May your Valentine’s Day be filled with chocolate, flowers, balloons, and someone special to love. Show that love EVERY DAY.

Enjoy a walk around Iowa Falls, IA, the setting of To Dance with Fireflieswith Stephen Grant and his “Audie.” Enjoy the Scenic City and always dance with fireflies in your heart.

A smile is a social thing, you know. People on the spectrum have difficulty with social things to say the least. I’m going to dig in here and give you some ideas of how you can help. In fact, I’m going to say, you MUST help because it IS that important.
All of the following ideas/strategies are based on speech/language therapy. I’m going to share many things about what our family personally did and continues to do.
• Imitation of making funny faces in a mirror (always in a turn taking manner with the adult sitting behind or beside the child)
• Tickling (always to a similar theme – when our son was young we’d roll on the floor together and I’d say, “Doug, tell me your secret to thinness.” I’d tickle and we’d laugh)
• Water play in a bucket – bath time for parents – pour, paint, play, sing, read
• Slapstick humor – watching the old Laurel/Hardy, Three Stooges, Andy Hardy movies TOGETHER.
• Favorite cartoon books – what is the child’s favorite that is non-violent? Doug liked Garfield and we still have the entire set. We drew them. Talked about them. Wrote new ones. Do you see the WE here?
• What’s silly about that? This is one of the most effective means of teaching a person how to look at a scenario and find a silly response. (my blog of July 21, 11 describes this in depth – take a look)
• Taking pictures and looking at pictures of people smiling (discriminate between them)
• Use Photo Booth on an iPad and make goofy pictures of yourself and client
• Teach how and why smiles are part of communication
• Role play using typical peers discriminating between giving and not giving smiles to see how to elicit a smile back
• Put yourself in silly, verbal situations such as, “Today I rode my horse to school and could not find a place to park him.”
• Put yourself in silly, physical situations such as, “I dropped my pencil and it’s very heavy to pick up. It must weight 1000 pounds.” (animation ~ animation)
• Let parents/caregivers know how important smiles are to overall communication
• Put a big SMILE sign in your therapy setting or carry one with you attached to a tongue depressor. Hold the sign up by YOUR face and smile back.

Redundancy ~ Daily practice
All team members ~ Include parents ~ Make it fun
Make it functional
It is social survival

A smile is contagious, infectious, catching, communicable, and transmittable.
I want all SLPs and parents to go to one public place this week.
SMILE at two people at this place.
Do not smile at two people at this place.
Comment on this blog what communicative, kind, social, reciprocal results you find
“When You’re Smilin’”

What was your favorite thing that happened today? Who is your favorite singer? What is your favorite book? Do you have a favorite sport? I have a favorite time of the year, do you? My babysitter used to show me her favorite thimble.

FAVORITE is one of my favorite words and it is powerful. I use it all the time and you should too. It’s one of Kathie’s Dozen Power Words that you will want to us as parents or share with parents as an SLP. Read on and I will reveal a great strategy that most parents need to know because they struggle as they ask the question of their child, “What did you do in school today?”

Children who are not on the autism spectrum can most often answer the question, “What did you do in school today?” But, to verbal children with ASD, this question is way too broad and overwhelming. It is what I’d call loaded. Consequently, those with ASD do no respond in any manner. They ignore the question. They might look away or they might change the topic.
The parent is asking the wrong question.
The parent needs to ask, “what was your Favorite thing in school today?’
Then, the parent needs to anticipate one word or a simple phrase as a response. After that response from the child, the parent must add, “my favorite thing was . . .”

The SLP will be popular with parents when this Power Word strategy is shared.
One might say you will be their FAVORITE SLP!

Fireflies is set in Iowa Falls, IA. A mainstream romance and key words are: Vietnam Vet, PTSD, 199th Infantry, love, war, grief, Down syndrome, family, reminiscing, friendships, and so much that you will love reading as either a man or woman.

Email Kathie at kathieh2@cox.net and so that your copy of To Dance with Fireflies and your buckeye can get in the mail ASAP! Only $13.00 + postage + a buckeye to you for Good Luck ~ we all need more of that.