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A Message from Laura
Hello everyone,
I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! America's forefathers determined that independence was an important factor in improving the country's overall quality of life. This month's article will outline for you the necessities your child needs to attain his or her best possible quality of life.
Extraordinary Minds has launched a new online group where you can voice your concerns, share your resources and gain support of both parents and professionals. Join the discussion
here.
Many parents through the years have asked if Extraordinary Minds accepts RSAs (Related Service Authorization) from CPSE or CSE. We have taken the necessary steps to obtain approval from the Department of Education to provide counseling and speech therapy for the new school year. We hope to add Occupational and Physical Therapy as well.
We are currently looking for a team of therapists that are motivated, open to learning new ways of understanding and treating children with disabilities and truly invested in long term quality of life. If you are a therapist who may be interested, please email your resume to L.Hynes@yahoo.com.
If you are a parent or professional interested in learning more about how RDI can help your family or professional work, don't miss the upcoming presentation at the PATH center. See upcoming events for details.
Laura Hynes
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Upcoming Events
July 13, 2011; 7pm-9pm Introduction to RDI at PATH Family Center Open to the public and free of charge. Click here for more information.
September: Fall Mommy and Me sessions If you would like to have fun with your child and learn how to foster his or her development, call now to register! All classes are run by licensed teachers and overseen by Laura, a developmental specialist. Space is limited! September: Fall Social Groups There are many foundations that are necessary in order for a child with autism or other disabilies to be able to socialize with peers. Groups offered by Extraordinary Minds offers a unique and valuable approach to teaching children how to understand and appreciate social encounters. Also Accepting Registration for: (click the links below for information) Introduction to RDI; group sessions |
Meet Montana Montana is a 14 year old child who shares on his website his journey as an individual diagnosed with autism as well as, what he calls his recovery from autism. Montana and his family have been doing an RDI program for over five years. Visit his website: My Autism Recovery Watch a video of Montana talking about his autism and RDI journey here. |
Marriage. Friendship. Employment. Family. Independence.
There are what most people in this country and many others would consider measures of a good quality of life. Unfortunately, in autism, the few studies that did look at long term outcome measures of quality of life, the results are quite dismal. The following are several long term outcome studies of adults with autism.
National Autism Society, 2001
Sample size: 450
Job: 6%
Independence: 3%
Peer Relationship: 17%
Patricia Howlin, 2004
Sample Size: 68
Job: 12%
Independence: 4%
Peer Relationship: 19%
Seltzer & Kraus, 2002
Sample Size: 154
Job: 10%
Independence: 4%
Peers: 14%
Consider why for a moment, in the NAS study, 50% of the individuals in the study attended higher education yet only 12% gained employment. For most jobs, one must be flexible, appreciate other people's perspectives, and be able to successfully collaborate and problem solve. These things do not come easily for children with autism and traditional approaches to treating autism have only taught skills to compensate for these difficulties, never addressing the deficits themselves.
RDI is a program designed specifically to address the deficits found in autism and other neuro-developmental disabilities and not merely teach compensatory skills to get around them.
Compensate: (dictionary.com)
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| to attempt to conceal or offset one's shortcomings by the exaggerated exhibition of qualities regarded as desirable |
One major deficit in autism spectrum disorders is social coordination. You can think of this as basic social reciprocity, how people do things together, modify their actions to remain in sync with another person and make ongoing adjustments to repair loss of coordination. An example of this can be as simple as an infant and a mother playing peek a boo, to two children playing tag on a playground to a crew of construction workers building a floor of a house. Basic social coordination is the foundation for all human interaction and communication. Without this general awareness of others and ourselves with others, the social world doesn't make sense.
Compensations: Teaching social skills or social scripts. There is no way that a person can learn all the possible reactions another person will have and all of the possible appropriate responses.
Communication is another area of difficulty in autism. Individuals on the spectrum have a difficult time with the aformentioned reciprocity of communication as well as using and reading non verbal communication and engaging in experience sharing. Close to 80% of the language that we use as humans is experiential. We share our thoughts and opinions; we seek out other's perspectives and expand our thinking by doing so. A huge portion of our communication is non verbal. We simlutaneously use gesture, facial expression, prosody and body language to strongly bring a point home or discretely relay a message.
Compensations: Focusing only on language and not non verbal communication, using and teaching only instrumental language (questions, requests, demands, labels)
Individuals on the spectrum often do not appraise situations appropriately. Think of appraisal as evaluating all elements of a situation, weeding out unimportant information and paying attention to the pertinent information. Often times individuals on the spectrum will appraise things very rigidly. "When I go X, I always do Y" ignoring the big picture, context and changes in environment. A good example of this type of rigid appraisal happened when I was in a school setting. A child who had autism and a father who was a NYC Firefighter was brought into a room with several classes where his father stood with all of his fire department gear on. This room was otherwise used for group movie viewing. This child was hyper focused on watching a movie in this room and it took him several minutes to notice that his father, dressed as a firefighter was in the room. This type of rigid appraisal is not unusual for a child on the spectrum and makes it very difficult to successfully navigate the world.
Compensations: Over preparation for situations (reliance on schedules), keeping situations/environment/routines always the same; not providing enough processing time before prompting.
The inability to successfully appraise a situations leads to great difficulty problem solving. To be a successful problem solver, one must be able to consider several ways of obtaining an end result. There is almost always more than one way to solve a problem and many times, individuals with autism, thinking in a very black and white way, only see one possible solution. If that solution is not successful, many times a person who has difficulty with this concept, will become frustrated and/ or give up.
Compensations: Consistently setting up situations where there is only one right or wrong answer; providing the answer; not providing enough time before prompting.
Rigid appraisal also leads to a deficit in episodic memory. Click here to view an archived article on episodic memory. This type of memory is personal memories that are attached to feelings and emotions. It is learning from experiences and basing decisions as well as future plans on those experiences. In order for a person to create and store these types of memories, one must be appraising situations in a way that involves themselves, themselves with others, emotions and communication. An individual with autism that pays attention to unimportant details instead of looking at the big picture, will not create episodic memories.
Compensations: Focusing on and strengthening other types of fact based and static types of memory. See here for other types of memory
You can learn how RDI can address these deficits in your child by scheduling an initial consultation with Laura. Mention this newsletter and receive a free initial consultation now through August 31st, 2011. You can also obtain more information by downloading Laura's recent Introduction to RDI webinar here or attend the upcoming workshop at the Path Family Center.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Questions? Comments? Join in the discussion. |
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Extraordinary Minds is dedicated to providing quality, individualized, family based interventions to address the deficits in autism and other developmental disabilities.
Extraordinary Minds
308 Forest Avenue
Staten Island, New York 10301
(347) 564-8451
L.Hynes@yahoo.com
www.extraordinaryminds.org |
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