Re: Anna's recovery
My daughter Anna LOVES cuddling by leaning in to get a hug, and putting her face against my head and neck area and making faces she wants me to copy (and shows great delight when I do). It's the thing she MOST likes to do with me.
This "cuddle & faces game" is a "repetitive game", meaning it's highly similar from iteration to iteration. The rules such are something like: "she leans in, I hug; she makes a face, I join". I'm showing how you'd keep the game fun, encourage your child throughout, but create and seize as many opportunities to teach language, the fun of variety, and other content. It's like teaching language arts or social skills are like the Christmas tree - the work-horse, the most important and biggest factor - and everything else we do and learn are like the lights and ornaments, draped on the tree to make it sparkle and flash and be exciting to look at or interact with.
So this is an example of adding variation, language, and a variety of skills training and learning to a repetitive game. See if you can count how many times I ask her to do something new and useful, such as learning vocabulary, using the internet and other computer tools, having her learn general life skills like working off a list, helping her see things are missing and add those missing words to her sentences, and more, in addition to doing just basic variation on the activity such as varying the sounds. Notice how I'm always trying to guess what she's trying to say and seeing if I can have her learn what she needs to say to get her meaning across, so her attempt to communicate all or almost all hit a target she was aiming at, and she feels bold and like talking a lot with me because there is no such thing as a failure, even if there's work and even genuine struggle in every case there's a fun or happy or playful payout. Notice that whatever arc she makes away from the activity (in this case helping me make a payment online, I help her keep finding her way back to it, as a way to slowly learn how to focus and complete an activity despite her very ADD/ADHD tendencies (it's the mildest form of autism we're delighted to be progressing into).
Isn't it shocking this child used to be able to only talk in 2-word sentences that contained only a shape and color ("blue rectangle" or "red circle" for example, to ask for a blue book or a red CD), or repeat phrases she couldn't explain or parse from computer games and kids' videos! She started in our Son-Rise® program in "Stage 1" and is now midway through "Stage 4", where completing "Stage 5" means you're no longer distinguishable / diagnosable as autistic.
To our current team members and visitors: Use this as a model for what to do in our sessions, but in your own style.
Sorry this is so long, but as you see once we're in the flow of it, it flies by and I suddenly realize it's long and stop it, having not got to our original goals necessarily but having made progress toward them, which is the key. Our sessions can go on for hours and feel like half that; when you're present and happy time flies by.
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On the side of my recovery....
Learning "industrial strength" web technology is making it realistic that I'll achieve my goal of starting a website that will hopefully rock the web. I finally know this about myself: I do best with and perhaps actually need a live coach in anything I'm learning that's complex. I have a lot of questions and basically can't progress without that coach to help clear them away; that coach in this case is a professor in a college course on those topics. I'm in the second of a 3-course series on Java programming and hope to take a course on LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) next quarter concurrently with the last of the 3 courses on server-side Java. Then I only need a class on Javascript to be off and running as far as understanding and being able to split up work, direct work, hire people etc. for the website I want to create, and be a credible leader of that business when dealing with investors in it. I didn't want to create a site and then have investors or competitors like Facebook and Google steal it out from under me or get fired by my own company because I don't understand the technology underlying my business.
I can't believe I'm saying this but I actually like programming and algorithmic thinking, and the amazing powers that you have if you can harness this tool.
I'm also WAY in love with Adobe Illustrator. I'm designing my own Power of Clarity(TM) website (powerofclarity.com using it to then send to a company in India to do the programming. It's so powerful - you can basically do anything with any image you can pretty much imagine doing. I'm not done with the book but am amazed with that I can turn out. I just whipped up a new flier which I retooled to remove the "cure" autism references, which I'm not sure is what's happening any more. I think my daughter, like me, is just learning to enjoy being with people and getting super skilled at it, which doesn't erase her underlying autistic way of viewing things, which is, I guess, really great!
If anyone wants me to whip up a flier like this for them, we can change out the pictures, text etc., I can offer that service to you. Contact me by messaging me on facebook at powerofclarity.com or email me at [email protected] or send a message through this blog, or email me at [email protected], and I'll help you prepare marketing materials of all kinds, and help you take a shot at turning your home autism therapy program at nearby colleges.
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