Curing Autism Together

First Son-Rise Training Session for an "ABA" (Applied Behavioral Analysis) Person in our Program

I have contrasted ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) and Son-Rise Program® before but never posted a training video for someone coming from that perspective, so here you go!  I recorded this at the spur of the moment - I didn't even take time to fix my hair before recording because a person was there for their training session and I felt like it was a bit over the top to do that! 

BTW, I always have in Informational Meeting before asking people to come back for training, and some of the Son-Rise perspective has already been set in that person's mind.  Then they come for their first session, like this one, which begins with me asking what they remember and about the program and their experiences (if any) with autistic people.  Then I base the training to build on what they already know.  In this case it's ABA, but that's just one of many possible approaches to teaching this material.  (If the person knows nothing about autism coming in, I have a basic training that I've already posted that is about the "5 things" - 1) The Attitude, 2) Joining, 3) Celebrating (interactions and flexibility), 4) Adding Variety 5) Positioning (for mutual peripheral vision.)

 

 

 

This is my spontaneous rendition of the "ABA person" training at a first session in ourSon-Rise program. I hope its useful for new people to Son-Rise to see.

 

Anyway, the points that came up for me were as follows:

• Son-Rise amps up quality, varied social rewards (such as varied cheering, really fun, novel and improvisational games and behaviors), for social goals, while ABA misses the point by rewarding social goals that aren't genuinely felt to engage in with non-social rewards, leading to "robotic" behaviors (which are never the case in Son-Rise).
  • Behavioral Therapy (ABA) is based on animal training, like Pavlov's Dog:  you ring a bell and give the dog a steak.  Later you ring the bell and the dog drools, because it's anticipated the sound with the steak coming after it before.  In ABA they reward the child with a positive reward - something they want - when they do a behavior that is desired, such as saying "Hello" to someone or looking at their eyes, primarily ABA gives autistic kids non-social/non-people rewards such as jelly beans to eat or electronic toys to play with, but is particularly stingy with and opposed to cheering and positive support and a flexible approach to maximally motivate the child.  They are not ushered into the joys of actual interaction being fun which limits their ultimate feeling of ease and social success, which is what we want from the Son-Rise perspective.
  • The Son-Rise rewards social elements (such as eye contact, communication and flexibility) with a amped-up social rewards, such as a friendly happy person cheering them for talking/ looking and/or more of an interactive activity they want and love, such as pulling them around the room again on a blanket as a pretend sleigh ride, or playing a game they love because the child has asked for it.  As a result "Son-Rised" children look at your eyes or talk to you because they come to enjoy your smile, enjoy seeing you understanding them, or want to hear what you want to add, while ABA children learn to speak so you will give their stuff back and leave them alone (ABA therapy includes primarily interrupting, taking stuff away the child is playing with, to get them to ask for it back), or to get food like jelly beans or something else. 
• ABA believes there are "good" and "bad" behaviors that they are the arbiters of, and rewards good and ignore (or in the old days, punish) the "bad", while Son-Rise believes that these children are doing the best they can in their situation, and loving and accepting them as a whole including the autistic behaviors they love, paves a way to bring their mind together in an organized way and to motivate them to be more social with people they feel great interacting and sharing with.  
  • ABA comes from the perspective that there are good and bad behaviors and those that the child most wants to do - their autistic behaviors such as hand flapping, rocking and spinning, which we'll call "autistic behaviors" or "isms" - are bad, and what the behavioral therapist thinks are good behaviors are, well, good.  They start with judgment and wage war on the child's autistic behaviors by taking things away and telling them to stop 24/7.  The child responds by hiding their autistic behavior from people around them and internalize there is something bad or wrong about them, or shameful, which destroys the relationship and splinters the child mentally into two spheres - the true self and the one they have to show you to not get punished by scowls or other negative treatment such as losing their preferred toys - as well as teaches them that fake, inauthentic behavior is what gets rewarded while their true passions that have the power to draw them out of their world and into ours languish.
  • Son-Rise in contrast is nonjudgmental and accepts the child's autistic behaviors as the child is doing the best they can based on their beliefs, experiences and biology, and recognizes that they serve a useful purpose to the child or they wouldn't be doing them.  That respect leads them to be like your best nonjudgmental friends or family, where you can just be yourself, work on your challenges and grow in a safe environment.  The child's connection with you gives them increasing calm and safety, and is the place social ambitions and practice take root.  We don't want to hinder that by telling them they're being bad to be what they are, autistic!

After that I went over the basics again with him - 

1) the attitude

2) joining

3) celebrating interactions

4) adding variety

5) positioning

and sent him in the room with my daughter.  Good luck and feel free to have a trainee from the "ABA perspective" watch this while you get something else done to help yourself and your child!  Best wishes and respond or contact me if you want to discuss further. Thanks for watching! 

The Work-Your-Way-out-of-Autism Method! Big Learning Opportunities in Basic Work 2017-07-11

Anna has autism and I often create curriculum for her out of what I might have or used to do FOR her which I help her do herself; often really mundane work reveals core autistic deficits precisely because they are so unadorned and basic. I find helping my child do the basic elements of work I might do for her, done with my skilled and supportive help and instruction, makes it an interactive, in-context and compelling activity for her since she gets something she wants out of it when she succeeds finally. She earns money learning cognitive skills like counting "backwards" (down) and wants to add money I paid her to a spreadsheet to make sure she has enough, which is handy way to start using graphs, negative numbers, buying on credit (with a loan from me!), budgeting, addition/ subtraction, and spreadsheet skills. She doesn't NEED to do this to get the toy, but I'm making it a condition of getting the toy that she engage in all this learning to get it, since I'm making her know what she has to spend, has left, etc.

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Youtube video:  Mundane, ordinary work algorithms reveal autistic mental architecture and movement-based cognitive challenges, and provide a clean opportunity to work on them. 

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Even in this simple activity of transferring written entries to an income vs expenses spreadsheet - the lowly task of data entry - we reveal one of the autism core challenges again: the inability to have a smooth linear representation of the flow of anything, it's all chopped up and erratic / uneven. She doesn't seem to be able to represent a number line and make incremental adjustments to it. In the same way I identified her counting one number plus another on disparate hands and in sometimes opposite directions which reflects no innate concept of a single number line to which things can be reduced, here she cannot read a list without jumping down a few and losing track of where she was, which for those functioning normally we know to not leave gaps in any number line and skipping spaces throws it alll off.

She keeps jumping several levels down because she doesn't hold her place with her finger so she keeps losing her place over and over. This is another example of how movement is underrated in it's involvement in cognitive problems and how ABMN (Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement) techniques. It reminds me of how I taught her to count with the unfolding of a single finger for each number she incremented up.

I also threw in a few impromptu ABMN directions partway through - moving slowly, asking her to do different movements she's not used to doing, in this case with her elbows because she put her elbow out toward me - an atypical movement - and I jumped on it. Leading your child in intentional, slow, atypical movements that require thought and body awareness throughout are at the heart of the ABM Neuromovement toolbox, and can help boost your child's neuroplasticity, which can speed their recovery from autism, as if making them younger again when recovery was easier.

"Inner vs. Outer Sensory Loop" Theory Clarified + Today's session on Describing & Answering "why"

INNER VS OUTER LOOP - CLARIFICATION

I got a lot of responses to my "inner vs. outer sensory loop" theory of autism.  In this post I want to refine and clarify the theory, and wanted to update you on how my daughter is doing since starting exercises I created for her to strengthen the "outer" loop, based on implications of my theory.

I realized the "inner" vs. "outer" loop terms might be obscuring the fundamental distinction: whether a person is relatively disregarding (or involuntarily cut off from processing) data from their senses, vs. more continuously aware of their senses.  It appears as if people who are autistic drop into periods where they are less aware of the present, unable/less able to take in, store and process new information, and are preoccupied with either just doing very simple activities in a "safe idle" mode, or preoccupied with pulling data stored from the past in a compulsive and repetitive way.  This "mode" seems to reflect a shut off of a person's mental structures responsible for short-term sensory or cognitive data storage and manipulation, which is analogous to a computer not having any ram memory left.  (This state reminds me a lot of my grandmother when she had alzheimer's and how we'd have the same conversation several times within a 20 minute period as if she couldn't store any of it.)  and which inhibits ability to retain and create new mental content, which is what identifies them as autistic.  

Maybe we should call this "sensory/ short-term memory inhibited state" or something like that.   We'll see. 

One of our longest-term Son-Rise Participants ends - Alexis leaves to be a baker!  A very talented artist and missed already.  

My definitions are:

• "awareness" for my purposes here means able to have a thought about about something whether it's expressed outwardly or not (which sounds like a statement you could objectively say to someone), which is sensory such as "I like how that feels", or mental, like "I recognize this face".  Even our pets have this awareness in a nearly unbroken way.  It's autistic people who drop in and out of this state which is largely the reason they have the diagnosis.  (Its disturbing to be in an elevator with someone else's pet and be thinking how much better their eye contact is compared with your child, but I have had that experience!  This is also why we feel like we "know" our dog is loving us, trusting us and enjoying being pet.)  

 

• the "outer loop":  person is nearly continuously monitoring sensory data of all kinds, whether the senses are focused outward or inwardly, which is the "normal" human state.  "Outer" means allowing sensory data to filter in from the "outside" of one's central mental processes. Senses the person if monitoring include:
  • outwardly focused senses, such as: vision, hearing, temperature/ touch, equilibrium sensors in your ears, or
  • inwardly focused senses (which are as yet unnamed)!  They are whatever process or structure is responsible for making the core process of your brain that you identify as "you" aware that you are "upset" or that you "have an idea".   your meeds and feelings and feeling sensing and thought sensing structures or processes which I am not sure yet have a name.  

 Anna & Alexis clowning around earlier this year.

 

• the "inner loop":  person is disconnected from their sensory processes whether internal or external which just causes them to act without being "aware" of it, or as aware of it, as they are when they are not "isming" (in their autistic withdrawal).  This causes them tojust take in and retrieving information (the "inner" loop) in a more compulsive (hard to consciously stop) way.   It's as if our autistic kids are in a sensory deprivation tank, which causes normal people to start digging into their memories and fantasies to give their brain content without which it will go crazy.  the content for my daughter anyway, are certain events and rehearsed, highly memorized videos and songs from the past. 

 

This is important distinction because helping a child check in with their activities whether mental or physical are equally important.  I realized my daughter is "remembering", an action, and point that out.  When my daughter stops interacting mid-conversation, and looks away, and just starts reciting lines from a movie she's seen (inner loop), it's NOT the same as if she thinks to herself or says "I'm remembering a movie" (outer loop), which then leaves her free to decide whether or not to say the words out loud. I don't believe my daughter has the choice, much as we have a "song stuck in our head" but it overtakes her whole self until she "comes out if it". It's as if her either normal cognitive processes stop or her long-term memory storage comes aggressively out to overtake her.  At that time you can't raise her awareness and grow her short-term memory, it's only when she's out of that "ism" period, interacting again.  Mining your memory can happen in a context of being very outward-loop aware, such as when you told a story to a friend in a very interactive way, or can be done in an  inner-loop way that causes the child to just repeat that phrase or scene without perceiving much besides it (as if you're not there).  I'm making you aware to see how there is a distinction so you can point out to your child that they were "remembering" and celebrate when they say they are, which starts making them more aware when they actually are next time. 

 

 

Documenting the struggle! Starting to work on describing and answering "why" questions in a context of getting the date from a phone calendar app

 

THE GOOD NEW IS THIS IS WORKING!

The good new is the focus on "say what you see", now expanded it "say what you hear, feel, do, and think" is having the desired effects!  Friday (May 5, 2017) she suddenly said "Did you hear that?" I hadn't heard anything and asked, "what?" to which she said, "the church bells", with a kind of excitement I see in normal kids but not often in my daughter.  I could just barely hear them and celebrated her noticing and pointing that out. She's been talking about more recent events more frequently and I'm excited to hear her talking about things that just happened minutes before, which hardly ever used to happen.  I'm just creating activities and rewards (especially celebrating, which is from Son-Rise) to invite her to focus on the present sensory ("outer") loop. It seems to be growing her long-term memory and propensity to focus there.

 

TODAY'S SESSION - DOCUMENTING INABILITY TO DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN YOURSELF

I've now included work on describing things which has the side effect of directing focus to the present outer sensory loop, too.  I was so frustrated to discover today that my daughter couldn't describe anything. We ended up googling what "describe" means and doing examples just before this video was starting to be recorded.  We will continue working on describing. 

The reason I want to document some of the messy sessions rather than spectacular ones is because most of them are of the messy variety and take lots of work to yield small rewards.  I get frustrated sometimes, really frustrated!  Some of that is in this video and I wanted you to see everyone does at times.  People get frustrated with "normal" kids too.  You're not alone getting frustrated.  Anat Baniel says that a small change in a large, complex system can be more significant than you may realize and have unexpectedly large effects in the future, like infants learn a series of skills that suddenly allow them to roll over or stand up.  There's hope as long as there's any change, no matter how small, and you keep looking for it and amplifying it with your focus and celebration!

New Theory on Autism: "Inner" vs. "Outer Sensory Loop" Dominance in Autism

ABM + SON-RISE YIELDS A NEW INSIGHT

I recently had a major insight about what characterizes an autistic vs. a "normal" person's mental functioning, which I have for the time "inner" vs. "outer" "sensory loop dominance",  which has significant implications for autism recovery therapy.  This insight grew from my attempts to integrate both the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) and Option Process/ Son-Rise Program perspectives on the same behavior in my child.  

 

ABM HELPS A PERSON FOCUS ON SENSING IN THE PRESENT THROUGH SENSING VARIATIONS THEIR BODY IN THE PRESENT

Several months into my Anat Baniel Method® (ABM) professional training I started noticing that ABM addressed the "outer sensory loop" (I invented this term / phrase) awareness, such as that a person is seeing something and feeling something new as we move their limbs very slowly and gently around in their zone of comfort, which is what happens in an ABM lesson.  ABM is all centered around a person better sensing their body movement and positioning relative to the world around them better and more accurately, and growing awareness and focus on the present in the process.  This "outer loop" awareness spurs brain organization and neuroplasticity, and is generalizable to other abilities in the brain, so ease with focusing on how a person's arm is moving and feeling in the present for long periods make it easier for that person to focus on what they are seeing or hearing for long periods, too. 

 

Anna and I do session in the car on the way home from dropping my son at school - I'm trying to figure out where to put the camera to be able to start recording and posting those.

 

OPTION PROCESS / SON-RISE PROGRAM HELPS A PERSON SENSE THE PRESENT BETTER VIA A PARTICULAR MENTAL MODEL 

I put this side by side with my Option Process® training, on which the Son-Rise® Program is based (I'm a Certified Option Process Mentor-Counselor but don't have any formal certification in Son-Rise, only my 10+ years experience using it at the time of writing this), in which a person learns how to be more aware of their "inner sensory loop" (again, a term/ phrase I invented), This means focusing on the present like ABM, only instead of just asking, "what am I seeing? what am I feeling (with my body)", Son-Rise/Option includes the questions "What am I focusing on?" which we call the "stimulus", then either "what am I believing about that?" or "how am I responding to that?" (which breaks into two forms - "how do I feel about that?" and "what and I doing / what did I do in response"?).  This is the "stimulus --> belief --> response" ("SBR") model:

SBR model:      stimulus  --> belief --> response 

The "stimulus" can be present or recent events, like seeing that it's raining outside or hearing you say "hi" to me, or remembering that I broke a glass that morning so I might remind my children to watch that area of the kitchen, or realizing my leg is falling asleep so I might reposition it.  That would be pulling from my mental "ram", which is our version of short-term memories or immediate response to sounds I hear in the present of just after it, such as hearing you say "hi", then immediately deciding to respond and say "Hi" back. It might also be pulling out info from the mental hard drive (to use a tech analogy) I have storing TV shows and replaying them to myself and everyone around me - that's the inner loop because it's not happening right now and is recreated from my long-term memory.  Our short term memories get at least partially integrated into our long term memories during sleep.  

 

SOLVING THE PUZZLE OF REALITY VS. REHEARSED

Both ABM and Son-Rise agree that self-awareness of movement and adding the opportunity of variations are the magic to recovery from autism, and both agree on the equivalence of  physical and mental changes as movement.  The word "emotion" has the word "motion" in it, it's a thing we do just like walking, and similarly stimulus we react to can be from our memories as easily as the thing in front of our faces right now.  What's different between autistic people appears to be the dominance of the inner stimulus over the outer one, at least in those who are lucky enough to get as verbal as my daughter and me.  I remember when I started getting trained in Son-Rise I became more aware of how people were reacting to what I said, so I started being more aware of seeing if I was talking too long on a topic, whereas when I was more autistic I would try to avoid seeing their reaction, only focused on what I was saying and my fear of what they might be thinking, both my inner mental loop.  My daughter similarly is focused on stories and commentary about them that are highly rehearsed and she's learning her experience - we all seem happy to be interacting that way so she's done because she's getting what she wants from us.  Yet this is not going to server her later and not what we really want.  

It appears that my child is nearly totally focused on the process of loading data from her longer term memory (which is like a hard drive) rather than her shorter term memories of what just happened, which is from her short-term memory (analogous to "ram", which is the temporary memory on a computer that is forgotten if not saved to long-term memory, which is the "hard drive" in a computer).  In fact she just about never brings up something that happens in real life.  I suddenly realized this is because real life has no repeat, no rehearsal either for how to describe the stimulus nor her responses to it.  Moreover I don't usually repeat or practice commenting about recent events with her to help her practice on fresher and more novel material.  She wants us to be happy with her and love and interact with her, and if she can watch shows and practice sentences about it over and over, why wouldn't she, since we do Son-Rise and we are celebrating her interaction?  I also create variations on my responses so I create just enough novelty to make that seem interesting to her, so why not keep doing that (at least from her perspective)?  

I suddenly realized I was asking for what I wanted (understandable, because I this is not part of the Son-Rise Developmental model), nor to look for, set up opportunities to exercise this mental muscle, or celebrate more current as opposed to old and rehearsed memories and conversations.  I realized she may need me to repeat or dwell a bit on newer content to make it seem more memorable or practice something to say about that.  I also realized asking her NOT to talk about cartoons may be key to stopping the pattern, since she knows I love and accept her and can help her do the other kinds of sentences, so there's little or no loss in empathy or desire to connect between us when I ask for the change.  She's come to prefer the ease of practiced sentences over the messy and different process of making up new ones and needs time and opportunities to try this new approach.  I cannot emphasize enough that that is a different process - invention in the moment vs. rehearsal and repetition.  From ABM I know that people learn their experience and that learning anything is a very random and disorderly process with lots of "mistakes" that give the brain information it needs to do things in a better, more refined and complex way, and her rehearsed sentences she rattles off and my cheerful responses are restricting her growth.  So I decided to just be honest and blunt with her, that I didn't want to talk about cartoons, which is something I often say now.

From my Son-Rise training I learned that what we focus on grows, and if we wanted to increase my child's ability and propensity to invent new sentences about new things, we need to focus on it, both asking for it, celebrating when we get it, and devising ways - developmental goals - to enhance it. The video included here is about how to do this, including how to enhance focus on present by having a child:

• tell the difference between two things e.g. 10 things,
• describe one thing with at least 5 descriptors, which causes focus on the thing and differentiation in thinking about it, to its qualities,
• writing stories about recent things, which grows focus on recording and speaking about recent events to start rivaling cartoons she's seen hundreds of time, since she has to slow down to write about them and create those sentences with help from me, and then can read proudly to others about these new stories rather than about the Simpsons and My Little Pony shows.
• saying what he sees / hears/ feels/does in the present, such as naming everything her eyes land on,
• listing what happened "today" or "yesterday". 
• asking her to "freeze" and then describe what she's doing with various parts of her body, such as "I'm sitting on the chair.  My left leg it crossed over my right.  My elbows are both on the armrests of the chair.  My right foot is on the floor on a blanket.  I am holding my fork and eating spaghetti."  All this creates body awareness a la ABM as well as being present to an outer loop, albeit still in our bodies, at least it's not a memory.
• Bring your child's attention back to immediate or recent events that might be interesting and help her formulate things she wants to say about it. 

 

 

Video about how autistic people focus on their memories (inner sensory loop) at the expense of their current senses (outer sensory loop) and how to gently shift the balance - it's working!
 

IT'S WORKING

Yesterday Seraphina almost tripped as she got up from the kitchen table and Anna just went on to talk about ponies like nothing had happened, and I saw the opportunity to focus on the present as kids are always interested in keystone cop type falls - why cartoons have so much physical humor - and was likely to consider focusing on the near fall for that reason has she not nearly forgotten it or ignore it a moment later.  I either interrupted her or right after she stopped talking, reminder her about Seraphina nearly falling and asked Seraphina to show and tell us why she almost fell.  The conversation shifted but then about 5 min later, my daughter actually said something about Seraphina almost falling, something she just about NEVER does - a very recent event.  

This happened this morning again.  I was working this morning on "say what you see (and hear)" in our notebook which she was doing to earn money to buy another pony, refusing to talk about cartoons, and helping her talk about other non-cartoon (non inner-loop) things all morning.  Then Shelby arrived, and I was telling Shelby Seraphina could not come Mondays to team meetings so we had to leave them on Tues or Thurs, to which Shelby reiterated that she could not do those days.  A few minutes later, Anna again said something like, "Did Shelby say she couldn't come Tuesdays?" Which blew me away since nearly everything she says until recently is "Did Homer hit Smithers?" (from the Simpsons) or "Did Rarity sing the Manhattan song?" (from My Little Pony), or some other "canned" question about a cartoon where she's expecting a certain response from me.  This was so normal I was inspired to start posting about this.  

 

MISSING FROM THE SON-RISE DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL 

This entirely new focus is something that should be but isn't in the Son-Rise Developmental Model bus it MAJOR, so we're adding it. Son-Rise avoids this quagmire by asking people to avoid all media for their child - no iPods, TV, videos, internet, etc. which is just not working for us and most of those I know.  We need that safe activity to keep our children busy when we are in a safe way, rather than hurting themselves.  

This element is in addition to a number of other things I've added to it for my child, bringing things I've added to the model to:

• Focusing on the outer loop and more current events - at least those that aren't as rehearsed (discussed here);
• Delegating roles and giving good directions for that person, including algorithmic thinking;
• Organizing / categorizing / organizing which is REALLY hard for many with autism especially those with Aspergers;
• Interacting with 2 or more other people at a high level including moderating activities so people are included and brought up to speed with what others know;
• Self-care at all levels (safety, being able to make phone calls for basic needs, being able to do math at the grocery store, cooking for herself, identifying goals and going for them, etc.);
• (I can't remember the others just now so I'll come back and fill them in later! I'm on a different computer that doesn't have my notes on this).

I'll keep you up to date as this develops. 

 

CONTACT ME IF YOU WANT A CONSULT

I figured it would be a good idea to offer what I know to those just starting out or who are interested in adding ABM to their Son-RIse Program as I did.  I'm open for phone consults and home visits starting now on that.  Contact me at 866-my-coach(692-6224) or at autismcoaches.com or autismpowercoaches.com (still deciding on name) at [email protected] or [email protected].

BTW I'm planning to get certified in the Anat Baniel Method in May 2017 (next month) and work mainly if not exclusively with autistic kids and see how this goes.  I have to start with autistic adults in May 2017 but starting in July 2017 when ABM Children's Mastery classes start I can work with kids.

Turning Autistic Repetitive Sentences into Stories! & Setting up to do Anat Baniel (ABM) Practitioner services next month!

Anna keeps talking about certain events - fictitious or real - over and over all day for days, composing 80% of what she spontaneously talks about, and is on her mind that day; everything else is in response to something I - or our other Son-Rise® Program participants - said on another topic. This is a higher functioning autistic trait - they call it "obsession" or "compulsion" - it's like having a song tune stuck in your head all day and so strongly if effectively blocks out all other topics and learning.  Anat Baniel Method helps by giving the child direct physical experiences that have new variations built in and feel great and go directly to the brain to stimulate change, but in the mean time, Son-Rise also does wonders for it, only directly cognitively.  

Anna's most recent haircut April 2017.

I recognized I wanted to open up my daughter's receptiveness to the more recent, outward experiences (see another post I plan to put up next about the nature of autism being trapped in an inward loop) to create new experiences she can talk about something new and current and real, otherwise she retells stories from Arthur, the Simpsons, and other shows over and over - although she is starting - after years of my suggesting - to create her own stories mixing together cartoon story lines and characters from various shows she watches.

I'm always looking to teach her skills she could get paid for, and writing stories is one I've been asking her to do for years, since she's an excellent illustrator and loves cartoon stories by others. I realized this morning she was telling a STORY, and it would be useful to go from a self-limiting repetitive verbalization to a real story in many ways. I quickly created another spiral curriculum book, "Anna's Stories".

 

I helped her with this first story a lot but she was enjoying it and her "learning switch" (an Anat Baniel Method term) was "on" for sure! I plan to guide her to write her repetitive story line she's obsessed with into stories which she could illustrate, thereby feeling happy and working diligently at practicing story construction, sentence structure, verb tenses, clauses, punctuation, giving context, sequencing events, describing things, etc - all things we're working on right now. An opportunity seized! Try it with your autistic child!

I run a Son-Rise® Program and am an Anat Baniel Method® Practitioner (as of May 2017). Message if you want to discuss! I'm going to start doing home visits to work with autistic kids using similar techniques!