This article is reposted with permission from the Speechworks website. Halloween is tons of fun! Dressing up, trick-or-treating, and getting candy all add to the excitement. It can be tricky, though, for children with autism. Halloween is special – it’s different from any other day! Children dress up, go door to door, and yell “Trick or Treat!” For some children, […]
Read more
This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each of the developmental capacities as described by Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous stages. You can find the list of related posts here. After children have become comfortable with interactive […]
Read more
“My child does some things that really disrupt our family life, and I need some help quickly. Does RDI help with difficult behaviors? Or is it mostly just about learning life skills?” RDI is a family-based intervention that addresses Autism’s core deficits. Autism is mainly a mental processing disorder, but it can come with a variety of secondary symptoms, usually […]
Read more
This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental capacity, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous stages. You can find the list of related posts here. After you and your child have learned […]
Read more
This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental level, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous levels. You can find the list of related posts here. Communication is so much more than speech! […]
Read more
Baden is the president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network of Winnipeg, and writes from the perspective of a person with autism. This post provides advice that parents may find useful as the school year wraps up. In my time interacting with parents of autistic children, there is one question I have seen more than almost any other: parents panicked by […]
Read more
Your child has just been diagnosed with autism. What does that mean? From parents who have walked the road awhile, here are the things we wish we could have known at the beginning: Your child is amazing. Your child loves you. Even if they don’t say it, they do. You’ll find your own, unique ways to connect. Take a […]
Read more
Nadiene is the mother of two children: Lincoln, who is a nine-year-old boy with autism and his 8-year-old sister Charlie. In 2011 she and her husband Jay participated in the Relate program at the Rehabilitation Centre for Children, which was then a pilot project. She wrote about that experience here. We wanted to hear from her again, now that their family’s […]
Read more
Often in the first years of parenting, childcare takes the centre stage. The things we liked to do before we had children can just fall away. Children (with and without autism) tend to like what’s familiar and don’t always behave the way we’d like when we take them out in new situations – so it’s easier to stay home and just stick with […]
Read more
Service dogs can be a great help to people with autism. In October of 2015 Jackie shared about her family’s reasons for getting a service dog for her daughter. Here’s a followup post on how things have gone, and how a service dog has helped Signey grow. So, when we decided to buy a service dog for our daughter, Signey, […]
Read more