Autism spectrum disorders: Developing communication and instructional strategies We often get questions from families about how to manage their child's Autistic spectrum disorder, in particular the use of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA). While Val and I researched an attempted to use ABA with our boys, it was not a success. We had to find [...]
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 [...]
A great many parents worry about Disney animation overstimulating their autistic child. Without question an unsupervised autistic child can become over stimulated watching Disney animation. I remember Conor as a young child glued to his favorite Disney animation and becoming totally over stimulated. It was clear to me that Conor enjoyed the experience of watching Disney animation. But I [...]
Autism and Disney animation Up to now Val and I have concentrated on general topics relating to language development. In this post we are now turning to our language research with Disney animation. We started generally because it takes a village to raise a child and understanding this is really important when it comes to autism [...]
Autism: understanding and setting expectations One of the most important yet least understood areas of special needs parenting is the area of setting expectations. Here Enda and Val talk about some of their experiences getting the balance right. For me the whole area of assessments, schools, special services, sports and expectations is an [...]
Managing behaviors: start with understanding communication In a very great number of conversations with families the issue of behaviors (or lack of) comes up when we speak about their autistic child. What I'm speaking about here is the behaviors that crop up in social situations like going shopping or eating out. The kind of thing [...]
The parent advocate and special needs families I am often asked by parents who made the most difference in the lives of the boys after diagnosis - a parent advocate, speech therapist, a school, a clinic or someone else? And what were the decisions we made that helped most in bringing the boys forward. [...]
Overcoming language disorders and building a future for our children comes in the most unexpected places. For millions of children to world over, language disorders and deficits are a major obstacle to just about everything. I remember Conor's teacher saying to me once that 'he was so intelligent but fundamentally unteachable'. Imagine saying all that in just [...]
