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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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iPad Apps, GFCF diets & Shark Teeth

Thank you to Ariane Zucher who authors an amazing blog Emmas blog for this post.

I was sent a trial to a new ipad app for children on the spectrum called The Social Express.  If you click on the link it will take you to Social Express Lite which you can try out on your ipad or computer.  The characters are Zack and the aptly named Emma with her dog Sunny.  There are a series of vignettes where your child is encouraged to identify the character’s emotions.  I tried both levels with Emma.  She was amused when she purposely chose the “wrong” emotion and then laughed when the voiceover says – “Hmm,  look at Emma’s face…”  then it says, “Can you try again?”  To which Emma would choose the right one, while saying out loud – “Look!  She’s sad.  She lost her ice cream.”  Em particularly liked the scene with the boy who is terrified of the dog, something Em can relate to, and when the girl mistakenly lets go of her balloon, another situation that has caused Em great upset.


 

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Finding Out Our Twin Kids Had Autism

Right before the twins turned three, I remember driving to the office to meet the psychologist and thinking to myself, how I am going to react if I hear “the next step for your kids with autism is”….  I didn’t even really know what autism was as I had never met anyone who had this disorder my entire life.

Well, that was all about to change. The evaluation didn’t take more then 40 minutes  for the Doctor to confirm each had autism. It felt like I just got kicked in the stomach not once but twice. You would think there was more to it then just a 40 minute evaluation, but that’s all it was.

Then he asked me if I had any questions. “How can you tell from such a short evaluation they are autistic”? The answer was short and to the point. Autism has classic signs and the twins displayed all of them, and, he had been doing this longer then I was alive.

I had so many more questions but there was a waiting room of moms and dads waiting to find out the same results I just did. We never looked at that day as a bad day, just another day in the world of raising our children. After all, they were still the same kids, but now they were kids with autism…..

“You know, your boys are not developing like my boy” said our pediatrician at our 18 month check up. He actually had a child the same age as our twins.  He told us his boy was gesturing, making eye contact, noticing when people came and left a room, and saying his first words.

He wasn’t saying this to show off, he was trying to tell us there was something wrong with our twins. We shrugged it off, after all our boys had reached all the other key milestones from crawling to walking, they were eating well and seemed to be doing just fine. Yes they hadn’t said a word yet, and they did have some odd ways of playing with their toys.

We had read that twins are slow to develop language and identical twins even slower. They actually had their own “twin talk” which was very interesting to observe, sometimes it was telepathic for instance, sometimes with out a word, they would both just bolt out of the room at the same time.

As far as the gesturing, that was something we didn’t even pay attention to because when you have twins you tend to be one step ahead of them and get them what they need. Two babies crying at the same time can be absolutely overwhelming.  “Ok, he said but keep a careful eye on them and if they don’t begin to gesture and give you eye contact then I would like you to get them checked out.

“Checked out for what, I said” “autism,” was his response. Six more months went by, and nothing had changed, no talking, no eye contact, even more weird repetitive playing. It was time for us to no longer attribute this to being a twin.We then made the appointment to get them evaluated.  They were initially diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not otherwise Specified (PDDNOS) before seeing the psychologist.

4 Steps We Took First

Besides the obvious of telling your family and friends here are 4 important things we did to begin our journey.

1. We made an appointment with a social worker who was referred by our local Regional Center.
2. We began a busy schedule of therapies.
3. We enrolled them in special-ed preschool
4. We kept a positive mental attitude at ALL times.

Getting Help with Autism

Here are 5 recommendations we’d like to share with you based on my and my wife’s 8-year journey with getting help with autism for our twin boys.

1. Don’t wait to get your child diagnosed; it has been proven that early intervention can make a huge difference.
2. There are so many different types of therapies out there to help children with autism. Due your homework about your options. We got the best results by doing Dir Floortime, DT, ABA, and now cognitive therapy using The Social Express and other best practices.  Make sure to contact your insurance company to see if you are covered.
3. Hire an advocate to join your team for IEP meetings. If anything just to help you with difficult decisions
4. Every day give your child a break from therapy and let them be a kid.
5. Apply for respite services. Date night or alone time is very important to recharge your battery.

“Do you have any comments about what to do first when your find out your kids have autism?”

 

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2011 Readers’ Choice Awards Nominations

The Social Express was just nominated for the 2011 Readers’ Choice Awards for “best kids apps”, Thank you Mandy!

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48 Countries in less then 30 days!

We are proud to announce that The Social Express has been downloaded in 48 countries in less then 30 days! We are so excited to begin hearing success stories around the globe!

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ASHA Convention 2011!

An Unknown blogger gave us a nice review with other apps which were seen at the ASHA convention.

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A Great Mom Gave Us A Shout Out On Facebook

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This is a great quote from a Mom who just downloaded the Lite version

“Love the characters..pause button is a huge plus to engage in lesson tailored to your child..created by a dad with two autistic sons, this one is worth the purchase.” 

Thank you![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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My Favorite Apps For Speech Therapy and Social Learning

Thank you to Angela Desideri for mentioning The Social Express social learning application in her blogg today. Angela Desideri, MS, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and co-developer of SpeechTree, a research-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app for the iPad. She is an approved American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) CEU provider and has presented on the topic of AAC throughout the United States and internationally.

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Study Finds Teens With Autism Face Major Obstacles To Social Life Outside of School

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A recent study of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder by Paul Shattuck, PhD, autism expert and assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis Shattuck notes that limited or absent peer relationships can negatively influence health and mental health, especially during the teen years. The study showed teens with an ASD were significantly more likely never to see friends out of school.  Although large large organizations like the YMCA offer inclusion programs for special needs children, their counselors are most likely not trained to facilitate interactions between typical peers and special needs children.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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