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Book Review of "Autism Breakthrough: The Groundbreaking Method That Has Helped Families All Over the World"

10/30/2015

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If I had a million dollars, I would send a copy of this book to everyone who subscribes to our  newsletter and every family receiving an autism diagnosis for their child. This book is that good.

It describes the Son-Rise program, which seems to me to be a very parent-friendly intervention that could easily be used at home. In fact, this book will give you many ideas for meaningful ways to interact with a child with autism, as well as encourage his or her growth and development.

I completely agree with what seems to me to be a foundation of this method: in order to help our children make progress, we should first work on our relationship with the child. When we focus on this first, it makes it so much easier (and much more enjoyable!) to teach new skills. I think that the basic principles of the Son-Rise method would be excellent to use as the foundation of whatever intervention or therapy you are using, including ABA, speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc. This is especially true of the chapter on attitude. This chapter is a must-read, no matter which intervention method you’re using. This book describes on of the most loving and respectful intervention methods that I’ve ever read about.

Each chapter includes simple exercises to help you start using these strategies with your child right away. There is also bonus content on the book’s website to supplement each chapter. Make sure you take advantage of that if you purchase the book.

The book does make the claim that the author of the book had autism as a child, and is now “recovered” by use of the Son-Rise program. I am rightfully skeptical of any program that uses words like “recovery” from autism, and I believe you should be as well. I’m not even sure I like that term at all. I always suggest checking the research status of interventions before you use them (a good website for this is the ASAT). However, that doesn’t change my great impressions of the Son-Rise program techniques.

The only other thing that I disliked about the book is that it seems to be somewhat anti-ABA. If you are an ABA person (as I am), please try to look past the parts of the book that are critical of ABA. I believe that naturalistic ABA (such as Pivotal Response Treatment) and Son-Rise have at least a couple of things in common. I would actually recommend this book to BCBAs, ABA therapists, and parents who have children in ABA programs. I think it will give you some great ideas that you can easily incorporate into your program. I see no reason why these two programs couldn’t work together in many ways.

I can’t really think of anyone in the “autism world” that I would not recommend this book to. In my opinion, it seems a little less applicable to children on the Asperger’s side of the spectrum, but the book does have a chapter specifically devoted to Asperger’s. The author also states that their methods can be adapted to use with children across the autism spectrum.

I would encourage you to check out the book on Amazon (affiliate link below) and the book’s website to see if you think it is right for your family.

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Special Interest Survey

10/23/2015

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As you know, Positively Autism offers lots of free teaching materials for students with autism. We would like to make more materials based on what topics children are interested in (such as trains, weather, dinosaurs, Lego, vacuum cleaners, anything!). All kids, but particularly kids with autism, are much more engaged with learning if they enjoy what they are doing, so we want to make lots of activities based on what kids love! Please help us decide which topics to make activities for by filling in this short survey. Thank you!

http://positivelyautism.weebly.com/survey.html
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"Shape-osaurs" Shape Identifying Activity

10/14/2015

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A ready-to-use printable activity to help a child identify shapes. Includes a built-in data collection sheet to track student learning and progress.

Download it for free here:
http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/shapeosaurus_final.pdf
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Train-Theme 3-Step Visual Schedule

10/9/2015

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http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/Train_VisualSchedule.pdf
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Self-Management for Improving Social Conversation Skills

10/1/2015

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We know that individuals with autism characteristically have some challenges with social communication. These challenges may include making statements that are very short, having infrequent social initiations, and a lack of sharing new and relevant information with others in conversation.

Recently, researchers conducted a study to help children with autism improve these skills through self-management.

What is Self-Management? To put it very simply, self-management means that you are aware of your own behavior and you know how to control and monitor it. Skills associated with self-management include
  • setting your own goals,
  • setting-up your environment to make achieving your goals more likely (such as making a to-do list or packing your backpack for school before you go to sleep each night),
  • monitoring your behavior and progress toward your goals, and
  • rewarding yourself for success (Reference: Association for Science in Autism Treatment).

Self-management is a research-based intervention. There are various benefits to using self-management. It can help skills generalize to new environments. Self-management systems can also be easily transferred into new environments. In other words, if a child learns to monitor his own behavior one-on-one with a special education teacher, he can also learn to use self-management strategies when he goes to an inclusion art class with his peers.

How Was the Study Set-Up? This recent study looked at whether self-management would help three children with autism (ages 4, 9, and 14) sustain social interactions. To use self-management, each student was given a chart that contained visual cues for what they were supposed to do in a conversation. The chart also included small boxes where the students could give themselves “conversation points” when they used the conversation skills.


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The children were taught to use the chart and conversation skills via the procedures in the manual, “How to Teach Self-Management to People with Severe Disabilities.” If you are interested in using self-management for your children or students with autism, I highly recommend this manual. It’s not very expensive, and it is a helpful, step-by-step resource.

What Were the Results? The study results suggested that the students improved their social conversation skills by showing more elaborate responses and asking on-topic questions.


For full results and more details about the study, please read the complete article:

“Using Self-Management to Improve the Reciprocal Social Conversation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” by Lynn Kern Koegel, Mi N. Park, and Robert L. Koegel.

Journal: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (2014) 44:1055–1063. DOI 10.1007/s10803-013-1956-y

All personal opinions in this post are those of Positively Autism, and do not necessarily represent those of the authors or publisher of this study. The video below is not associated with the authors or publishers of this study.


Here is a video of one example of using self-management with a student:
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The information provided on this website is for instructional purposes only, and should not be construed as professional advice on any subject matter. If you need assistance 
for the purpose of diagnosis and/or personal counseling, it is advised that you contact a licensed therapist in the appropriate medical or therapeutic field. If you have specific questions about your child, please contact the appropriate professionals, such as a BCBA, medical doctor, SLP, OT, or LPC.


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