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 [...]
The Autistic child and communication I remember the early days of confusion surrounding Conor and Eoin after the autistic child "diagnosis". Both boys had been described as intelligent to Val and I, but at the same time unteachable and unreachable. What a nightmare, all I could think of was Dustin Hoffman in Rain man. The idea [...]
Autism: how we taught speech and language. While it might sound obvious, if your child has autism or a speech and language disorder, your ability to practice language with your child becomes very restricted. I think the key word here is practice. I remember Conor turning 10 years old and thought my god, if he and I [...]
Want to teach time? Many special needs parents ask me how to teach time to their non verbal autistic child. As with the Animated Language Learning program, visual strategies are the way to go: Help your child to x off each day on a calendar in a visible location like the kitchen. By doing this [...]
We all have tough days And in the case of parenting special needs children a lot more so. At times just trying to get through the day can be such a trial. Not to mention all the uncertainty and worry we carry around with us. So when I felt really worn-out scratching my head wondering why [...]
Members of the Dodd team speak A short video from autism experts Professors Siegel and Sullivan with Diane Provo weighing in on the Dodd family, language development and Animated Language Learning.
Language progress after 11 months I spoke on this blog, last December, about the progress we were seeing with my sons’ language. I found some video clips and spliced them together to show you how much he has progressed in the 11 months since we started using Animated Language Learning. There is just no [...]
Our thanks to Pat and Sharon for sharing their story with us on the their journey into language, reading and speech through Animated Language Learning's research!
Rian using his words I previously wrote about Rian using Animated Language Learning here. 7 months later I wanted to follow up. We started using ALL in October 2013 and in January 2014 he completely freaked out when we got to Chapter 3 – especially the scene where Rocky (the muscle guy) is using [...]
A Parent speaks I spoke to Enda on 1st October 2012 for a few hours about the ALL Programme and we decided to sign-up Rian for it that afternoon. We were initially very sceptical that Rian would actually sit in one place for more than two minutes and type. For the first few sessions, [...]
