The Five Best Teaching Aids for Children With Autism and Special Needs
By Henry Bee
We have had over ten years experience with tutoring and teaching our daughter with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Below is some of the Teaching Aids we used that we think were the most successful in her development and learning. These methods can be used with any child with or without an Autism Spectrum Disorder, Pervasive Development Disorder or Special Needs.
Teaching Aid 1 – Setting up a Therapy Room
In the beginning what got us going was the SON RISE program. Liz went to America to the Option Institute and did a two week course on how to cope with a child with Autism, methods for working with and tutoring a child with Autism and how to set up a therapy room for a tutoring a child with Autism and or Special Needs.
The course is not just for Parents of children with Autism, but also for children with Learning Difficulties, Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD) and children with Special Needs in general. The course also focusses a great deal on how to deal on an emotional level with the fact that your child has an intellectual disability, and there is ongoing support if you so wish.
So on Liz’s arrival back home we set up a therapy room. We used a spare bedroom and painted it in bright colours. We set it up with shelves and storage drawers, play equipment, a computer and printer, a suitable child’s height table and chairs for table top work and a sturdy floor covering. The basic idea was to have a room the child can identify with as a learning and fun area only, somewhere that they will in time know that when they are in there it is time to learn.
Teaching Aid 2 – Getting Through to a Child with Autism
One of the very useful things Liz learned from the SON RISE program was a method to work with Autistic children, a way to get through to them and that was to get yourself to their level. Get down on the floor and rock with them, spin objects like they do, repeat the sounds they make, enter their world. This is how we got Isy to acknowledge us, by doing just that! She began to pay attention when we entered her world and slowly we began to influence her behaviour and satisfy her thirst for learning.
Most children with or without Autism Spectrum Disorders, Pervasive Development Disorders, Learning Difficulties or Special Needs enjoy learning, they have a thirst for knowledge, it is just a matter of finding how to get through to them and making the learning fun for them and yourself.
Teaching Aid 3 – Applied Behaviour Analysis and Discrete Trial Teaching
The next step for us was getting into Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT). Liz also seeked out and trained therapists, including Uni students to work with Isy intensively and her progress was astounding. Isy loved to be in her therapy room learning. Each session would run for 2 hours, and she would get up to three sessions a day up to six days a week. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Doesn’t Gluten-Free Work for Autism?
By Brian Sater
Many people are touting the gluten-free diet for children with autism. I am going to explain why the diet does not work for all children with autism, what the dangers are, and how to improve the diet to truly make gains for your child with autism.
The Danger of a Strict Gluten-Free Diet
There are many people swearing by the gluten-free diet and that it does help their child with autism. There are inherent dangers in providing a child with a gluten-free only diet. Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in these diets. However you need to be able to replace minerals and vitamins lost when a diet becomes strictly gluten-free.
I believe that we do not get proper minerals and vitamins in our diet anyway. Our soils have been depleted of the minerals our plants need to process the vitamins we need. This makes it necessary for all of us to supplement with minerals and vitamins.
Not all vitamins are equal. Don’t think that you can just pop a cheap multivitamin and be on your way. Many of these cheap supplements are inexpensive for a reason. Many have fillers added to them for bulk so they can sell many of them on the cheap. In fact, these cheapies have been found to just pass through the body providing no nutrition at all!
What to Add to the Gluten-Free Diet
In order to avoid hundreds of nutritional deficiency diseases, we need 90 essential nutrients. I know of only a few companies that are able to effectively provide that in a quality supplement. Quality is essential over quantity.
Now, the biggest culprit in autism. Sugar. Yes, start with the gluten-free diet. Supplement. The biggest change is to take sugar out of your child’s diet. Treat your child like a diabetic.
I want you to think of what happens to a child when it is weened from its mother in our society. Young children jump from their mother’s milk to sweetened everything. Sweet cereal, sweet juices, sugary toasted snacks/meals, and so on. Those young brains need all of the nutrients we can give them, yet in Western society we give them sugar and processed foods.
What Can My Child With Autism Eat?
The question I get asked at this point is,” What can my child eat?” Before answering that, I want to mention another category of foods to avoid. They are fried foods and nitrates and nitrites. Everything from processed meats to chicken nuggets fit these categories.
You can now have the privilege of exploring foods you may not know about. Millet, flax, buckwheat. You can provide your child with eggs, not hard cooked, but scrambled or poached. Eggs are great brain food. Rice is a good food. Sweet potatoes. Read the rest of this entry »