Howdy all,

Well I am now the proud mother of two beautiful children. Our little boy Liam was born on the 30th of March and he has certainly been a lovely addition to our family. Though I can hardly say ‘little’ as he weighed in at 4.45 kg, which is nearly 10 pounds! Eek…poor me

Anyway we are enjoying him immensely as there is nothing quite like a cuddle form a newborn baby.

In my last blog post we looked at some of the main things to think about and some key questions that you should ask any speech pathologist before employing their services to help your child with autism.

After you’ve been working with your therapist for a few months you’ll want to know if the therapy is actually making a difference and that you child is making some real progress. This depends greatly on how good a ‘match’ your therapist (and the therapy) is for your child.

So today (as promised) I’d like to share with you some of the warning signs that may indicate that it’s time to find another speech pathologist who is ‘a better match’ for your child.
» Continue reading “Signs That Your Speech Pathologist may not be a “Good Match” for Your Child”

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

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. » Continue reading “Don’t forget about toy libraries!”

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. » Continue reading “Part 1 – Why ‘Play’ is SO Important for Children with Autism”

Since you are reading this I’m guessing that the subject line may have grabbed your attention which is great because….

What I have to tell you today is very important. In fact it may change the way you think about just about every aspect of your child’s treatment.

———————————–

I often get asked to give families strategies to help deal with specific behaviours such as ‘toilet training’ or ‘picky eating’ or ‘poor sleeping patterns’.

It would certainly make my job MUCH easier if I could tell each one of you that ONE particular strategy would be the ‘Magic Formula‘ for solving each of these issues.

But the truth is…

because every child with autism (like any child) is so incredibly different and so unique, there simply isn’t a ‘magic formula’ or one strategy in particular to remedy these individual behaviours.

But there is a solution… so please read on. » Continue reading “Is there a ‘Magic Formula’ for Autism?”

I was reading back over the questions that you posted me and there was a common theme emerging…

“What is the best way to deal with  my child when they are feeling upset, frustrated, annoyed, disappointed?”

I am pleased that this topic was raised because it is an area of treatment that I get quite passionate about and I would like to share my thoughts with you…

So often we are happy to engage with children (not just special needs kids!) when they are happy and joyous, but we tend to disconnect with them when they are experiencing more challenging emotions.

But why do we do this?

Feelings of frustration, sadness annoyance etc are all basic (and completely normal) human emotions that we all encounter on a regular basis. But when this happens to our own child we are naturally driven to find a way of making them feel ‘happy’ again by saying things like “Stop crying”, “You’re okay”, “Where’s your happy face?”, “It’s ok, how about we have something to eat”.

But all this actually does is disconnects us from what they are really experiencing and feeling, and we miss an important opportunity to ‘connect’ with our child and to help them learn and grow from the experience. » Continue reading “Dealing with your child’s challenging emotions”

Welcome again to our new subscribers out there.

I’m slowly but surely answering the emails that many of you have requested some help with…

Today’s topic…

How Avoiding this one little habit will help improve your child’s social and communication skills

Often children with autism can be very passive communicators and may only talk when they are spoken to or when they are very motivated to communicate something.

Sometimes when I’m carrying out assessments, parents tell me that their child is capable of stringing a few words together into a sentence, yet often the child will not utter a single word for the entire session which is very sad! This is because the child does not know how to share their wonderful thoughts with others yet.

One way that you can dramatically improve your child’s ability to actively share their thoughts and ideas with you is by reducing the amount of questions that you ask them. Sounds simple I know. But sometimes we have such a natural desire to constantly ask our child questions because we know that they understand many things and we want to try and ‘squeeze’ as much information out of them as possible!

Here are 3 reasons why you should avoid doing this… » Continue reading “One Habit to Avoid for Better Communication”

In my last post I spoke about improving your child’s social skills, and how preparing your child with autism for successful play interactions with other kids is a step by step process.

As mentioned, your child will need to become competent at playing and interacting with YOU (their primary caregiver) before they have the necessary skills to be able to do this successfully with their peers. This is mainly because ‘typically’ developing children are not very patient and will not wait around if your child does not have the skills to participate in the game or activity that they want to play.

Step 1

Therefore, step one is to make sure that you equip your child with these necessary skills by teaching them how to interact well with YOU first. You can get more help learning these skills with the ‘7 steps to Unlocking Your Child’s Social Skills‘ audio which I use regularly with all of my clients.

Step 2

Once your child has mastered the skills from step one you can move onto step two, and begin increasing the amount that you expose them to peer interactions.

Please remember that to begin with your child’s abilities with their peers will not be as advanced as they are with you. It is important that you learn how to support your child through their play with peers so that you give them every chance of success by ensuring that they have a positive experience.

Here are 5 key strategies I use with my clients on a daily basis to help them build successful interactions with peers… » Continue reading “The Key to Socialising with Peers – the next step”

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”