Friday, November 14, 2014

Social Thinking Conference

Michelle Garcia Winner, developer of Social Thinking, and a variety of other experts on Social Thinking and ABA will be presenting, and debating, at the Social Thinking Conference, December 3 to 5, 2014, in Concord, CA. Although Michelle is a Northern California resource, she's a national speaker, and this is a rare opportunity to hear from her locally.  For more information, check out the link to the Social Thinking Conference.


Monday, September 15, 2014

Local DIR/Floortime Conference in Lafayette, CA

I'm a big fan of DIR/Floortime, and the work of Dr. Greenspan. It's exciting that the conference is so close for those of us in the Bay area. It's open to professionals and parents, on Friday, October 10, 2014.

Here is the flyer:


Monday, March 31, 2014

Temple Grandin speaking at Las Positas

For those of you who are long time readers of this blog, I'm sure you've seen plenty of posts about Dr. Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is probably the more well know autistic individual in the country.



And now, you can see her in person. Dr Temple Grandin will be speaking at Las Positas College on Thursday, April 24, 2014, at 7 pm. You can get more information and purchase tickets by going to the post on the Las Positas site.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Can I call myself a blogger if I never write my blog?


In the grand scheme, that’s not an important question. But, in its own trivial sense, it does touch on the ideas of semantics, language, identity. And those are issues of importance. 

I just read a whole series of articles on “people-first language.” An example of people-first language is “person with autism” rather than “autistic person” There are good arguments to be made for both preferences. Person-first language emphasizes the individual, rather than the diagnosis. People-first language is often advocated by disability rights organizations as a more respectful form of language. But, other groups advocate away from this style, stating that people-first language can separate the diagnosis from the individual, or even make the diagnosis seem like a less desirable condition. They argue that autism is an innate part of the individual.

In all I’ve read, I see opinions from autistic individuals, from individuals with autism, from parents of autistic individuals and from parents of individuals with autism. Which leaves me confused because I’m an outsider. I don’t want to offend, but it seems like I have no choice. Whether I use person first language, or not, I’ll be offending some individuals. 


So I’ll leave it at this. My intent in my writing is to be respectful. I’m sorry if I chose the wrong form, and I’ll keep looking for consensus. Until then, I guess I’ll just go with the clearest grammar.

Image: By Tom Murphy VII (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Monday, February 17, 2014

Time to Think about Summer Camps!

It's well known that kids on the autism spectrum struggle with generalizing learning from one setting to another. Simon Baron-Cohen explains this by way of the extreme systemizing theory of autism, where autistic individuals set up rules to understand the world, and those rules don't easily generalize from one situation to another. I think this difficulty is clearly apparent in social situations. So often, I've worked with children who could teach the content of a social skills class, yet they struggle to apply those same skills in any meaningful way in their own lives.

That's why I like to see experiential social skills training, rather than more didactic, instructional training. When an individual has the experience of doing activities with others, ideally with some support on the social skills involved, and he/she gets to apply the intellectual theories of social skills in a real, social setting, that person has the chance to practice, understand and learn those skills, rather than merely recite them. Experiential learning takes place in many settings, from a group project in the classroom, to sports teams, to hobby groups and camps. When I work individually with children and teens, I combine instruction on social skills to application, through here and now games and activities. Whenever I get the chance, I bring up what's going on socially, right in the session. I think the most useful part of many social skills groups isn't the skills discussion around the table, but rather the shared pizza time afterward.

So what's the point of all this instructional theorizing? The experiential call to action! It's February, and not too soon to think about summer camps. There are so many good ones, with camping, Legos, robotics and computers, arts, sports, nature, and horses. Check out my resource page for my favorite Bay Area social skills camp choices or search online for activities your child will enjoy.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc