As I sometimes do on Sundays, I would like to share a few links that I have run across recently which may provide some benefit to others (perhaps informational, thought-provoking or just plain fun).
Oh, you want to know who won the giveaway? All in good time, my friends, all in good time.
Okay, okay, I’ll wait here while you scroll down and see if it was you. Just make sure you scroll back up because there’s some really good stuff here in these links that you won’t want to miss. 
The Links
Informational:
Walking the Autism Road with Someone You Love by Christine Hoover – a short article with highly practical suggestions for anyone who wants to be a friend to a family dealing with a diagnosis of autism or another disability. This was helpful to me to more easily articulate an answer to friends who ask me how they can help.
Preventing Meltdowns: Outsmarting the Explosive Behavior of Individuals with Asperger Syndrome by Judy Endow – very nice discussion of both the stages of explosive behavior and several solid strategies for preventing meltdowns before they start
Thought-Provoking:
Vaccines: Are you REALLY “Green”? at 1-2-3 Autism Free – interesting post about how many people who are concerned with going green and/or organic also choose to vaccinate their children, given the ingredients in said vaccines. I have to admit I’m on the other side of the problem, easily choosing not to vaccinate but having a harder time being truly green and organic in my household products and practices.
And, Finally, Just Plain Fun…
Top 10 Hazards of Being a Mom Blogger by Ellen at Love That Max – Number 1 is “Being called a ‘Mom Blogger.’” Enough said – now go and read the rest!
The Giveaway Winner
As promised on my Cowboy & Wills review, I am also announcing the winner of the free copy of the book. I listed out and numbered all of the entries from the top down, with Mrskroberts being number 1 and Shenkfam being number 13. I then ran a random number generator at Random.org, and this is the result:
The winner is number 2, Elizabeth Channel. Congratulations, Elizabeth! I’ve sent you an email asking for your mailing address, and the book will be sent directly from the publisher once I have that information.
And thank you again to Monica Holloway for sharing her son’s story with us!
I recently had the opportunity to get one of the cool sensory products from National Autism Resource to review for my blog. After looking at the items, I immediately knew what I had to choose – one of the Squishy Dinos.
Why that one, you ask? Well, we have a new kiddo coming to the Friendship Station (special needs classroom) at our church who is obsessed with dinosaurs, so all of the teachers in the room have been picking up toys and puzzles from dollar stores, yard sales or wherever we can find them to help him be engaged and occupied while he is there. Plus this one had the extra bonus of providing sensory input, so I was sure it would be a hit.
And it was! The boys have integrated him happily into the battles and rescues and other games they love to play, and they don’t realize we are sneaking in some extra sensory input along with it. Even the parents can’t resist picking him up for a little squeeze therapy.
The one we got is the stegosaurus, which you can’t see in the picture unless you look very closely in the upper right corner of the box. He has a rubbery body which you can pull and squeeze, as well as a squishy middle that is very satisfying to play with when you’re bored or a bit stressed out. (Can you tell I have played with it almost as much as Michael has?)
National Autism Resource is one of the neatest sites I’ve seen of this nature, as it combines helpful articles for both parents and teachers with recommendations of books, toys and other items that correspond to the topic of each article. As it says in their mission statement…
National Autism Resources was born from a dream to make the world a little easier for people living on the spectrum and their family members. We strive to empower our community by providing excellent information, helpful links, and affordable books, games, toys and therapy products for people on the spectrum.
I think the dinosaur will be staying at church, but I love the idea of having sensory toys that look like regular toys for Michael to use at school or other places where he needs a little stress relief but doesn’t want to look different from the other kids.
When you have a moment, I would encourage you to check out this site. They have a ton of sensory friendly items as well as other products designed to help with social skills, emotions, learning and educational supports.
Disclaimer: I received one of the dinosaurs from the Squishy Dino set to review. No other compensation was given, and my opinions are my own.
I’ve been too busy with a psychiatric evaluation and an annual IEP meeting to keep up with email, let alone blog, but there have still been a number of great articles that caught my eye this week.
My Crystal Ball and My Checkmark Chart at Welcome to Normal – My last token economy system for home had kind of fallen by the wayside with the recent difficulties in school, especially since I wasn’t letting him play the Wii or computer if he was aggressive that day. It kind of makes it hard to earn privileges at home when you aren’t allowed to redeem them.
But after reading this and seeing how Caitlin is converting the checkmarks to money, I thought that might work for Michael at this point in time. I am making them equal to a dime, which is the same amount he gets at school (although theirs go towards school dollars and not real ones, of course!). Michael has been highly motivated by it for the last few days, so hopefully that will continue.
Interview With Taylor Morris — An Exceptional Teenage Girl with Aspergers at Hartley’s Life with 3 Boys – A fascinating interview with a young lady who shares about her experiences with sensory processing disorder and Aspergers.
In Honor of Dr. Stanley Greenspan at 5 Minutes for Special Needs – Dr. Greenspan, who among many other things started the D.I.R./Floortime therapy, died on April 27th following a stroke. He will be greatly missed.
Eating for Autism at autism community – This is a review of a book by Elizabeth Strickland regarding the GFCF Diet and having a healthier diet overall. I’m wondering if any of you have read or used this book at all and whether you like it. One of the things I need to focus on with Michael is improving the quality of his diet, which has been difficult due to his sensory issues and the number of different foods and textures that he avoids.
Well, that’s is for this week. I’m clearing out the GReader and starting fresh in the morning!
Besides revisiting the behavior plan and the level of positive reinforcement being provided, the other thing the IEP team did in response to Michael’s aggressive behavior at school was to add a safe crisis plan.
We had had a safe crisis meeting earlier in the school year when the school secretary had (inappropriately) gotten involved and physically moved Michael from the hallway into a classroom, but all we did at that point was clarify for everyone in the building who to contact if the adult in charge of Michael felt they needed assistance with him (i.e. NOT the secretary!).
Now we had started seeing some out of control behavior, with Michael jumping straight from a calm state to yelling and screaming at people, and then a variety of aggressive behaviors, including hitting, kicking and throwing things such as his shoes and socks, chairs and even a trashcan. So the team met to create a safe crisis plan.
The way it was explained to me, the behavior plan tells the adults what to do so the child will (hopefully) not have a meltdown, and the safe crisis plan tells the adults what to do so THEY don’t have a meltdown! Our plan does not include any form of restraint; in fact, the purpose of the plan is to give everyone the information they need on what to do so that restraint will not be needed.
Our Safe Crisis Plan
The basics of the plan are pretty simple – if Michael is hitting, kicking or throwing things at anyone, the teacher will physically block the behavior if possible and will clear the other students from the room.
Next, a second adult will be called to take charge of Michael. Once he is calm enough to leave the room himself, he will go to a separate room with the adult. We chose the speech room so we would have a consistent location; the SLP is only in the building two days per week and does a lot of her work in the various classrooms, so it is usually available.
Then, once Michael has left the room, the other students can return and continue with their lessons. Michael will stay in the speech room until he is completely calm and ready to return to class If he is unable to calm down after 30 minutes, they will call me to come and get him.
Of course, we are all very focused on lots and lots of positive reinforcement of desired behaviors and on intervening as soon as we see Michael start to become upset to avoid any of this, but it is good to have it in place so everyone knows exactly what to do if there is a problem and to lessen the possibility of anyone getting hurt.
NOTE: I thought I had posted this last night, but I just realized it was still in draft form. We actually used this plan today, as he had an incident that turned into a major meltdown and I had to come and get him from school. I’m still trying to process the details and figure out where to go from here as far as he is concerned, but I am thankful at least for a good team that is working so well together.
I just got the graph from the learning support teacher showing Michael’s timeouts from March. He currently gets a timeout only for yelling or screaming and for any aggressive actions (hitting, kicking or throwing things). Outside of these, he is prompted toward the desired behavior and positive behavior is reinforced through a visual token system.
This had been working quite well for a while, although lately the timeouts have been gradually increasing in frequency and it was discovered after a recent series of aggressive episodes that the reinforcement scheduled had been thinned considerably because of how well he was doing.
Oh, beware the words “well” and “fine,” I tell you – they’ll get you every time!
He attended 20 days of school from March 3rd to 31st (not sure why the 1st and 2nd aren’t on the graph) and had a total of 10 timeouts.
- 13 days with no timeouts
- 4 days with 1 timeout
- 3 days with 2 timeouts
The most days in a row with a timeout was 2; whereas the most days in a row without a timeout was 9. So what was different about those 9 days in a row?
Simple – we increased the positive reinforcement.
Yep, we upped the visual reinforcement back to its original level on March 15th and then had 9 days without a timeout. In fact, even after that, he only had three timeouts the rest of the month, and one of those was on a day when he had been on a study trip. He had done an amazingly fantastic job through the entire day to that point, but just couldn’t recover from being upset when he got out during a spelling game due to mis-hearing the word that was asked.
I have quoted this before, but it’s still so true:
The power of positive reinforcement is the most under-utilized tool we have.
~ Peter Gerhardt, Organization for Autism Research
In fact, our autism consultant has introduced another visual reinforcement schedule, which is set up like a game and based on Super Mario Bros, that specifically targets his behaviors during competitive situations. At least for now, it is motivating enough to help mitigate the negative feelings he has when he doesn’t win or isn’t the first or best one in an activity. (I’ll see if I can get a copy of it to post here; they keep the book at school.)
Have you found this to be true for your child? What motivates them even when the emotional stakes are high?
The regular students in my son’s first grade classroom have to complete a think sheet if they pull all four of their cards in one day, so when we created my son’s behavior plan, we wanted to include a think sheet for use after a timeout (timeouts are for yelling or physical aggression only at this point).
His OT created one just for him. I wasn’t sure what it would look like and how much writing would be involved, so I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw that it was mostly circling things. She used emoticons for the emotions and other colorful icons to illustrate the other areas, and it has worked beautifully.
I scanned one of the think sheets so you could see it – sorry it’s not a better image.
A couple of notes:
- Stop and Think is something the speech teacher uses with all the kids.
- Park It is something we pulled from the training world and included in his behavior plan. It basically means that when you have a question or comment that is inappropriate for a particular time, it can be written down and addressed by the proper person later. Sometimes that’s the teacher and other times it comes home to me. We have it right on his communication sheet. I’m not sure if I’ve posted about that before, but I’ll try to scan a copy of that for a future post.
Michael has even asked to fill the think sheets out when he goes to his quiet space because of being upset about something (that is not the same as a timeout, just a place for when he is overwhelmed or starting to get out of sorts). The OT has encouraged this because it will help him become more aware of how he is feeling before he gets out of control.
We have been following the new behavior plan for one month now, so I am emailing the team to get their feedback and ask for the numbers on how many timeouts there were for each thing. But I know they are pleased with his progress overall, as well as relieved that the new TSS is so much better.
If anyone would like a copy of the Word document, just email me or leave a comment below requesting it and I will email it to you.
This post was written for the Steady Mom 30-Minute Blog Challenge I would encourage to check out the other posts and also the Steady Mom site as there are some great changes happening over there.
