Small Bus Brigade Back to School 2018
By Kim Rossi
Back to school is here. For me, it's my last year with a school aged child. Next year Bella will be in a transition program for 18 - 21 year olds. She has had 15 years of speech, OT, PT, ABA and other therapies. She's tired of the non-stop structure and having to "earn" even the smallest reward like a trained seal at the old SeaWorld (before David Kirby let them have it.) Of all the therapies she has received, PT has done the most and yielded the most success in terms of her ability to move. Speech? Nothing. OT? A bit of help. She doesn't hold a pen. She doesn't write or draw like her sisters. She's her own person. Beautiful. Quiet. Engaged in her own way with the world. Aware of everything going on around her. Everything. She's smart and understands all that she hears.
ABA and discrete trial have given her a few skills. But they have also made her and her sisters wholly prompt dependent. This was never so obvious as when her older sisters started a day program for disabled adults. The adult world is NOT prompt based. Not yet anyway. My behaviorist from DDS told our school district many years ago that the ABA model was not workable in the real world. I'm not saying that ABA is wrong or detrimental. Just that it has its place and then needs to be tapered off, and more independent skills imparted in its place. But how? And by whom? I'm dog tired, how about you?
Adult programs are learning that they need to adapt many parts of their work for the new autism population. The pay scale is typically very low - with an hourly rate less than what school based 1:1 paraprofessionals make in our area of Connecticut. That's a problem. And it will grow. As the need for programs explodes.
Kim Rossi is Managing Editor for Age of Autism.
Sun Rose; Learning to read helps develop language; I believe you are right.
I know we are not all equal in the extent of brain injuries that occur. Looking back on it all what happened at the end of the third grade was a miracle. I wonder what turned it around. I know I started giving him aspirin for those strange periodic fevers he was having as a toddler. Only because his sister had Kawasaki disease as a two year old herself and low dose aspirin for her was the treatment. Maybe that helped in the extent of the more brain injuries happening?
As far as reading helping to develop language, in the first grade I read to him every night and made him follow with his finger the words as I read. He had that much going for him, the ability to follow along, but it was after school at bedtime. There was nothing left to distract him at that point. . Some times I kept that little guy up after nine to get this important ritual in.
By the end of the first grade he was able to read out loud, but that did not mean that he could get his own thoughts out in any coherent way. We still kept the reading up, and summers were really nice since there was no school to get in the way. At the end of the third grade he met on the bus a new kid that just moved into the neighborhood and expressed to me the desire to go to his house. That friendship turned a lot around too.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 30, 2018 at 07:44 AM
Inadequate apathy of state organised provision needs a reality evaluation as to what's possible within care and support planning.
Risk Assessments,- Goal Planning to aims and objectives with reverse goal planning templates and choreography same as learning to drive a car?
Se available free info at Helen Sanderson Associates Reading Room Blog -The importance of telling stories 23 May 2016 describes achieving person centred care and support realities !
Activities provision dosn't always have to cost a lot of money either !
Earth ,Wind and Fire "Lets Grove" Phil Wright Choreography /1g youtube Social Enterprise?
Posted by: Morag | August 30, 2018 at 04:05 AM
Kim, Thanks, thanks, for all you do -- and how you keep going. Together. there are millions of us who are your friend, in every level of degree -- trying to expose the godawful vaccine damage to everyone from womb-to-old-age.
Posted by: david m burd | August 29, 2018 at 06:33 PM
Hi. My very first knowledge came from Sarge Goodchild of Active Healing - he was a child who used patterning w huge success. I am a huge fan and on his board! Kim
Posted by: Kim | August 29, 2018 at 09:14 AM
Hasn't anyone here ever heard of patterning and . early early teaching of children with autism to read I bring this up periodicaly and no-one even seems interested?
Posted by: Sun~Rose | August 29, 2018 at 08:47 AM