Living with Autism

Today I am going to talk about Obsessions:

In the early days, a lot of well-meaning but very misguided 'professionals' might try to tell you to squash obsessions. Indeed when Liam was small and starting in a mixed special needs pre-school, the staff would take his Thomas the Tank Engine toys away from him and put them out of reach.
 This just made poor Liam more obsessed with holding them ALL the time and it became a problem when he needed to do other tasks.

The solution was provided by a teacher in his Autism Specialist School, who had years of experience of reaching children with autism. We got Liam a clear plastic pvc back-pack and when he needed to do a hands on task, she gently put all the Thomas trains in it, then let him wear it on his back.

When he completed the necessary task, he was allowed hold them again. Slowly he reduced the number of engines and increased his participation until he could happily attend at 'circle time'  holding only "Trevor the Tra…

ABA is not a therapy for Autism.
It is a behavioural science.
If a teacher with 30 pupils is using pairing and reinforcement to teach her class the national curriculum, then she is using ABA.
If a so-called aba tutor in an unrecognised so-called aba school is giving a young adult a task based on something that is; 1. not of any interest to them,
2. that does not take into account their previous skills level,
and 3. is not functionally valid, then that is not ABA.

It is not the classroom, or the age of the pupil or the tutor or even the curriculum that determines it, it is whether it is based on the foundations of behavioural science.

I was at the Red Door conference and I had an issue with the new buzzword of
"Person Centred Planning" that was coming up in some lectures.

Hang on while I put on my lycra body suit........






If the person that the planning is being centred around is assessed to determine their skills base, That is ABA. Power of "establish a base line"

If the plann…