Maureen Bennie curates a news blog for Autism Calgary called "What in The World is Going On About Autism". Her blog often mines and expands on the articles and events that she has detailed in that news feed, as well as looking at current best autism resources, news stories, and events on a variety of topics about autism and ASD.
There is almost no literature available on training the older child with autism. Traditional children’s books all use the potty chair to teach toilet training. Animated characters on videos do not explain the elimination process or show exactly what to do. It took us nine years to get my son Marc using the toilet on his own, and here is how we did it.
Many of us fear what will happen to our children with autism as we both age, particularly those of us with children who will require life-long care. Aging in autism however, is a much understudied phenomenon. While there are many resources available to help parents of young children with autism, very little is discussed or available for those over forty. So…
Anxiety is a natural and essential part of daily human existence. We all live with worries and stress from time to time, but when anxiety begins to interfere with a young person’s life – when they can no longer face school, or have problems interacting with friends, or performing simple tasks – what can we as parents and caregivers do to…
Many autistic adults have difficulty being accepted in, and carving a niche in the working world. While they may have troubles communicating verbally, they might still be able to, and want to contribute in a meaningful way through work. Most provinces in Canada have programs available to help autistic people find work, and there is a growing number of provincial…
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine where our kids will be several years from now. What will their life look like once they leave home? What skills will they need to be successful as an adult? What is a meaningful life for this adult with ASD?
These questions swirl around in my mind all the time. My children aren’t many years away from accessing adult services. I often think of the skills they will need to be successful. Those skills will vary for each child depending on their functioning level.
Ido Kedar is a young man on the spectrum who has an excellent blog called Ido in Autismland. In his own words, he says: “I am an autistic guy with a message. I spent the first half of my life completely trapped in silence. The second – on becoming a free soul. I had to fight to get an education.…
I’ve written about the difficulties I have had getting my own children to recognize and use washrooms that are not the ones from our home. It can be a real challenge for a child with autism because there is a tendency to represent, understand, and remember things in an extremely specific way. This tendency towards specific or inflexible learning is…
Answer: A few years ago, I attended an excellent seminar with Penny Gill, President of the Autism/PDD Family Alliance in Southern Ontario. Her presentation, Overcoming the Challenges: Teaching Someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder to Cook Really Well, showed us that you can teach someone with an ASD the important life skill of cooking provided the challenges are understood and the…
Historically children with developmental disabilities were excluded from pain research, but this past month a new (as yet unpublished) study showed conclusively that people with autism exhibit abnormal brain responses when a painfully hot object is placed against their skin. The brain’s response to pain has three phases – early, intermediate and late. In an experiment with 17 people with autism and 16 people without, a small piece of metal was taped to the skin and heated to the point of causing discomfort/pain but not injury. The people without autism were still responding to the pain ten seconds after it stopped, but the people with autism had no brain response after the ten seconds.
By Anna Vagin, PhD. I’m working with a group of four third graders in a social learning group. As they play a cooperative board game, they are working on being flexible – listening to each other, sharing strategy plans, and letting go of their individual ideas when others present a better one. Oh, yes, and they are managing their uncomfortable…
Feeding a child on the autism spectrum can be a great challenge for parents. Creating healthy meals, eating a variety of foods, eating too little or too much food, focusing on only one texture or food presentation, and gut/digestive issues are just some of the worries parents have when feeding their children. Here are a few helpful hints that I have learned as a mother of two children with autism who are both on specialized diets and struggle with eating.
I am an avid reader of Judy Endow’s blog because she highlights issues that many of us are not even aware of. Her recent post about the differences in self-advocacy if you are poor or middle income was eye-opening.
Judy has been both poor and middle income as an autistic adult and has observed that “self-advocacy is typically geared toward middle-income status. This could be problematic since many autistic adults live in poverty.”
If you have a child in school with autism or other special needs, chances are you are already navigating either an IEP, an IPP, or a 504 plan. These plans can seem overwhelming to parents, so I have prepared an explanation of what to expect during the meetings and how to get the most out of these plans for your children with ASD in school.
Until recently, boys and girls on the spectrum have been painted with the same brush both in terms of diagnosis, and more importantly in terms of treatment. But as a mother of both a boy and a girl with autism, I can tell you that they have always been very different.
Many of us have had uncomfortable moments when a person with autism “acts out” or does something inappropriate. Sometimes these behaviours can be aggressive and downright scary for a parent or caregiver. While it might be easier to imagine that prescribing a drug could minimize these events or make them stop altogether, new research out of the UK suggests that many people with intellectual disabilities are overprescribed medications in an effort to treat problem behaviours such as aggression and self-injury, despite there being little evidence of any benefit from these medications.