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Autism Help for Parents: How We Got Our Twins into Mainstream Classes

Autism-Help-for-Parents-Mainstream-ClassesWhen it comes to providing help for parents who have children with autism, I like to share my experiences. If there’s any possibility that I can help other parents like you—I’m there. I am always willing to tell you what I’ve learned.

The way I look at it, there’s always a need for more autism help for parents.

Our twin boys were diagnosed with autism in 2003. They were three years old. My wife and I had incredibly mixed feelings. On one hand we were happy because we finally knew why our boys hadn’t spoke a word yet, and at the same time feeling completely helpless as neither of us knew anything about autism. If you’re a parent of a child—or children—with autism, you know what I mean.
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Autism Help for Parents: Great Tips from a Sensory Design Specialist

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When you’re a parent of a child on the autism spectrum you’ve got a thousand (extra) things to do. We hear you! Maybe redecorating your child’s room doesn’t fall high on your list. But we loved the child’s bedroom improvement ideas shared by Environmental designer Lauren S. Henry. We thought you might find a tip or two to help you.

Lauren Henry uses color and pattern to support children’s environmental needs and provide autism help for parents. She applies a wide variety of techniques to transform the lives of children diagnosed with autism and other special needs through their surroundings.

Here are our favorite tips from Lauren’s helpful list.

Autism Help for Parents: 3 Sensory Design Tips from Lauren S. Henry

Use indirect lamps for lighting. Examine all the lighting in your home and your child’s bedroom. Lauren advises that you “stay away from all florescent lighting, period.” Try lamps instead of overhead florescent lighting.

Add indoor plants. Consider adding indoor plants, even if you don’t have a “green thumb”. Lauren suggests adding plants because they ground our children and us as parents.

Avoid transparent toy containers. When storing your child with autism’s toys and belongings rethink use of transparent containers. According to Lauren, see through containers and boxes can contribute to visual chaos, overstimulation and anxiety for special needs children.

Please click over to Lauren S. Henry’s helpful blog article, Top 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Child’s Life Now. Click here to read her complete article. Her tips will give you some great, easy to do ideas. We can all use more autism help for parents!

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

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Music is One of the Best Activities for Kids with Autism

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I think music is absolutely one of the best activities for kids with autism. Music played a huge role for me when working with my twin boys diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

I was so lucky to be able to learn music and the piano, myself, at a young age. By the age of four, I was a child prodigy playing difficult piano pieces. I went to Berkley School of Music in Boston. Later I became a music composer as well as a musician.

I was so lucky because I played keyboards with lots of different bands. The bands ranged from jazz, to metal bands to rock. It was so cool.

So, as you can imagine, I really believe that old saying, “Music has the ability to soothe the savage beast”.

I think music is just as important as English, mathematics or any other school subject. Fortunately, our boys love music too. One has learned to play the violin and drums. The other is learning to play the piano. Although, one of our twins also loves art. He’s become an illustrator and draws pictures for stories all the time.

Music Provides Great Autism Help for Parents!

Music became especially helpful when our twins transitioned to mainstream school from special education classes. That’s also about the time the boys became interested in socializing with other children. For your child on the spectrum, an interest in music might come at a different time.

Because of the boys’ transition to mainstream classes, I was inspired to write about singing, dancing. I wanted to help them understand how we use our words to socialize with others.

My friend, Kelly Keeling helped me create an album of songs on the topic of social learning. He’s a wonderful singer. Kelly and I met twenty years ago while we were playing together in the band Baton Rouge. (We were signed to Atlantic records.)

Then 20 years later I called Kelly to help me with this unique children’s set of songs. I wanted to write music to help our twins learn about social awareness and social skills through original songs. Eventually, these became the songs we used when developing our social learning program, The Social Express.

We named the collection of songs (album) “On Our Way to Happy Village”. The music is for our upcoming software (Brighten Learning) which is due out in 2013.

We finished the music first and thought people would enjoy it even though the software isn’t finished. The proceeds for sales of songs on Lime Green Limousine go to help research for Autism.

My boys really like one song I wrote, Feelings Change Each Day. They also like a soft ballad I wrote, Beautiful Day. If you’d like to check out the lyrics, you can click to this website. www.limegreenlimo.com/lyrics

When to Use Music with Your Child

I suggest that you try using music with your child with autism, if you don’t already. Anytime of the day or evening is good. When they need to settle down, or when they may be starting to have a meltdown.

I play softer songs like ballads for our boys at night when they’re getting ready to go to sleep. We play songs on the iPad. You can also play songs for your child on a PC.

Sometimes when they come home from school, they have to get the pent-up energy out. Do your kids have this energy thing when they come home from school?

Anyway, we put on music, sing and dance together. We have fun and the boys get the bugs out and work off their energy from the day at school. We think music is one of the activities for kids with autism.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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How Our Social Learning Software Helps Your Child

Social-Learning-Software-Autism-Help-for-ParentsThe Social Express is a 16-lesson social learning software program designed to provide autism help for parents of children with autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD.

Autism Help for Parents

Children diagnosed on the autism spectrum do not learn the skills needed to be effective adults in the same way that other children without the autism diagnosis do.

Our program provides autism help for parents by making it easier for you to work with your child with autism between therapy sessions.  The Social Express helps you to reinforce the social skills that your child may be learning in classes or therapy sessions.

The Social Express introduces many skills that are needed for your child to become socially competent. Improved social skills may help your child with autism to make friends more easily.

Children with social learning challenges require direct instruction, with each facet of every skill broken down into small pieces. The Social Express addresses the areas of social skills needs by providing a highly animated, interactive and visual presentation.

Here are a few of the social skills included in our 16-lesson learning program:

– Being With the Group: Keep Your Body Facing the Group

– Pick the Feeling: Use Your Eyes and Brain to Figure Things Out

– Say the Right Thing: Talk About What the Group Is Talking About

How Our Social Learning Software Benefits Your Child

The Social Express is mainly developed to help elementary school age children with autism, Asperger’s and ADHD.  Here are three suggestions for working with the program:

Work through the program along with your child. It is best if you work with your child when using The Social Express learning software. Instead of letting your child interact with the program alone, it’s key to work through the lessons with your child. This way you can more easily reinforce social skills with your child between therapy sessions.

Pause the software to discuss what he or she is learning. When using The Social Express with your child, stop the software in between each lesson. That way you can discuss the social skill being presented by the program with your child. This becomes a “teachable moment” for you with your child.

Review each lesson with your child.  Revisit each lesson and allow your child to select the “wrong” answer. Then you can explain to your child what happens in social situations with other children when someone makes the “wrong” choice.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

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Autism Help for Parents: Win Our Social Learning Software

Autism-Software-Smart-Apps-for-KidsOur friends at the popular website, SmartAppsForKids.com are launching The Social Express GIVEAWAY.

You can find out how to win a copy of The Social Express by clicking to the Smart Apps For Kids site here.

SmartAppsForKids.com calls our autism software:

“The Social Express, the app everybody wants…”

We love hearing that! We developed The Social Express to fill the need for autism help for parents. The Social Express is popular with teachers and therapists too. But we’re really glad that it’s the autism software app of choice for many parents who want to help their children to improve social learning.

If you know of anyone looking for autism help for parents, tell them  about The Social Express. Parents can help their kids with autism improve social skills using our autism software on just about any device you like. The Social Express is available for PC, Mac, or iPad.

How Autism Software Helps Your Child

The Social Express is engaging, educational autism software for children and young adults with social learning challenges. The software is designed to teach users how to think about and manage social situations. This way it helps them to develop meaningful social relationships with other children and succeed in life.

Using video modeling, The Social Express helps your child with autism, Asperger’s, or ADHD to work on skills that he or she needs to make friends. Skills like self-regulating, recognizing other people’s facial expressions, and how to keep the right distance from others in a conversation.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

Visit the Smart Apps For Kids website to learn more about The Social Express GIVEAWAY. Click here to check out their website.

 

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How to get your kids with autism to ask you for help

One thing our twin boys have in common with apparently most people in the world is their love of computers.  Our early riser especially likes to play with it before the rest of us are even awake!  The last few days the computer he uses hasn’t been working. Surely he MUST want to use it. He LOVES it. But, will our child with autism simply ask us for help to get back to one of his favorite activities?

This is a question that goes back eight years.  As toddlers they would stand at the gate by the stairs screaming  even though they knew the words, and/or signs, for up, down, open, and help. At least we knew what was troubling them, which was not always the case.  Their adamant avoidance of language left them alternating between screaming and being mute.

I remember when one of the boys ate five waffles in one sitting.  I didn’t even know he was hungry. I felt so sad. The psychology and sociology classes I took in college made me think indicating needs such as hunger and pain is what made us human.  They never mentioned autism.

Here are some of the things we did to get our kids with autism to ask for help:

Modeling: “Say, I need help zipping my jacket.” And have them repeat it.

PECS (picture exchange system): Have them point to, or bring you, the picture of what they need. You can take your own photos of their favorite food or toys.

Hiding: Put their backpack, or other necessary item, out of sight to try to engage them.

Prompting: “If you need help getting the computer to work, you need to ask Dad for help.”

One of the issues we had with their early success was just trying to recognize the success. They both had a problem of projecting their voices, which may be a problem for your child with autism.  They would say ‘help’ for example, but even the people standing very close by couldn’t hear them.

Another issue is time.  This all may sound simple, but for kids with autism, practicing how to ask for help is a goal for the long haul.  In the beginning, if we hid their favorite stuffed animal that they slept with every night, they would simply go to bed without it.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Eventually, they asked for their animals.

This morning one twin prompted the other to ask Dad for help.  We’ve waited a long time for today.

What have you done to get your child with autism to ask for help?

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How To Navigate The Public School for Your Autistic Child’s Education Part 2

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As we shared in our last post we learned a ton as we started our autistic twins education inside the public school district.

Having taken a ‘deer in the headlights’ approach to our first IEP (Individual Education Program) meeting, it was more of a survival technique than a strategy. The twins were just two, and we had no advanced knowledge of what an IEP was prior to being immersed in one. Here are some thoughts we learned along the way that we wanted to share with you on your journey to educate your child with autism in the public school system.

Workshops.  Our Regional Center provides meetings twice a year for parents to learn about the special education process.  This includes explaining what an IEP is, tips for preparing for the meeting, and your rights.

Standards. Your school can provide you with a pamphlet each year that outlines the standards for all subjects for your child’s grade.  This will help you see where they are headed and where your child will need a goal.

IEP. IEP’s are prepared by the school team to assess the child’s current status and prepare for the future year.  They are held annually.  Every three years they include an expanded assessment prepared by the school psychologist, and additional questionnaires prepared by the parents.

Meetings generally begin with a review of the goals from the prior IEP. The new IEP starts with an overview of Present Levels, a review of the new Goals, then Accommodations, Modifications and Services that will be provided. You are welcome to invite other team members you are working with outside of school if you have any.

Present Levels. It can be difficult for you to read about your child’s behavior, or level of functioning, seeing it on paper, while other people are around you, even though you live with it. It’s difficult. You may feel defensive or taken back, or in denial. A lot of emotion can come up.

Maybe being around them at home you get used to their behavior. Maybe you don’t see it because life forces you to ’just keep swimming’. Maybe they’re getting away with behaviors at school that they don’t even try at home or  maybe the school is exaggerating.

This is a piece of the having a child with autism in the public school system puzzle you will have to get used to on your own.  Just be aware that this could be upsetting and that everyone is there to help.  Keep in mind that you can’t get to the solutions until you examine the problem.

Goals.  Our approach has been to ask each team member in advance of the meeting for a copy of the new goal.  There’s a lot of information to go over in an IEP meeting (especially when you have 2 kids on the autism spectrum).

Having a little of that information in advance has been very helpful to us. When goals are presented to us at the meeting for the first time we often don’t have feedback, because we are just trying to take it all in.  When we have a chance to review them in advance we feel empowered to roll up our sleeves and be a part of the team.

Accommodations, Modifications and Services. The latter part of the IEP will specify what is needed in terms of personnel and provisions to accomplish the goals. Staff may assist your child in the classroom, or in small groups, or even one-to-one.

Standardized testing may be taken in a smaller setting and with more time.  Even seating in the classroom may be discussed.  Does your child do better being closer to the teacher, or closer to the board, or in the back of the classroom where no noise is behind them?

Anything that can advance the education of your child is welcome for discussion.  Please let us know if you have questions in the comments section below.  We’d also love to hear things that worked for you as you worked with the public school system for your autistic child’s education. Good Luck.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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How to Choose an App for Kids With Autism

You’re so excited! You just discovered the app store on your computer or your mobile device, however, your head is spinning with the amount of apps available for kids with autism. From social skills to math and everything in between, no worries, I know how you feel. I remember my first time checking out apps and thinking ‘how in the world I am going to know what is a gimmick versus what will actually hold my twins attention?’

There are tons of free apps out there and just as many for less than $5.00. My first advice for you is to download an app based on a target area which you are currently working on. I found the non educational apps such as Angry Birds, Bubble Popper, Can Knockdown and Ant Smasher (just to name a few) to be good for my twins to play just for fun. Some of these actually seem to have helped with hand and eye coordination as well.

Be careful though not to let them play some of these apps for too long. Angry Birds in particular seems to make one of my boys extremely anxious. I understand as I have clocked several hours playing this addicting game myself.  Here are just a few apps which I have found to be very useful for my kids with autism.

TT Clock- A great app for learning how to tell time

Kids Math Fun- Another great one for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They have it broken out for different grades which is nice

Vocabulary Builder- Learn a new word every day

Sentence Builder– One of my favorites!

Question Builder- A great way to learn who, where, what and why questions

Story Builder- Helps to teach what will happen next.

Shell Lagoon- Works on Homonyms, Synonyms and Antonyms

Piano Plus– A fun way to learn how to play the piano

A Checklist for Choosing an App for Kids with Autism

Making a checklist before jumping into the app store makes a lot of sense to help you decide which app to buy.

1. Write down your target areas.
2. Read reviews before downloading.
3. Ask you therapist or teacher which apps they are using and you can download the same to supplement at home.
4. Make sure to open up the preferences or setting in each new app (if part of the app) and customize to your child’s ability.
5. Pick up a few fun non-educational apps which can be used for downtime fun.

Can you tell us which apps you like to use for your kid(s) with autism?

Image:iStockphoto.com

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Getting Your Kids with Autism into Community Sports

Community sports and kids with autism can feel like a scary situation for most parents who are raising a child or children on the spectrum.  How could our boys possibly follow the directions, stay with the group or not have a meltdown which could distract the other team members from their fun time?

These were the thoughts that ran through our heads when some friends suggested that we sign the twins up for sports. After all, making friends, developing a competitive spirit, learning how to be a good sport and having a social outlet were all the things we were working toward. And, as a child, I couldn’t wait to go and play sports with my friends. In fact, my father was a co-founder of a basketball league which was a huge success!

Our first try was soccer, however that ended fairly quickly after several different occasions where the twins just kept running a la Forrest Gump style, away from the field. Next was basketball, ah my favorite sport. I volunteered to be a coach on the team. Greatest achievement was when one of the boys got a basket, however, it was the other teams basket.

We still cheered along with everyone else in the gym like they just dunked like Michael Jordan. You know, we would have kept them in the program but the gym was so incredibly loud with whistles, buzzers, and people everywhere that it quickly became clear that this was way too over stimulating for them.

We then said let’s try some individual sports. We signed them up for swimming and gymnastics, and SUCCESS! We continue to be involved with these sports today

Here are three things that we learned which gave our kids with autism the best results.

1.It was better to have them play with kids that were younger.
2.While most parents dropped their kids off, we stayed to provide extra support.
3.Individual sports with other children present, such as swimming and gymnastics, worked better then group sports particularly where there were just too many directions.

Resources to Check Out in Your Community

There are plenty of places which offer community sports such as the Boys and Girls Club, local community centers, Boy Scouts, local chapters for the Autism Society, Autism Speaks and Kids Included Together (KIT).

National Organizations That Helped Our Kids with Autism

Every geographical area has its own organizations, here are some of the National ones which we found to be very good with the twins

My Gym– Nation’s leading non-competitive gymnastics and play program. 200+ locations offering Mommy and Me, gymnastics, birthday parties, camps and other fantastic

J.W. Tumbles– Exercising young minds and bodies is important. So is having fun. Our goal is to make learning not only a great experience, but also a rewarding one.

YMCA– We know that lasting personal and social change comes about when we all work together. That’s why, at the Y, strengthening community is our cause.

All in all, our experience of putting our twins in sports was a mixed bag. However, once we found out what worked and what didn’t work, we now feel like everyone in our family is winning from being involved with the community.

Do you have any thoughts on what sports you would try for kids with autism?

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Welcome to Their World Blog Posts

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Thank you to blogger and Mom Mandy  Nite creator of Welcome to Their World  for this inspiring post on how The Social Express is helping their family.

The Social Express

The Social Express by Brighten Learning, Inc is a wonderful app for social skills. This app has to be the top social app I’ve seen on the market. This app has everything imaginable about social skils learning except for the live person!!! This app is amazing for children with ADHD, Autism, and Asperger’s. This app teaches your child how to manage social situations and how to deal with stressful ones too. The Social Express is available on the Ipad, PC, and the Mac. The graphics of this app are amazing and the sound is perfect. The price might seem high but once you try the app (which you can do on their website) you will see why immeditatly. The Social Express app has 16 lessons that are all interactive with 30 scenes and 2 levels of play. Level 1- is for younger users and/or children that have a significant difficulty understanding of social skills and level 2- is for children that have understanding of social skills just not sure how to use them correctly in the real-world. Each level will end with a review and a key that will unlock the Clubhouse at the end. This app has been a magic worker for my almost 8yr old daughter and I plan on starting my 6yr old son on it too. I used my 8yr old to test out the app and she is currently on level 1 and we are about half of the way through. She is starting to use what she learned in the app in the real-world and I’m amazed everyday by the progress made. She has significant social skill problems in that she has high functioning autism and selective mutism and ADHD. She has even started to talk with other children one on one slowly with a little prompting and a few reminders of social skills but is getting the hang of it. I could go on and on about this wonderful app but I will leave the rest for you to learn about on their website with a few key points below:

Here’s some of the info right from their website about this app

The 16 interactive lessons target a comprehensive set of skills, including:
● Joint Attention
● Identifying Emotions
● Problem Solving
● Conversational Skills
● Self-Regulation – Coping Strategies
● Reading Non-Verbal Cues
● Sequencing
● Perspective Taking – Theory of Mind
● Understanding Figurative Language in Conversations

Printables
The Social Express features five sets of Printables comprising 17 total pages. The Printables include:
● Achievement Certificates, personalized with the user’s name and presented at the completion of a skill level
● Character Profiles of all the main characters in the software, including a blank template for drawing and writing “Things I Know About” details regarding people the user knows in real life
● Hidden Social Keys for Being Part of a Group, including a blank template that can be used to list the Hidden Social Keys for additional real-world locations and situations
● Feelings, including eight feelings and three blank templates for drawing and writing additional feelings
● Coping Strategies, including 12 coping strategies and three blank templates for writing additional coping strategies
All Printables can printed out individually, by set, or in total. Many of the Printables feature high-quality artwork that can be colored in by the user, and some can even be cut apart and bound into booklets.

How Will Children with Social Learning Challenges Benefit?

As a safe, controlled, and familiar learning environment, The Social Express provides an opportunity for users to become more socially competent and have successful social interactions.
Potential benefits include the ability to:
● Identify feelings in others
● Understand the importance of “eye contact” (thinking with your eyes) in order to figure out what to say or do in social situations
● Read non-verbal social cues
● Identify appropriate coping strategies
● Learn how to start conversations
● Learn how to be part of a group
● Learn about the hidden rules in social situations
● Sequence situations and infer what will come next
● Figure out what to talk about with friends
● Monitor when others are using appropriate social behaviors
● Learn about using figurative language (idioms) in conversation
● Stay on topic when having conversations
● Watch social situations unfold and see how behavior can have negative or positive consequences

Highly Highly Highly recommended app!!!!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Social-Express-Interactive-Software/191570134257222?ref=ts#!/pages/The-Social-Express-Interactive-Software/191570134257222?sk=info
http://thesocialexpress.com/what-is-the-social-express/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-social-express/id477525808?mt=8

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