Hi all,

Thanks to those of you that sent me through your questions and comments in response to my last message. It gives me more ideas of the knowledge that you would like me to share with you. As mentioned, unfortunately I won’t be able to answer them all immediately, but over time I will certainly try to answer everyone’s questions.. so stay tuned!

A number of you were interested in knowing more about how to help your child socialise with other children. I may have touched on this topic before, but since most of these issues can be quite complex and in-depth, it can be quite valuable to revisit them from another angle.

So in relation to the topic of Socialisation with Peers it is important that you understand a few key things.



1. Signs that your child is ready to begin Socialising with Peers

A child’s ability to socialise effectively with other children comes very naturally once the child is interacting well with his or her parents/caregivers first. When your child is playing with you they must be showing the following skills: » Continue reading ““My child wants to socialise with other kids but doesn’t know how””

Hello everyone,

Welcome again to our new readers!

Today we’re going to delve further into something I touched on a couple of weeks ago. The importance of using language to ‘Share’ vs simply ‘Requesting’.

I’ve also created a special audio sample for you to listen to so please read on…

Often children with autism will use their language to ‘Request’ for needs and wants like:

• What they want to eat
• Wanting a push on the swing
• Wanting help to join the train pieces together

but they can find it very hard to ‘share’ their thoughts and ideas with us.

Such as sharing…

• That they can see an aeroplane in the sky
• What they did at school, preschool or day care
• How they feel when their baby brother draws on their picture
• Their favourite flavour of ice cream
• Why they don’t want to go and play with their friend today

If children are only using their language to ‘request’ things and not to ‘share’ thoughts and feelings then it often means they are not using their language very much at all because they don’t need to request for many things in their day.

This can become an even bigger issue as the child gets older » Continue reading “Sharing vs Requesting Language”

Hello again,

Just a quick note. In case some of you do not know… if you ever have any questions, comments or opinions that you’d like to ask me or share with our other readers, you can leave them at the bottom of the message (you’ll need to click through to the full article first!).

Recently some of you have asked for my opinions on the subject of disciplining children with autism.

This topic is very detailed and I handle this area of development very individually with each of my clients. As you can imagine there are numerous ways of dealing with situations depending upon the age, severity level and personality of the child, etc.

I think the best way of us getting this conversation started is to take a look at an email that I received requesting some advice… » Continue reading “7 tips for disciplining children with autism”

Firstly, welcome to our new readers out there!

I thought I would share with you an email that I received from one of my clients. This topic is something that I am dealing with on a day to day basis in my work so I thought that it would be very relevant for many of you.

How many of you would love your child to be able to sit down and concentrate on a game, activity or piece of work for longer than minute or perhaps even a few seconds!???

Then Henry’s mum’s story will probably sound familiar to you…

“Thank you for putting together the Autism Essentials pack it has indeed helped us with our son Henry. We are going ok implementing the sensory diet but Henry is very physical and seeks movement activities all the time. So when we want to do something “low key” (eg: a puzzle) he really lacks interest and the balance between the two is hard to establish”

So what is a Sensory Diet and what can you do in these situations to help your child? » Continue reading “Help! My child finds it hard to concentrate”

People are often curious what is the ‘secret to my success’ when working with children with autism and I reply by saying… “I always work with the strengths and motivations of the children I treat.”

Working in this way is a ‘no brainer’ to me and it puzzles me why more professionals do not work in this way.

It doesn’t matter what your child is motivated by, you can always use this to build other areas of development. Let me give you an example… » Continue reading “What makes your child tick?”