This is a bit of a catch-up post, since I keep thinking of all the things I have been meaning to share but haven’t gotten to yet. ‘Tis a bit long as well; my apologies – it was either this or four shorter posts and that would overwhelm even me!
First, the Wordle
The image at the top of this post is called a Wordle – have you seen these yet? They are very fun to play around with; you just enter some text or a URL with a feed and it creates a word cloud. Then you can play around with the font, colors and the layout until you get it how you like it. Yes, I know there’s no real reason for me to make one, but they are fun!
The Timer Revisited
I posted earlier at 5 Minutes for Special Needs about using a timer, and I wanted to also share a way that the staff at Michael’s summer program are using it with him.
When he is called to an activity such as art time and refuses to come, the staff, instead of arguing or giving a timeout, will simply tell him they are starting the timer. The timer is started and not stopped until he joins the activity. Then when free play starts, the staff member tells my son, “Oh, you owe me [x number] minutes of art time before you can start playing.”
The best part is that it’s working. 
Now when they say they will start the timer if he doesn’t come, he will often say, “No, not the timer!” and come right away.
Root and Sprout
Root and Sprout is a website dedicated to supporting moms and dads in providing “gentle, hands-on parenting” to their children. New articles are published monthly, and the August Edition is now up. Yours truly actually wrote one of the articles this month and am honored to have it accepted and published in the Wildflowers section. If you scroll down, it is the second article. (Wait, what I meant to say was read the first article and then you will get to mine!)
Updated to add: Root & Sprout is now using a blogging platform so that each article has a permalink and you no longer have to scroll through each section.
Feel free to explore the other sections and consider submitting an article yourself. It is a fairly painless procedure and the editor doesn’t bite (well, not that I am aware of, anyway!)
And Finally
Phew! I am so happy to have all of that off my brain! I need to clear the space because tomorrow will be my first day at the Penn State National Autism Conference. I wasn’t able to attend today’s opening sessions, but am all registered and ready to go in the morning.
Tomorrow I am scheduled for Asperger Syndrome: Strategies for Young Children in the morning. This session deals primarily with self-regulation and social/emotional competence; I am figuring that Michael is high-functioning enough that a lot of this should apply to him, and if not I am sure I could use some help in this area. My afternoon session is Strategies for Successful Inclusion of Learners with ASDs. It is directed at teachers, but hopefully there will be some things I can offer to the team as we move forward.
To anyone who made it all the way to the bottom of this post, I really appreciate you!!
