Howdy everyone,

I’m sorry that some of you have not heard from me for a little while. Things have been crazy busy!!!

Not only am I due to have our second child any day now but I have also been running some training workshops here in Sydney for other speech pathologists to share my knowledge and experience in working with children with autism.

I really enjoyed doing the workshops and the attendees got a lot out of them, which was great!

One of the main aims of running the workshops was to help shift the way that speech pathologists work with children on the autism spectrum. I figured that if I can help fellow speech pathologists work more effectively with these kids then I will indirectly be helping many more families because they will have greater access to speech pathologists who are trained with the unique knowledge and skills that are needed for treating children with autism.

The title of the workshop is “Effective Speech Pathology… what works and what doesn’t”. Some of the key messages that I shared were:

1. It IS possible to treat the social part of the triad of impairment
2. When we use a developmental approach to treatment we are treating the core deficits of autism
3. We must get to know the ‘individual differences’ of the child if we are to achieve greater therapy outcomes
4. Parent training and empowerment is an essential part of effective treatment
5. Practical and meaningful speech pathology is a must

I then went on to practically explain how I carry out ‘effective therapy’ with the families I treat, using lots of client examples and video footage etc.

In a nutshell….
As speech pathologists I strongly believe that we need to be carrying out a ‘relationship building’ and ‘developmental style’ of therapy rather than sitting these children down at a table, drilling them with specific, isolated skills that are often not meaningful or motivating for the child.

After specialising in the treatment of autism for over 12 years and consulting to many different programs, I’ve treated enough clients and seen the case history of enough families to know that this structured style of teaching does not address the core deficits of autism or lay the foundations for even more effective learning.

I am a very open-minded therapist and certainly not ’stuck in my ways‘ but I still continue to practice a relationship building style of therapy today for one very simply reason… because I find it get results.

My plan now (after our baby is born!), is to travel around the other capital cities of Australia to carry out the workshops there, then head overseas to do the same. Towards the end of the year I’ll be running more advanced training days for speech pathologists to increase their skills even further.

So along with continuing to manage Connect Therapy and creating more Training Resources I’m very excited to now be training other therapists in autism as I know that it will reach so many more families and quite possibly indirectly assist each one of you in your journey as well as other families that will follow in your footsteps!

So that’s what I’ve been up to… how about you guys?
How effective have you found Speech Therapy to be in your child’s treatment? What type of therapy approach has worked for you? I’d love to hear your experiences from a parent’s perspective.

Please leave your comments in the boxes provided below.

best wishes
Monique

Happy New Year!

My first blog entry for 2010. I hope it’s a great year for everyone.

This is Part 2 of how to help children with autism maximise their learning and connection using picture books. It’s a follow on from Part 1 which we did last week. If you missed Part 1 please watch it first, otherwise this may not make much sense to you.

You can watch Part 1 here http://www.autism-essentials.com/blog/maximising-learning-with-picture-books/

So as promised, in Part 2 I walk you through some real examples of exactly how I use picture books to connect powerfully with children with autism and explain the various techniques I use during the process that will really help to maximise their learning and connection throughout the activity.

There’s some really valuable tips in this, so I hope you enjoy it!

I really hope that you trial some of these techniques with your own child or those that you treat. Please let me know how you go.

P.S: As always If you have any thoughts or stories to share about this week’s article please leave your comments in the box provided below.

Wow! Only 4 more sleeps until Christmas!

I thought I’d squeeze in one more autism tip to help get you through the holiday period.

This week’s video is about getting the most out of your interactions with your child with autism while reading picture books with them. And because this is an activity that almost all children and parents enjoy doing together quite frequently, I’m sure you’ll find this one very helpful.

Take a look…

Duration – about 10 min

 …read more

Often toy libraries can be a very underutilised service in many communities… but they have a lot to offer, particularly for children with autism, aspergers or pdd-nos.

Many families say “We have so many toys at home…the last thing we need is more toys”

But let me give you a little bit of food for thought….

I saw a boy named Oli on the weekend for a session who will be going to a mainstream school next year.

He is doing really well with his play and interactions at home with his parents and his brother. This family have done an incredible job at building their relationship with Oli, helping him realise that they are heaps of fun to be around and can add so much value to his life. In fact, when I recently analysed some video footage of Oli playing with his family at home it really was not apparent that he had autism!

Yet aside from all of his wonderful progress at home his parents report that he is having significant trouble forming relationships with his peers.  …read more

This week’s video tip is self explanatory really.

Again, this is another strategy I use regularly with my private clients that can work quite nicely.

Particularly suitable for higher functioning children with autism (typically 3-6 years old) who are up to the stage where they ‘get’ the basic meaning of situations, but who are then challenged by real life situations where they are required to interpret the complex feelings and thoughts of other people through their words, facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice, then put all of that information together to really understand a deeper meaning of a particular situation.

If this sounds like your child, then you could really benefit from this.  …read more

Hi everyone,

I have to say I’m finding video to be a great way of explaining all of the concepts and techniques that I have to share with you and also for bringing to life many of the examples that will help with applying these tips to your own situation. So I hope you’re enjoying them too!

This week’s tip focuses on how you can improve your child’s articulation and speech clarity skills using a technique called Video Modeling. There are many ways to improve articulation, but Video Modeling is one technique that I’ve found to be very effective over the years with the children I treat.  …read more

Last week I promised to do Part 2 of Why Play is SO Important for Children with Autism. (If you missed Part 1 you can find it here).

But the thing is, we decided to try video blogging, which I’m really excited about! However it took us much longer than expected to get Part 2 ready.

So anyway, I’m sorry it’s late, but here it is as promised…

Part 2 in shiny new video format!

The first video below looks at the importance of stage 3 of play development – Imaginary Play, while the second video gives you some great tips on how to use Imaginary Play to help your child (or those children that you treat).

Stage 3 – What is Imaginary Play? (18 min)

 ...read more

One thing that you need to understand is how important PLAY is for the thinking, language, emotional, problem solving and creative skills development of children with autism. So many people underestimate the importance of PLAY.

Ok. So how does play develop and what should your child be able to do in play?

Stage 1

From birth to 18 months of life, much of your child’s play will revolve around Sensory Play.

This means feeling different textures, learning about how their body feels when it is moved in different ways, listening to interesting noises like birds tweeting, the clock ticking and how different people’s voices sound different and can make interesting noises etc, etc. Their sensory play will continue to develop and become more complex during the first 18 months.  …read more

Hi all,

Last week I attended the Asia Pacific Autism Conference and one of the big take-home messages (which I am always going on about) was “how important it is to fit the therapy to the child rather than the child to the therapy”. This is incredibly important and also a great way of distinguishing good quality therapy from more generic approaches that may not be effective, or sustainable.

As you may know, I strongly believe that every child’s intervention plan needs to take into consideration the unique and individual differences of the child with autism. But what is equally important and often overlooked, is that the intervention must also take into consideration the values, circumstances, and lifestyle of the FAMILY for it to be most effective and sustainable.  …read more

One of the main autism symptoms or characteristics of children with autism is their language delays and slower speech development.

The ability of a child with autism to talk well is not just dependent upon having the motor skills to be able to shape sounds into words and words into sentences. But more importantly the child needs to have thoughts, ideas and feelings that they want to ’share’ and communicate with others.

The reason that I want to talk to you about this today is because I had a session with a little girl named Sasha on the weekend. She is a delightful little girl who has many of the pre-verbal skills necessary to be able to talk and in fact she has already started to appropriately use some important words in her life e.g. more, go, biscuit… which is a wonderful start.

However it is very obvious that the area of development that is going to get in the way of Sasha’s language and speech development is going to be her ‘limited interests’ in her life.  …read more