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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

A New Social Skills Book For Children With Autism To PracticePlayground Socializing and Play

Maureen Mihailescu has done it again with “Social Skills Practice for the Playground for Children on the Autism Spectrum.” She now offers a new book that is easy to use with children with autism to help prepare them for playground socialization and activities. Rather than a how to do it book where a parent or therapist has to create materials, Maureen Mihailescu's book is ready to use with children who need this kind of social intervention. Maureen uses photographs of social scenes at the playground and provides targeted questions that stimulate social perceptions, social language, social problem solving, and social awareness of one's own feelings and of others. Many of the questions are rephrased and target similar behaviors or responses. However, the book is to be used with children with autism to become more competent in answering social questions, role-playing social situations, and understanding social opportunities and activities at the playground better. The book is designed to be adapted to the social awareness and social language complexity skills of these children. A parent or therapist can prompt for simple language or more complex language and problem solving skills, such as feelings being hurt, or even possibly feeling rejected. This is where the adult adapts the book to the individual child's needs based on the child's current abilities and how you want the child to progress. One of the main goals here is to get children with autism, whether they are minimally verbal, or highly verbal, or socially awkward, to start thinking socially about other children at the playground and how they can approach, communicate, and play with other children in socially appropriate ways. Children who are non-verbal could benefit from the photographs and questions while a parent or therapist creatively integrates their own communication system
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Monday, January 17, 2011

Top 10 Autism Research Achievements of 2010

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Closely Spaced Pregnancies Are Associated With Increased Odds of Autismin California Sibling Births.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether the interpregnancy interval (IPI) is associated with the risk of autism in subsequent births. METHODS Pairs of first- and second-born singleton full siblings were identified from all California births that occurred from 1992 to 2002 using birth records, and autism diagnoses were identified by using linked records of the California Department of Developmental Services. IPI was calculated as the time interval between birth dates minus the gestational age of the second sibling. In the primary analysis, logistic regression models were used to determine whether odds of autism in second-born children varied according to IPI. To address potential confounding by unmeasured family-level factors, a case-sibling control analysis determined whether affected sibling (first versus second) varied with IPI. RESULTS An inverse association between IPI and odds of autism among 662 730 second-born children was observed. In particular, IPIs of

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Is Your Church Open To Autism?

Churches that make space for autistic children on Sunday mornings will be disrupted — by joy.Emily Colson, guest blogger It’s everywhere, bursting from our schools and neighborhoods and playgrounds. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in every 110 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. But with numbers like this, shouldn’t our churches, of all places, be bursting with autism too? Certainly our pews are packed with families basking in the love and support of the church. Right? Not exactly.
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Autism Support Network

Join our free support community and connect with thousands of other families and individuals touched by ASD. Find out what’s working for others, coping strategies, and life guides from others living what you’re going through now.

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