas for games with children on the spectrum in mind. For example, "101 Games and Activities for Children With Autism, Asperger and Sensory Processing Disorders" by Tara Delaney is divided into 10 chapters covering such areas as engagement, communication and social sense.

Do you have any questions regarding the suggestions listed above? Or do you have any comments as to how to provide some tried and successful solutions to the challenges listed by the above scenario? Please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

In the next post of the social behaviour series, we are going to carry on providing suggestions for the problems brought up in the other case scenarios. So please do come and visit soon!

Regards,
Daven

www.triumphantkids.com

Suggested Reading List:

New Social Story Book - Carol Gray & Tony Attwood

The Social Skills Picture Book Teaching play, emotion, and communication to children with autism - Jed
Baker

101 Games and Activities for Children With Autism, Asperger and Sensory Processing Disorders - Tara Delaney

Learning and Motivation: Behavioural Therapy for Children with Autism

2012-08-05T03:40:00.002-07:00

An Introduction.

While behavioural therapy has been regarded as one of the effective therapies for children with autism, there are many people who are still unsure of what it actually is or does. In this post, we will explain more about behavioural therapy. We will look into what behavioural therapy is and what are the main principles behind the methodology.

What is Behavioural Therapy?
Behavioural therapy refers to the changes and modification of behaviours that are observable. Behaviourists argue that all behaviours are observable and it is through the observation of external factors that undesirable and challenging behaviours can be modified through behavioural interventions. Internal factors such as thought processes and introspection are not taken into consideration when designing and implementing behavioural interventions as behaviourism argues that all behaviours are results of responses to external stimuli (environment). Thus no introspection (elaborate thought processes) is involved in the reaction to stimuli presented. Internal thought processes are also excluded from the theory of behaviourism because they are regarded as immeasurable. External factors on the other hand are measurable due to them being observable. For example, the number of times a child throws his book on the floor is measurable.

The Science of Behavioural Therapy.
Behavioural therapy is based on the principles of classical conditioning by Ivan Pavlov and of Operant conditioning by B.F Skinner.

Classical Conditioning
It is learning process that occurs through the association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occuring stimulus. For example, A naturally occurring stimulus (food) is paired with a response (running towards the kitchen). Then, a previously neutral stimulus (bell) is paired with the naturally occurring stimulus (food. In this case, when the bell rings, food is being brought out). Eventually, the previously neutral stimulus comes to evoke the response without the presence of the naturally occurring stimulus (Whenever the bell rings, the subject will come running to the kitchen without having to see the food).

Another Example of Classical Conditioning:
Jane likes chocolates. Whenever she sees chocolates, she would laugh and clap her hands with joy. Her teacher always keeps the chocolates he distributes to his students in a green colour recyclable bag. Once every week, Jane sees her teacher takes out her favourite snack from the green bag. One day, Jane sees her teacher takes out the exact same green bag and immediately laughs and claps her hand in anticipation of receiving some chocolates without even seeing the sweets in the first place or being informed that there will be chocolates to be given out that afternoon.

The laughing and clapping is the unconditioned response. It is a response that comes naturally to the person displaying it in reaction to the natural stimulus (chocolate) presented.

The anticipation is the condition response. It is a response that is conditioned (learned) after being exposed to the previously neutral stimulus (green bag) which is associated with the image of the chocolates.

Operant Conditioning:
Operant conditioning is a learning method through rewards and punishments for behaviours. For example, when a child gets rewarded for washing the dishes after meal, he is more likely to carry out the responsibility again next time because he anticipates being rewarded.

While operant conditioning can be used to increase desirable behaviour, it is also used to decrease undesired behaviours. For example, a child when warned that her television previleges will be taken from her if she doesn't complete her homework on time in the future may result in decrease of tardiness.

There are mainly two components of Operant Conditioning. They are reinforcements and punishments.

Reinforcements
Reinforcements increase behaviours. There are two types of reinforcements, namely positive reinforcements and negative reinforcements.

Positive reinforcements - Favourable outcomes presented after the a behaviour. For example, as above, a child being rewarded for doing the household chore. It is positive because a behaviour is reinforced by the addition of something (reward).

Negative reinforcements - Removal of unfavourable outcomes after the display of undesirable behaviour. A A response is strengthed by the removal of something unpleasant. For example,in order to not get bad grades, a student studies hard. Thus the behaviour to work hard is strengthened a bad grades are removed.

Punishments
Punishments on the other hand decrease or weaken behaviours. Just as reinforcements, punishments have two components - positive punishment and negative punishment.

Positive punishments - Presentation of an unfavourable outcome to decrease an undesirable behaviour. For example, if a child touches a heated kettle and scalded his hand, he will be less likely to touch a hot kettle next time.

Negative punishments - A pleasant and desired outcome is taken away to decrease an undesirable behaviour. As above, when a child doen't complete her homework on time, she may get her television watching previleges taken away from her. This results in decrease of her tardiness.

So far, we have learned about the two main principles of behavioural therapy. Understanding the basics, we are then able to get into more in depth study of behavioural therapy and its role in providing interventions to children on the autism spectrum. Thus, our next post in the Learning and Motivation series will dig deeper into the workings of behavioural therapy and how it relates to special education.

Till then, if you have any concerns or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

www.triumphantkids.com

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism 1: The Challenges in Communication

2012-08-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

What are some of the challenges faced by children with autism when it comes to communcation and social interaction?

Scenario 1:
Jeff is 7 years old attending primary one. Although he has the desire to talk to his peers, he always has difficulty initiating conversations with them. His peers think that he is weird as he is always talking about things that don't make sense to them or he will be regurgitating the same comments everytime he tries to strike up a conversation with them.

In this case, although Jeff is socially aware of the pleasure in seeking companionship, he does not possess the mental flexibility nor social skills to keep up with the demands of a social setting. Furthermore, his understanding of social interaction is very basic - talk to someone and that person will talk to you. He is unaware of the many intricate details that come along with conversation due to his inability to process abstract concepts. These include emotions and the mental processes of individuals - how do they like being talk to, what kind of things they like to talk about, how they might react to certain topics or people and ETC.

Scenario 2:

John has a couple of friends in his class who would try to include him in their play activities whenever they could. There are times when John plays well with them although he does experience difficulties in catching up with them during conversations. However, John also has many episodes of temper tantrums and meltdowns resulted from various instances such as losing in a game and sudden changes in the games' objectives or rules. As a result of these episodic meltdowns, John's classmates are at times apprehensive of including him in their activities.

Here, we see a child who is unaware of social rules and having difficulties controlling his emotions when things do not go the way he expects. As discussed in previous posts, behaviour is a reaction. Everyone will have a reaction, but the level of it depends on how we are able to control our actions that may be detrimental to us and the people around us. That being said, learning to express one's feelings calmly is a skill and concept that needs to be taught and practiced. Children with autism may take longer time than others to master such behaviour because the idea of having to put aside the immediate emotion they are experiencing is very abstract as compared to acting out instantly once an emotion is experienced. Furthermore, as above, because a child with autism has difficulty thinking in another person's perspective, they may see little reason in not expressing their immediate emotions through action. Finally, as many children with autism have difficulty expressing their emotions, acting out may be the next best option to show how they are feeling at the moment.

Scenario 3:

Henry likes playing by himself. Whenever other children try to play or talk to him, he would either ignore them or walk away doing his own things. Even if he is within the group, he tends to keep to himself doing his own play instead of joining in. At first, children were intrigued by his lonesome and "hard-to-get" personality. However, as time goes by, they lose interest in engaging him in their activities and go seeking out other more responsive new friends.

In this scenario, the child seems to not understand the meaning in communication or social interaction. Play is very basic to the child and he is happy to be self engaged. Social understanding is at a minimal as he finds no need to engage the attention of others as long as his interest is fulfilled. He find no meaning in the world of others as he has not been exposed to the benefits of social interactions. Fundamental skills such as langauge joint attention may also be lacking leading to low interest in the world around him through expression of language and social cues.

Scenario 4:

Jessica is often being teased by her classmates for talking weird. Whenever she tries to initiate a conversation with them, they will try their best to shun her. These incidents lead to her possessing very low self esteem . She loses confidence in keeping up with her social skills as she reasons that people are going to make fun of her anyway if she tries. She begins to keep to herself more not just in social settings but also at home. This has resulted in other behaviours such as fear and anxiety attacks to be in new surroundings or when surrounded by new people.

In this case, it will be more of public education that is lacking. Often, students with autism in classroom get little support from the adults because they belong to the minority in a culture where the majority's well-being are being looked after first. Of course, that is not to say that all students with autism are being neglected in the classroom but it does show time and again that it requires substantial amount of resources such as manpower and educational materials in place to provide adequate assistance to the students of the minority. In this scenario, the classmates could be informed about what autism is about and how it may affect the langauge and communication skills of their classmate who has autism. Yet, discussion about autism in open settings remains a stigma to many adults, resulting in a 'don't ask, don't tell' attitude. This in turn allows the children with autism to be misunderstood as misfits within a classroom setting which in the first place, should be supportive and encouraging of learning and equipment of life skills.

In the upcoming post of this series, we will be looking more into these above described scenarios. What can be carried out to deal with the challenges faced by these children? If your child is facing any difficulties described above, what strategies and teaching methods can be put in place to help your child to develop better social and communication skills?

Till then, if you have any concerns or suggestions, please email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. i look forward to your correspondence.

Regards,

Daven

www.triumphantkids.com

Learning and Motivation for Children with Autism Series

2012-08-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

Learning and motivation is a wide ranging subject in the education field. What motivate children to learn? What are the best learning tools and approaches for children?

In this series of posts, we are going to look into the various methodologies out there for working with children with autism. We are going to learn about how these various approaches influence and promote learning.

From behavioural therapy to floor time strategies, we will be discussing how your child with autism are able to benefit from the many different methodologies available to the parents and caregivers.

Which of these does your child suit better? Is it possible to provide a holistic intervention service for your child so that he can develop all rounded skills and capabilities?

Thus let us look closer and more in depth into the many possibilities to bring about positive improvements in your children's lives. Do watch up for future upcoming posts in this series.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to motivate your child to learn? Or would you like to share what your child is motivated by in order for positive learning to take place? Send me an email at davensim@triumphantkids.com for further discussion!

Social Behaviours of Children with Autism Series

2012-08-03T06:23:00.001-07:00

This series of posts will look into the many concerns of parents regarding the social behaviours of their children with autism. The behavioural patterns and how they affect social skills and communication and day to day life will be further discussed. Also, what are some of the approaches and strategies that can be put in place to deal with these difficulties faced by the children?

What Is Social Behaviour?

Social behaviour

Social behaviour is the conduct of a person in an environment and society. It consists of activities in response to stimuli present that encourage interaction with others. The stimuli can come in different forms such as social rules and cues or incentives for interaction such as peer recognition, feeling of enjoyment and social rewards.

What are the characteristics of the social behaviours of children with autism?

1) Social interaction may be marked with awkwardness. There could be lack of eye contact when interacting. Line of conversation may be off tangent as there is difficulty in staying focused on the topic talked about.

2) Lack of flexibility in thoughts leading to rigidity in speech. Not being able to switch ingrained opinion readily when needed.

3) Lack in understanding and expression of emotion. Both lead to incapacity to look at matters from another person's perspective, resulting in social animosity.

4) Feelings of frustration and insecurity are more often and common for children with autism. This may be due to the difficulties faced when expressing their emotions and thoughts. Being unable to explain how one feels usually leads to feeling of frustration which at times may result in meltdown when further attempts to communicate fail.

5) Weak sense of social rules and cues. This leads to increased sense of impatience and inability to wait as they do not comprehend the idea of consequences which are abstract concepts.

What are some of the social behaviours you observe in your child? Maybe you would like to share some pointers with other parents and readers. If you have any suggestions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com

Click below for newer posts of the Social Behaviour series!
The Challenges
Dealing with Challenges 1
Dealing with Challenges 2
Dealing with Challenges 3
Dealing with Challenges 4

Also, please visit my website www.triumphantkids.com to find out more about the service I provide.

Till I hear from you again, best regards,
Daven :)

Learning behaviours of Children with Autism: Functional Fixedness.

2012-08-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

Functional Fixedness refers to our incapability to assign alternative functions or uses to an object after we are so accustomed to its utility towards a mean. For example, while there are many uses to a paper clip, we are usually fixed on the idea that it can only be used to clip papers together.

Do understand that everyone of us, and not just people with autism experience Functional Fixedness. However due to the rigid behaviour of many people with autism, Functional Fixedness poses more of a problem to learning to them than usual.

How Does Functional Fixedness Affect Learning for Children With Autism?

1) It increases rigidity and deters development of problem solving skills. For example, a student and I were making a kite and I brought ice cream sticks instead of long wooden sticks for the craft. When I asked her what can we use instead of the usual wooden stick that the craft book asked for, she informed in a matter of fact tone that it was impossible to make a kite now as we did not have the right materials for it.

2) It increases rigidity and deter development of language skills. Language is a function towards communication and many students with autism have the tendency to be rigid when it comes to language usage. For example, a student I worked with had difficulty accepting the idea that an item can have two different labels - a table can be called a desk at times. This student would even start crying whenever I call the work table a desk.

3) It affects communication and social skills. Children who are more adept at looking at an item using varying perspectives are able to adapt to the change of direction in a conversation easier that children who can't. Children who are more rigid in their way of communicating also tend to get anxious and unsettled more easily. Refer to the student above who cries whenever language is used in a way that she is not familiar with.

4) It leads to feelings of fear and frustration for children who are more affected by it. As these children lack the capacity to think flexibly and adapt what they know to situations arising, they are more prone to episodes of tantrums and meltdown due to uncertainty over the change in routine or standard procedure.

What Can We Do To Lessen the Influence of Functional Fixedness?

1) Encourage the child to think flexibly by engaging him in activities that promote flexible thinking. You may get some basic ideas from my Flexible Thinking Series. Click here.

2) Engage in everyday activities by using objects around the house for different uses. For example, instead of cutting with a pair of scissors to do art and craft for a particular afternoon, tear using a ruler. Instead of using the ice cube tray to freeze ice, use it to freeze fruit juice. And instead of pouring water into cocktail, pour water into a glass of frozen concentrate and watch them melt.

3) Motivate your child to accept differences and changes to what he is usually accustomed to. Use the token system to help your child earn towards an incentive whenever he does not kick up a fuss over the different use of language. Use shaping to teach positive behaviour towards differences in the usual. For example, immediately redirect whenever your child is about to get upset by praising him to allowing the different usage of langauge, then gradually extend the time before redirection, eventually fading it by including the difference in the usage of language in everyday conversation.

Example:
1 - "Jane, go sit at the desk" - followed by immediate redirection "Good sitting down at the desk! Woo hoo, great job! Let's play!"

2 - "Jane, go sit at the desk" - a few seconds before redirection.

3 - A minute before redirection.

4 - "Jane, go sit at the desk" - No redirection. Light praise and then carry on with task or work.

5- Use desk in everyday language or whenever wnated to substitute 'table', "Jane, put this book on the desk please".

Using the token system from step 1 - 3 may be helpful too. In this case, when she responds to the instruction with the target word in it, she is being praised and rewarded with a token.

What are some of the difficulties you face with your child regarding functional fixedness? If you would like to share and offer some suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

Till the next post, I wish you all a very lovely weekend ahead.

Best Regards,
Daven. :)

Learning Behaviours of Children with Autism

2012-08-01T21:33:00.001-07:00

Welcome to a new series of posts titled 'Learning Behaviours of Children with Autism'. Throughout this series, we will be looking at various behaviours that resonate with the many different learning patterns of children with autism. For example, we will be asking the many burning questions such as "Why is my child with autism so rigid in things that he does?" and "Why does my child loses tantrum easily when structure is disrupted?"

Throughout this series of articles, I will be discussing how these behaviours, while seemingly unrelated to learning, are actually impeding your children's learning progress. We will be looking at these various topics at three levels -

1) The root of the problem - The description of the behaviour. What the behaviour is like, when does the behaviour occur and what trigger the behaviour.

2) The problem - how the behaviour is affecting learning.

3) Solutions to the problem - what are the methods and strategies we can adopt to facilitate better learning?

So please stay tuned to upcoming articles of the series as the first article about Functional Fixedness will be up soon. What is Functuonal Fixedness, you ask? Well, you will have to come back and visit real soon!

Till then, if you have any questions that you would like answered via this series of blog posts regarding learning behaviour, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. No matter which part of the globe you are from, it's never too far to voice your concern and to gather solutions to the problems you are facing.

I am looking forward to our correspondences.

With deepest regards,
Daven

Flexible Thinking Series 3: Role Reversal

2012-07-30T23:17:00.003-07:00

Role reversal encourages children with autism to adopt the role of an inquisitor, cultivating a skill necessary for daily living. The goals are many and include for the child to

1) master confidence in initiating communication instead of being prompted to be engaged in communication
2) develop interest in things and people around her
3) understand social rules and cues that facilitate more spontaneous partaking in activities with peers
4) develop better language skills through verbal and social interaction.
5) develop problem solving techniques by learning to ask questions and by demanding a response for the question posed.

And of course, challenges the child to think from another perspective, in another person's position. Children with autism often have difficulty putting themselves in another person's shoes as a result of rigid thought patterns that rely heavily on routines and structures. It also allows the child to feel a sense of achievement for being able to be in charge in the completion of a task. It puts the child in a limelight without too much expectations placed on them.

Role reversal activities
Mastered tasks. Provide sentence strips as visual cue and script to read from then while delivering instructions to the adult.

Play pretend. Taking turns to tell each other what to pretend. For example, "Mum, pretend that you are a chimpanzee!"

Just like pretend play but this one teaches the child reading skill as well. Have a pile of action verb word cards face down on the table. Take turns to flip one over and then deliver the instruction to the follower, "Dad, sing". Praise each other for the correct action done. Make mistakes sometimes so that the child can correct you, "No, try again".

Asking questions/ playing detective. The "Hide the Treasure" game. Take turns hiding puzzle around the room and asking each other "Where is the puzzle piece"? Praise and reward each other for puzzle pieces found.

There are many other tasks and activities that teach role reversal. Can you think of some? Why not send me some suggestions to my email at davensim@triumphantkids.com?

Also, please do visit my website www.triumphantkids.com and find out more about the services I provide.

Till the next post of the series, with deepest regards,
Daven.

www.triumphantkids.com Email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com

Stories as Learning Resources for Children with Autism

2012-07-29T03:32:00.003-07:00

Why Stories are good tools for teaching children with autism?
Stories are like visual cues, providing the children with concrete illustration of concepts and events otherwise too abstract for them to fully understand. For example, someone may not understand why you feel upset about certain issues when you verbally express to them your opinions. However, if you show them a documentary that is engaging to their senses visually and mentally, they may be able to relate to your cause better.

Stories that are interesting and engaging or appeal to the children's interests are likely to bring across ideas and concepts more effectively than traditional classroom methods.
For example, children are seen to be more interactive when presented with medias that are plotted with story lines.

Stories have a structure from beginning to end. This gives children with autism a sense of security and comfort as they are able to witness for themselves the systematic unfolding of events and steps of concepts.

Stories allow children with autism to relate what they have read or seen to their everyday life. As stories present concepts in a more concrete manner, they are able to apply what they have absorbed into everyday living. Studies have shown that children are prone to imitate and learn from visuals and medias (good and bad) that they are exposed to. This is why it is important to write stories that encourage the behaviours you want the child to develop.

Stories provide a platform for children with autism to role play. More and more emphasis over the years have been placed on role playing as a method to learn social skills and communication for children with autism. Stories provide the scripts for such role play.

How to write stories?
One of the more popular story telling tool is the Social Stories created by Carol Grey. There are many websites online and books available on how to write tour own social stories. You might want to check this out. You can also find out more about Social Stories from the official Social Stories website, www.thegraycentre.org.

I usually write my own stories to work with my students. The stories are usually created according to the child's literary and understanding level. Events are laid out step by step to make them earning and understanding concrete for the child. Email or contact me for more ideas.

Stories can be used to target behavioural issues such as the following:

Saying hello
Using the public toilet
Staying calm
Talking politely
Etc...

I am sure there are many behaviours out there that need addressing an stories are indeed a great tool for teaching positive behaviours. No matter where uou are, if you have any questions or need help in developing a story for your child, email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com for a free consultation.

Till then, please visit my website, www.triumphantkids.com to find out more about the services I provide in Singapore.

With deepest regards,
Daven. :)

www.triumphantkids.com Email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com

Autism Support For Parents

2012-07-29T03:25:00.001-07:00

From the day your child was diagnosed with autism, it seemed like your world was pushed into an area of disarray from then on. You are suddenly desperately in search of every information and support you could find not just for your child, but you, and the family. However, you soon realize that despite the vast amount of resources out there, you still find it extremely difficult to get the answers to your burning questions. The most you could get out of are mostly "maybe, perhaps" when what you really want are "indeed, for certain"...

What were some of the concerns on your mind when your child was diagnosed with autism? How did you cope with the unexpected stress that came your way? Were you able to find the support to see you through the times filled with questions and uncertainty? If yes, from where and from whom did you find your support. Do you find that your concerns are less of a stress inducing issue over time. If so, was the support you have been receiving or have received the reason for the improvement in your perspective about autism and your child? If yes, how willing are you to share your experiences with other parents and caregivers so that they can benefit from your expertise?

Support. What Exactly Is It?
We often hear about this term called 'support' and yet we understand so little, and unfortunately get so little of it.

Support is actually a very broad term. When we talk about support, are we talking of emotional support, physical support or program implementation support? Are we talking about getting more information or getting hands on physical assistance? Do you need morale support or financial assistance?

It is really important to know what kind and what level of support each individual needs. Some people just need information while others may need more than just theoretical resources. Some parents may need that emotional support every now and then to let them feel and know that they are going the right direction but other than that are very good at finding and adopting teaching strategies for their children.

How Do We Identify the Kind of Support We Need?
Yet how many parents do go out there to actively seek the support that they need? And how many parents actually dismiss the the importance of having the necessary support, regardless of what kind it is that they need? Also, how many parents actually could identify the kind of support they truly need?

Perhaps it will be beneficial for you to sit down with your love ones and have a thorough discussion with them. Sometimes you may be so overwhelmed with so many things in life that your mind is too busy to ponder over more intimate and personal but nonetheless important issues such a your own well being. Maybe your love ones may be able to pinpoint the kind of support that you are lacking. Or maybe it's the lack of support from your live ones that you feel is lacking.
Once you are able to identify what kind of support do you exactly need, then seeking for that assistance could be so much easier.

Don't forget that there are professionals out there who may be able to help. What about friends or other parents out there with similar problems? With social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and the various Yahoo groups, seeking out specific support groups for your needs are made more convenient these days. Also don't undermine the power of familial support. It is one of the best kind of support anyone can get. If you think that you are not getting enough of it, maybe it is time to sit down with them and discuss about the issues at hand.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesistate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. You can also find out about the services I provide on my website www.triumphantkids.com.

Till the next post, with deepest regards,
Daven. :)

Teaching Students with Autism: In the Classroom

2012-07-29T03:18:00.004-07:00

I would like to dedicate this post to the teachers and professionals working with children with autism in the mainstream classroom. While visiting some of my students in school and gathering information from the teachers, one of the main challenges faced by the educators is having the necessary resources they need to support their students with autism. Thus it often appears that the children are not getting sufficient support in the classroom leading to many repercussions such as lack of learning opportunities or the incapability to absorb what were being taught in class.

Why are children with autism not getting sufficient support in class?

1) The class ratio of teacher to students is too big. Many classrooms have only one teacher to usually a class of more than 20 students in the pre primary level and up to 40 students from the primary level onwards! Imagine a teacher having to cope with that many kids at the same time in the span of a day. Although some schools, usually the international ones have one additional co-teacher in the class, the ratio is still too large as teaching resources are distributed equally among all students and not catered to just that one child with autism. Also remember that all children, not just ones with autism have attention deficit problem from time to time. It is indeed exhausting for a teacher to be on a lookout all the time for all the kids under her supervision.

2) Every child with autism possesses different personalities despite having the same diagnosis. Even a special needs teacher needs time over the school year to get to understand the kid she is working with. Also comparing the special needs classroom ratio to the mainstream classroom ratio, the mainstream school teacher has less time and resources to know her student with special needs as well as she may have want to. Furthermore there are instances when a teacher is adept at teaching a particular child with autism but is not when teaching another student with the same diagnosis. This is due to the different learning needs and behavioral patterns of the two children.

3) The demands of integration lies heavily on the class teacher.The mainstream classroom teacher further has to coordinate her efforts to cater to two groups of students - mainstream and special, leading to inequity in the distribution of attention due to the latter group being the minority.

4) Most mainstream teachers are untrained in working with children with autism. Mainstream teachers are usually equipped with the skills and knowledge to teach mainstream students with no particular special needs. It takes more than just a teaching diploma or degree to work with students with autism. Also, working with kids on the spectrum requires at least a couple of years of hands on experience in order to understand and learn about the unique culture of autism.

With the above being said, we must not declare the battle lost because it never is and never will be. There are many teachers who over the years adopted or devised strategies to cope with the demands of teaching and integration. Recently, more efforts have been taken by many school managements to provide learning support to their students with special needs. More teachers are also being sent for training while new job vacancies are made available to special needs aides who will be sent for training if they clinch the job offer. Things are certainly picking up in the area of special needs students' integration into the mainstream school setting.

However, there could still be a long way to go. To ensure that these students have the best support and learning years ahead of them, attitudes and further implementation of feasible strategies to benefit all parties involved (teachers, professionals, caregivers and of course, parents) are important considerations.

To find ot more about the services I provide, visit me at my website, www.triumphantkids.com or email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.

Till then, with deepest regards,
Daven. :)

Special School for Your Child with Autism

2012-07-29T03:14:00.002-07:00

While many parents aim for their children to access mainstream schooling, it is often feasible to consider special needs school as a stepping stone towards that goal.

Why Special School?
Your child will be allocated to a classroom that is conducive for his learning needs. The teacher to student ratio is low, enabling more teacher and student contact which means more learning hours. Your child will also be able to focus better due to lesser distraction as opposed to a large mainstream classroom setting.

The learning goals set for your child are realistic and achievable. As the programs set for your child is individualized, you are assured that she is learning at a pace that she can cope. Placing high expectations on a child may impede learning process as she may feel adverse towards learning in the long run.

The child is gradually equipped with the necessary skills to advance to learning environments that will place greater expectations on her. However, as she is allowed the time to learn and develop the necessary skills while attending special school, she may not find learning as adverse as if she was to be chucked into an environment which she is not ready to be in.

The Stigmas Associated with Special School.

"Special school impedes my child's learning progress".

You will instead be doing a great disservice to your child by placing her in a mainstream setting. Understand why it is difficult for your child to get the support she needs when she is in a mainstream classroom from my earlier post, Teaching Students with Autism: In the Classroom. Furthermore, special school teachers are trained to teach your child with special needs while mainstream teachers usually are not trained in this area. Who will you choose to work with your child? Someone with experience dealing with your child's needs or someone who is unsure of what autism or special needs is all about?

"My child cannot learn social skills in a special school"

Neither will your child be able to learn social skills in a mainstream setting. While integration is greatly beneficial for children with special needs and autism in learning social skills, with no fundamental skills in place, no amount of integration is going to help these children communicate effectively with their peers. These fundamental skills include language, understanding social cues and social rules. Children with special needs ate probably better off learning these skills from special education teachers who are trained and experienced in delivering these lessons. Furthermore, more often than not, your child's peers in the special education classroom may be more likely to communicate with your child in a level that is mutual and patient. Also, there are speech pathologists and psychologists attached to special schools. Your children will be able to access these professional services which most mainstream schools may lack.

"My child won't be able to keep up with his peers of the same age academically if he doesn't enroll for mainstream schooling now"

Children who access the mainstream school through the typical educational pathway are not guaranteed success for everything that they do. The ones who join mainstream schooling at a later age might not lose out as it is very common for people regardless of needs, to complete their tertiary or university education at a much later age than the common standard set. Placing a child in the mainstream school system to fail at every level because she is not ready for it yet is a waste of resources that could be better channel towards intervention services that are more beneficial to the child in the long run.

If parents are still worried about their children's progress or are concerned about the curriculum not challenging enough for their children's development, perhaps they hiring supplementary therapy or tutoring services might be a viable option. Usually these services will target skills that the children are still lacking and thus speed up their learning progress according to their learning needs and coping level.

With all the above being said, integration for the child with special needs into the mainstream environment may be viable in the long term. However, it is always important to measure the pros and cons before making a decision based on fear of losing out. Attending mainstream school can be a very stressful event for children with autism. How they are able to cope with the expectations placed on them and how they react emotionally to the mainstream surroundings are factors to deeply consider.

If you have any suggetions or questions, please do not hesitate to email me. You can also visit my website, www.triumphantkids.com to find out more about the services I provide.

Visual Cues: The Misunderstood.

2012-07-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Why do we overlook the importance of visual cues?

Very often we regard visual cues as tools for children who are non-verbal as a communication mean. Many parents may at times feel that it is under the capability range of their children to be using visual cues since they are verbal. Other parents worry using visual cues might slow down or regress their children's language and communication level since they might be over relying on or too comfortable with visuals rather than speech - "my child may choose to use visual cues instead of speaking".

Yet in my years of working with children, visual cues have often increased desire to communicate via speech or speech has generally improved with expression through the use of visual cues. More often than not, visual cues teach language by encouraging reading and acquisition of knowledge. For example, flash cards are a form of visual cues. We have no qualms about teaching new vocabulary using flash cards or no worries about flash cards encouraging our children to stop talking, do we?

Why are visual cues important?

We take visual cues for granted. Everywhere we go everyday, there are visual cues. Visual cues are there to tell us which bus and train to take to work. Visual cues are there on the road to guide you to drive to your destination safely and on time. Visual cues are in the menu from which you order your food. Visual cues appear at the bottom of the screen of the foreign movie you are watching. How would you feel if all these visual cues are taken away from you? How would you react and what would you do?

Of course that being said, we do not have to enforce using visual cues in everything that we do. It is all about selecting what are needed for specific purposes most of the time. A child who knows how to verbally request for an item does not have to be expected to use a sentence strip to ask for what he wants. But we can make use of sentence strip to teach the child to use longer sentences for requesting, then gradually fade its use away once the skill has become automatic. Just like driving a car, when you first drive to your new home, you might need signs to show you where you are going. But as you become familiar with the route, over time you do not need to rely on the signs anymore. However, the signs will still be there if you ever need it. Thus very often as well, visual cues are used as a form of reminder to what's already known or understood to facilitate communication or expression of ideas and thoughts.

For children who may be easily overloaded on the auditory level, communicating with them using visual cues may help ease the frustration of sensory overload. Perhaps your child has difficulty understanding you because there are too much sound going on for him at the same time you are talking. Having what you are saying to him presented to him visually as well may help improve understanding.

Visual cues teaches literacy skill. Children learn to show interest in reading after they understand that print has meaning to it and that print are explained by the pictures accompanying it.

If the child can read, visual cues such as sentence making strips facilitates learning of language semantics. Even if the child is very weak in literacy, visual cues such as these can advance his reading capacity.

Visual cues are the next best thing after modeling. When it is not possible to model something, visual cues are useful in teaching languages, concept and skills. Visual cues are like instruction manuals to the new equipment you just bought.

Visual cues are also useful as form of activity schedules and reward systems. While it is convenient to negotiate verbally with a child, he may find it difficult to follow up with the rules and consequences which may be too abstract or easily forgotten due to other distractions. Visual cues can function as reminders to what are to be achieved and what will be earned. For more on schedules and reward system, visit my earlier post.

Types of visual cues.

Visual cues come in different forms - pictures, words, a combination of both pictures and words and also in the form of objects. We will be looking more into the different forms of visual cues in an upcoming post.

Till then, if you have any suggestions or questions, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com. Also, please do visit my website www.triumphantkids.com for services I provide in Singapore.

With Deepest Regards,
Daven

The Flexible Thinking Series Part 2: The Many Facades of Sounds

2012-06-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

Flexible thinking activities allow the child to grasp the idea that there are many variations to a single concept. In this part of the series, we are going to explore how sounds can be used as a fun tool to promote learning to variations of a concept.

(Sound is everywhere and very often, children with autism are caused to feel anxious by incoming sounds and noises that are unfamiliar to them. By teaching them about the various transformations of sounds, they may be able to learn in the long run that the unfamiliar sounds they are hearing could actually be related to ones that they are familiar with).

Sound Discrimination:

Play the sound and let the child guess what sound it is. Then play variations of the same sound. For example, the sound of one person clapping, the sound of many people applauding and the sound of fast versus slow clapping.

Play Pretending with Imitation of Sounds:

Have the child pretend to be an animal or doing an action while making its sound. For example,

Pretending to be a lion and then making roaring sound, growling sound and any other loud, angry sound.
Pretending you are driving a car, “Vroom, vroom”, “Rrrrrreh vroom” and “beep beep”, “honk honk”.
Pretending you are a musician playing different kinds of instruments and making sounds from them.

Same Tune Different Lyrics.

Use same tune for different songs. You can replace the lyrics to a song that your child knows to make a song of your own. For example, while playing with toy car, sing “The car on the road goes vroom, vroom, vroom…” to the tune of Wheels on the Bus. Teach your child lots of different tunes and then gradually incorporate singing into playtime. Encourage your child to think of a tune to sing together so that you can make up lyrics together while playing.

That's all for now. If you have any comments and suggestions, please drop me an email at davensim@triumphantkids.com. Also, please do visit my website for more details about the services I provide in Singapore. Together we can empower your child towards a brighter future.

Till the next post, regards,

Daven.

Motivation is Key!

2012-06-06T21:57:00.002-07:00

Very often, we ask the question, "How to we encourage learning?"

Thus for this post, I shall discuss with you the key to encouragement of learning - Motivation.

The Rationale Behind Motivation .

We all are motivated in one way or another to fulfill our duties in life. We work for a salary. We complete our assignment on time to score a good grade. We go back to school for higher learning to achieve better career opportunities. We work through the hours, waiting for time to knock off. Everyday we are motivated by different kinds of reinforcements to keep us working or fulfilling our duties no matter who we are.

The token system is one of the most common form of reward structures that is being used by professionals and parents. Actually, everyone uses it in one way or another. The token system may exist in our daily life in more abstract forms. For example, we work to earn money and the salary we accumulate can then be spent on things we like or want.

Why the token system?
1) Children need to know what they are working for. Many children with autism who have no understanding of time will need more concrete information on when and how they will be able to get what they want.

2) The token system also facilitates the learning of rules. Following rules is another abstract concept. It cannot be seen, felt or touched. It is a concept that many people fail or refuse to follow if there exists no consequences. There has to be motivation in order for rules to be followed. For example to win a game and feel good about yourself or to win a prize, you will have to follow the rules of the game you are playing. So to feel happy getting what he has requested for, the child needs to follow the rules by earning all the tokens first.

3) Teaches delaying of gratification. Very often we are faced with children who simply can't wait. It is not that they can't, but because they refuse to. Impatience is a reaction to a situation in which you cannot get what you want when you want it. And patience is not an innate virtue we are all born with. Instead, patience is a behaviour we learn, practice and maintain throughout our lifespan. Teaching your child to be patient is key if you want your child to do well in all aspects of his or her life. In an upcoming post, I am going to discuss how a reward structure can facilitate teaching patience.

4) Encourages your child to think. In a previous post, we talk about how making choices encourages your child to think. If you have missed that post or need to refresh your memory, click here. Also It encourages flexible thinking. As the child get familiarized with the token system and how it functions, the adults can tweak the system around to help the child accommodate different forms of reward structures. We will be talking more about reward structures in the upcoming post.

So be sure to visit this blog real soon as I will be discussing the various form of token systems and reward structures that you could use to help motivate your child.

Till then, if you have any queries or comment, please do not hesitate to email me at davensim@triumphantkids.com.
Also, please do visit my website to find out the services I provide.

Deepest regards,
Daven

Free Trial Sessions Promotion!

2012-05-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right. If you have not visited the Triumphant Kids website, then you should at least be informed that I am offering free trial sessions for a limited period, Singapore, islandwide! The promotion is only available when you sign up via the Triumphant Kids website. Please express your interest by filling in the form posted under the promotions link. Or you can just click here to jump right to it.

Hurry now as spaces are filling up fast! Obligation free, what have you got to lose?