As parents of language deficient children we know how incredibly isolating this condition can be. Yet a great many children with this and related disorders like autism can be highly visual and with the right strategies can participate in and grow from exposure to sports. While our boys were clearly very visual, they were globally [...]
Feel you can't go shopping with your autistic child? As parents of language impaired children with the kind of behaviors that this brings, I frequently get asked about family activities. We all live in a society that is constantly checking the P's and Q's of life, what is acceptable and what is not. Despite all [...]
Autism, communication and parenting: our journey to learning readiness. One of the most frequent questions I get asked by parents is 'how do I get my son to co-operate with me?'. If I were to translate this question into a term more familiar to teachers, it would be how to get 'instructional control' [...]
Special needs parenting, you can't do it on your own. There are times that I feel a little confused by advocacy and the debate surrounding the needs of our autistic children. In all the advocacy within society about parenting special-needs children, I believe the fundamentals can get forgotten. By this I mean that [...]
Autism and getting out and about with your child. With the summer arriving, and the children soon finishing school many parents are speaking to me about getting out and enjoying the summer with their children. This can be somewhat more complicated when one or a number of your family are autistic. In many [...]
Sports activities and the autistic child. For anyone who is a frequent reader of my posts on the development of autistic children, they will know the importance I place on sports activities and the use of the great outdoors in the development of our children. And right from the get go, just as with [...]
Behavior management and the summer months. When it comes to an autistic child one of the aspects that strikes the greatest fear in parents is the whole conundrum of behavior management. And what is behavior management? In its broadest sense managing behavior is a lot about getting your autistic child to engage in society [...]
Finding Dory speaks to disabilities in a powerful way I just saw Finding Dory, another wonderful production from the guys over at Pixar. And as with many connected with Hollywood and the film industry they are challenging society to think about what we all represent. In this case the challenge comes in the form of special needs [...]
What autism services do I need? Today I'm going to speak about diagnosis and autism services in a clinical way. I will leave the enormous emotional aspect aside for another time. However I will say this, as I write here my son Conor is working across from me. He was diagnosed as autistic, intellectually disabled and profoundly [...]
Boat meets water: the lift in Having successfully brought Lea Ho to Galway, the task of preparing her for the water and dropping her in now presented. We had the advantage that she was on a very rugged trailer with lots of space around the boat to work. As my father always said, the [...]
