Joy's Autism Blog

Tomorrow is Alex’s 14th birthday. I’ll write him a letter, just like I have on this day since that afternoon when I walked against the tide of people coming from a parade in Manhattan to make my way back to the hospital. Just like I did after a sandwich in the coffee shop (now long gone) while “This May Be the Start of Something Big” actually played on the radio in the coffee shop.

This may not be one of my cheerier letters. Tough year. A year ago he was bolting into neighbors’ apartments. More recently there have been ugly things that have nothing to do with him. Still, my toughest year as a parent — tough too because I realize they’re not likely to get any easier.

I had a cheery piece planned for here about Alex (PDD-NOS) eating corn on the cob at a street fair, but you have to go with the subject that’s burning a hole in your pocket. I drill him on birthdays.

“Alex, tomorrow is your…”

“Is your,” he says. He’s munching pretzels and watching Elmo on the iPad. “Is your … bi… Birthday!”

“Birthday!” Then he’s back to Elmo on the iPad. Alex’s typically-developing younger brother Ned is really late; I bet he’s somewhere buying Alex a present.

Almost a decade and a half since the isolette and going to the hospital every damned night. Fourteen years and three schools. Fourteen years and now there’s a mustache and there’s hooking up a computer when other people claim they can’t. Now there’s a prom coming up. “Are you going to ask someone to dance, Alex?”

“Maybe when he has his iPad and he’s dancing around to it, we could dance with him,” says my wife Jill. “He doesn’t ask for much and maybe he wouldn’t like it, but maybe he’d like the company.” I’m afraid the first thing I think is that he’d sit down on the couch until we left him alone. Guess that would be okay, too.

To Jill, I’m afraid, falls most of the ideas this year. She doesn’t disappoint. “”I want him to have a special day and feel special and loved,” she emails. (Hope he feels that from me when I hustled him out of the house this morning with a haul on the arm and a snap that he’d dawdled over putting on his mismatched socks and so had no time for the ipad before the schoolbus. Hope so.)

“I thought we could decorate with balloons,” Jill writes. “I should make birthday sign tonight!! And just in general help him realize he’s having a special day (which when he’s reminded he seems to be on board with). I am pretty sure I have all brownie ingredients. You can help me make sign later. Is there any space in the living room or on a bookshelf that we could clear off/establish for him as a Lego numbers place? Window sill? Top of the air conditioner?”

Alex has been making numerals out of Legos and setting them up the edges of the coffee table, the dining room table, the entertainment unit (much as we have “entertainment”). “1976” in red Legos to the right of our TV, “946” in yellow to the left.

“You have to really think outside the box for gifts for him. Can we push some books in on a bookcase? It wouldn’t be so terrible.”

No, it wouldn’t. I can’t think of a better gift. Wish I could.

Jeff Stimpson lives in New York with his wife Jill and two sons. He is the author of Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie and Alex the Boy: Episodes From a Family’s Life With Autism (both available on Amazon). He maintains a blog about his family at jeffslife.tripod.com/alextheboy, and is a frequent contributor to various sites and publications on special-needs parenting, such as Autism Spectrum News, the Lostandtired blog, and The Autism Society news blog.

I am excited to share a guest post with you by writer Jeff Stimpson. He generously offered to share this story about jobs and autism, a very important topic for those of us who have children with autism because after all they are going to be turning into adults with autism before we know it! Enjoy!

My son Alex’s service coordinator dropped by his school the other day. “Alex seems to be doing well there,” she e-mailed. “He was sweeping the floor when I arrived.”

Really? I thought, looking at the crumbs on our living room floor. Knew I had kids for some reason!

Alex does now: setting the table so the handles of the coffee cups face the same way; emptying the dishwasher every morning. I get the feeling he has the skills. “Alex,” I ask as he tucks in the sheets at the foot of his bed, “would you like a job?”

I expect him to parrot back something like, “Like a job?”

“A job to do,” he says, tucking.

We all have a job to do, but sometimes the job doesn’t find us. Writers know about this; I hope Alex doesn’t have to know about it, too. He could probably scrape by the next six or so decades on what amounts to the pure compassion, maybe the pity, of society. I’d prefer, however, that Alex, who is almost 14 is solidly on the spectrum, learn about that spring in the step after a day of good work you enjoy. He has the skills, I think.

Some people also have the attitude, like when a teacher from his school went into a local thrift shop to ask about employment for her students. “We don’t hire the handicapped,” she was told.

“We don’t actually use that term anymore,” the teacher said.

“Well whatever you call them, we don’t hire them!”

LinkedIn connection Jennifer tells me her son started as a cart attendant at a local Target; after three years they added “sales floor” to his cart duties. “He also straightens the store, stocking and fronting items,” she adds. Jennifer advises parents in my position to connect with local stores, making introductions early with businesses that would accept a person with a disability – “really ‘accept,’ not just legally.” Around a student’s junior year, work with a vocational rehab department to secure a job coach and internships.

Jennifer’s son had some “less-than-perfect” jobs before Target, she stresses, “so stay positive and keep pushing.”

I wish I pushed Alex more. The dishwasher is a dawn routine now, true, yet often simple sweeping of the crumbs slips my mind. Instead, I think how he’s on his iPad watching too much “Sesame Street,” and I let him alone. I’m not together enough to be Alex’s dad. I’m not smart enough for this job.

Jeff Stimpson lives in New York with his wife Jill and two sons. He is the author of Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie and Alex the Boy: Episodes From a Family’s Life With Autism (both available on Amazon). He maintains a blog about his family at jeffslife.tripod.com/alextheboy, and is a frequent contributor to various sites and publications on special-needs parenting, such as Autism Spectrum News, the Lostandtired blog, The Autism Society news blog, and An Anthology of Disability Literature (available on Amazon). He is on LinkedIn under “Jeff Stimpson” and Twitter under “Jeffslife.”

If you would like to share your autism story send me an email. My contact information can be found here on my Contact Me page.

I really love sign language. I think it’s a great and convenient tool to help babies and kids with autism to get that communication ball rolling. Some of Adrian’s first communication WAS sign language and I think that really helped him make that connection between words and objects. I am excited to share this valuable information and this free resource for you to use in the future to learn some signs and teach them to your babies and children! This guest post is provided by babysignlanguage.com and for future reference you will find their link in my side bar under “communication resources”.

Can baby sign language really help children with autism? More and more parents and educators are saying yes, it can. Not only can it help the child, but it can help the entire family.

But first, for the child:

Communicating with sign language has been shown to increase vocalization attempts in children with autism. While some mistakenly assume that learning to sign will prevent a child from learning to speak, the research does not support this assumption. Signing actually helps a child learn to talk. The same area of the brain is activated during speech and during sign, which suggests that the development of both could go hand in hand.

On a more practical note, sign language can help alleviate frustration. When a child wants or needs to communicate something, it is very helpful if she has a sign that matches what she wants to say.

Signing with your child also facilitates eye contact and promotes social interaction. You have to look at someone to see them sign, and she has to look at you to make sure that you understand her sign.

Now, for the rest of the family:

Some parents shy away from signing because they themselves don’t know sign language. This is sad, because it is so easy to learn a few signs, especially when compared to learning everything else that one must learn about parenting.

You don’t have to be fluent in sign language in order to start signing with your toddler or preschooler. You can learn and introduce one sign at a time. Is there a word that your child could use often? One that might alleviate some frustration? Then teach her that sign. Just start there. It will alleviate some frustration for you too, in those moments when you don’t understand what your child needs.

Making sign language a household event gives other children a job to do, a way to help. Teaching and learning signs quickly becomes a family affair. Other children in the household usually jump at the chance to help, especially if it means interacting with a sibling.

Many parents choose to hang baby sign language flash cards up in their home, to serve as reminders, not only for the sign itself, but for the task at hand. For example, hang up the flash card for the sign for “wash,” near the bathroom sink to remind everyone to wash their hands before leaving the bathroom. Or hang up the sign for “shoe” by the door to remind everyone to take their shoes off.

Make signing a bonding experience for the whole family! Most things are anyway, right? With baby sign language, or signing at any age, the more the merrier.

This article was provided by babysignlanguage.com a website featuring digital resources including a baby sign language dictionary, baby sign language flash cards, and baby sign language wall chart 100% free.

I’m excited to present this guest post written by Becca Jarzynski, M.S., CCC-SLP. Becca is a pediatric speech language pathologist who specializes in treating children with autism spectrum disorders. Her blog, Child Talk, can be found here and it will also be listed on my sidebar for future reference under “Communication Resources” and check her out on facebook too!

Pictures and Autism: Using Pictures To Teach Creative Language
Over the past ten years of working as a pediatric speech-language therapist, I’ve found that pictures can be a highly effective tool for working with children who have a diagnosis of autism. Children with autism are often highly visual and concrete learners; pictures have a way of slowing language down and making it more concrete. I use pictures in a wide variety of ways, but today I want to share with you how I use pictures to facilitate two-word phrases with children who are just learning to use language creatively.

Most children with autism use echolalic speech. We think that this is because their brains process information as whole chunks—something we call being a gestalt learner. As a result, many of the children I work with have learned whole phrases that they use without actually understanding that each of the words in the phrase has individual meaning. For example, I’ll often see young children with autism say, “do you want to swing?” when they actually mean “I want to swing.” They do this because this is what they’ve heard asked of them when they were standing in front of a swing that they wanted to swing on. Not understanding that each word has specific individual meaning, they just repeat the whole phrase they heard in an attempt to communicate what they want.

One of my strongest beliefs as a speech-language therapist is that we need to teach children with autism that they can create meaning through putting words into a wide variety of short sentences. This is the generative aspect of language that makes it so that we can all create sentences we have never heard before, and it’s an essential aspect of language development. Without it, children are left to memorize sentences for specific situations and this highly limits their language skills.

As a speech-language therapist, I will use pictures to show relationships between words in phrases so that children can actually see how changing words changes meaning. The actual pictures and words I use with a child vary depending on that child and his interests, but the general process I use goes a little something like this:

First, I find a situation where a child needs to create specific two-word phrases to communicate his specific wants. I look for a situation that is highly motivating for a child, one in which each specific phrase would be important to that child. Take, for example, a child who *loves* to play with a ball and hammer toy. His ball and hammer toy has a green ball, a red ball, and blue ball, and a yellow one and he knows which ball he wants. Given this situation I would:

• Make a picture to represent “ball” as well as pictures to represent each of the colors.
• Place a Velcro strip on the front of a binder, and put Velcro on the back of all the pictures as well.
• Get out the ball and hammer toy and place it on the floor next to the pictures.
• Hold up the balls and allow the child to reach for one so I know which one he wants.
• Quick create the phrase on the Velcro strip that matches the ball he wants. Say, for example, he wants the blue ball.
• Point to each picture as I say the word in the phrase (“blue ball”).
• Have the child imitate me.
• Give him the blue ball.
• Repeat the process, exchanging the color word on the velcro strip to represent the color ball the child wants.
• As quickly as I can, I back off of prompting him and let him create the sentences on his own.
• And, as quickly as I can, I get rid of the pictures and let him just use his verbal words.

The ball activity is just one of hundreds of activities where something like this would work. You might use this strategy to teach your child to create the phrase “eat + (food item)” or “watch + (movie)” or “play + (name of computer game)” or “go (location).” The key lies in finding an activity that allows you to teach your child that he need t o mix and match words together to create his own sentences that have meaning to him. Once he understands the power of creative language, he’s well on his way to being an advanced communicator.

Thanks to Becca for this valuable information, to read more great articles on getting communication going check out Child Talk!