Reading is best say Snoopy and Kathie
If it’s good enough for Snoopy . . . try it. Read more to your kids and for your soul.
How to Teach a Child with ASD to SMILE
My father was a huge influence in my life and ultimately, in my career. He was not a professional man. He was patriotic. He worked hard. He was kind and generous. He owned a café, The Red Rooster in Iowa Falls, IA. I worked there, first as a dishwasher, then as a waitress, and what I loved most, as a fry cook. I learned a lot about all three of those jobs but what I remember most was the big, wooden, carved sign that my dad had specially made. It hung over the door just as one exited the kitchen and went out into the main dinning room. Nobody could miss it and who would want to. In its simplicity, it read, “You’re not dressed unless you’re wearing your smile.”
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’”
Kathie Harrington, Literary Spotlight in Las Vegas Review Journal – View
VIEW STAFF – Las Vegas Review Journal
Posted: Jan. 22, 2013 | 12:18 a.m.
Las Vegas resident Kathie Harrington is the author of two books on autism, “Tears of Laughter – Tears of Pain” and “I Never Told My Son He Couldn’t Dance,” and the children’s book, “Bayo, The Boo Cow.” A speech language pathologist, Harrington graduated with her master’s degree from Truman State in Kirksville, Mo.
In her first novel, “To Dance with Fireflies,” Harrington’s heroine, Audrey Benway, leaves Las Vegas to travel to her hometown, Iowa Falls, Iowa. While there, she revisits a past filled with romance and loss. Despite her commitment to her husband and children at home, Audrey can’t help but wonder what became of Stephen Grant. The man who never knew he was the father of her first child still haunts Audrey’s thoughts after 25 years. When her friends tell her he recently returned to town, Audrey can’t resist calling on him.
For more information on Harrington’s novel, visit willowmoonpublishing.com.
EXCERPT FROM ‘TO DANCE WITH FIREFLIES’
All of a sudden, there they were dancing before her. Audrey had almost forgotten about the magic of fireflies. How could she? How could anyone forget the waltzes, the two-steps, the Charleston’s, the line dances, the beauty and mystery that surrounded every Midwestern summer’s evening? The fields were ablaze with delight, and her eyes were glowing as bright as the lanterns that shined from the millions of fireflies dancing in the Iowa fields. They never seemed to end. Miles and miles, dances and dances, their show went on with a streak here and a bolt there. Into the bushes and out again – no rest at night – fireflies had business to watch over. The sunshine of the day would be their repose. Audrey caught them as a child. She followed them into the bushes as an adolescent. She ignored them as a young adult and even moved away from both of their homes.
How would she relate to the fireflies of Iowa today? The winds that blew through her life between yesterday and her life today were strands of memory cohesively held by her perceptions of a world that was, and the island she had fashioned. She imagined the winds calm, the past as settled, and the fields standing silent in their vigil.
However, for Audrey Benway, the winds were kicking up, and fireflies were dancing all around her.
**** Get your copies of any of the books from Kathie and they will be AUTOGRAPHED. Contact Kathie at her E mail address: kathieh2@cox.net
Autism and Autumn
We need to laugh at funny things with our kids with autism this autumn:
• Like crackling crispy leaves under your feet or in a bowl if necessary
• Like digging into a raw pumpkin and pulling out the pumpkin goop and seeds
• Like sitting on the floor and reading a Halloween book together
• Like painting funny faces on your hands and pretending to have them talk to each other
• Like lining up pumpkins or gourds from littlest to biggest and back again
• Like pouring water over rocks and listening to it ripple
• Like using a flashlight in a dark room to find the Halloween ghosts the SLP has taped to the walls earlier
• Like singing Five Little Pumpkins together and counting ones your make or draw
• Like adding to the Five Little Pumpkins and making more of them
• Like digging in a bowl of kernels of unpopped popcorn to find the candy corn and counting how many are there
• Like putting on funny Halloween and other autumn colored neckties and jewelry and laughing in front of the therapy mirror
• Like. Like. Like. I could go on and on because the list is endless, as endless as your creativity. This is how children learn. This is how they remember. This is how we teach.
Everything:
should be done with turn taking, choice, sequencing, association, vocabulary, basic concepts, initiating, asking, answering, yes/no, colors, counting, following directions, and fun. This all leads to forming relationships, better known as social language skills!
A Thanksgiving Feast for the SLP about Autism
A Feast for the SLP
by
Kathie Harrington
ASD is awesome
It’s on the table every day.
We can feast on its behaviors
Or we can provide a better way.
ASD is for a lifetime
We all have one life to share.
We can stumble through that life in blindness
Or we can show the world we care.
ASD is part of this Thanksgiving
A day we pause to bless.
May we all be thankful for the skills we share
And the many gifts of our success
Autism and the Colorful Language of Autumn
Welcome to the wonderful windows of Autumn. AUTUMN and AUTISM start the same way. Oh, the places you can take you child with Autism/ASD this Autumn. The colors you can show him/her. The smells you can experience ~ together. The sounds of crackling leaves beneath your feet. Feel the pumpkin seeds as they slip between your child’s fingers and yours.
Language skills of Autumn that all parents need to incorporate into the days ahead before they FALL into winter:
COLORS, VOCABULARY, SMELLS, CATEGORIZING AUTUMN “THINGS,” COUNTING LEAVES, ATTENTION/FOCUS, SEQUENCING AS YOU CARVE YOUR PUMPKIN, FACIAL FEATURES ON PUMPKIN, TURN TAKING, ASSOCIATION WITH FALL COLORS/ITEMS, MATCHING,
As you can see
Autumn can be
A treat for the eyes, ears, hands,
For both you and me.
Sprinkle with colors.
Sparkle with fun.
Add lots of laughter
And make YOUR family number ONE.
A very, very, wonderful Autumn to all of my friends at Kathie’s World!
Read “Shilo” now on sale for only $1.99
Download Shilo today for only $1.99. You’ll smile and cheer as these two young adults who happen to have autism/Aspergers discover one another.
Shilo, when I was young
I used to call your name.
When no one else would come,
Shilo, you always came.
Neil Diamond
Download your copy of Shilo from Willow Moon Publishing
Best Books on Autism/ASD Ever
My two new books on autism/ASD are now out and ready for you, the family and professional. With inspiration and information, I offer both of them to you from my heart and mind; a lifetime of experience from the voice of a mother and the strategies of a speech/language pathologist.
Tears of Laughter ~ Tears of Pain is for the younger child
I Never Told My Son He Couldn’t Dance focuses on the adolescent and adult.
Order your copy today and please leave a review on the Barnes and Noble or Amazon sites.
The Inner Voice in Autism/ASD
Encourage Children to Talk to Themselves: that’s right, to themselves as well as to others.
Communication for children with ASD is difficult. That includes expressive, receptive, and pragmatic language skills. There is one other language skill that is not mentioned much with the autistic population, yet it is so crucial to daily living skills. As SLPs we need to assist children and adults with ASD to develop an inner voice.
“Permitting and encouraging children to be verbally active — to speak to themselves while engaged in challenging tasks — fosters concentration, effort, problem-solving, and task success.” — Alix Spiegel
When children have difficulty with words, like those with ASD, it only makes sense that they would have problems thinking and telling themselves something in words. Temple Grandin says that she “thinks in pictures.” The point is that Temple is using her inner voice for thinking about what is happening at the present time or predicting what will happen. This is focus/attention with words and pictures using an inner voice.
• Why train an inner voice
to comprehend language
to understand other’s feelings/emotions
to attend/focus
to predict events
to direct negative behaviors
to deal with daily living
• When to start training an inner voice
early
• How to train an inner voice
use self-talk (statements about what you, the adult are doing)
use parallel-talk (statements about what the child is doing)
find Key Words in the child’s life: eat, work, color, play, build, pick-up, and use them often in the self and parallel talk
when appropriate, ask the child/adult, “what are you thinking about.”
when appropriate, ask the child/adult, “how do you think I’m feeling/thinking about.”
share experiences and talk about them
share real-life pictures/artwork and talk about them
write Key Words down on flash cards and go over them rapidly
play memory games
As typical developing adults we use an inner voice whether we are always aware of it or not. It’s our intuition, regulator, self-monitor, and even keeps us out of danger. We speak to ourselves to guide and manage our behavior. Children and adults with autism can learn how to use a self-guided inner voice that can be with them throughout their lives.
