Kids with autism often find it hard to make friends. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to. It’s also not unusual for people with autism to communicate more comfortably in writing than in conversation. One day not so long ago, a boy with autism in Charlottetown shared on Splash N’ Boots’ Facebook page that he was looking for a […]
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Should your child’s peers know what autism is, and that your child has it? The answer depends on the child and the situation. Our family decided early on that it would be more helpful than harmful, and so every year, when our children enter school, we have made sure that there is an opportunity for our children’s new classmates to […]
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Last May, I shared a list of books that our children have enjoyed. More than that, they were books that led to conversations or activities that we could do together. You can read Part 1 here, and here are some more! Once There Was a Raindrop by Judith Anderson This is one book in a series about science – other […]
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We tell ourselves stories and live by the stories we tell ourselves. -Joan Didion Recently I had coffee with a friend. We talked about the trip he and his wife took to Vietnam. He told me about the beautiful places they saw, and also about the homeless woman he met outside his hotel. He talked about their friendly greetings every […]
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This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental capacity, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous stages. You can find the list of related posts here. After you and your child have learned […]
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This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental level, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous levels. You can find the list of related posts here. Communication is so much more than speech! […]
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Canada Day, at the start of summer holidays, is a perfect opportunity to do something fun with the family. Often, though, our family has found Canada Day events to be too big of a commitment, and crowds can be overwhelming. But we can still enjoy the day! Our criteria for autism friendly means: easy to get there, park, and leave […]
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Individual Education Plans (IEPs) usually focus on behaviour – what we want kids to be able to do. In order to know what a child has learned, they have to list goals that are specific and measurable. A Developmental perspective, on the other hand, thinks about how a child relates to others, and how they think. Developmental goals tend to […]
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One day, our autism consultant gave us a piece of advice about books and reading. She recommended that we choose books that we could not only read, but that connect with what our child is interested in, and we could act out in some playful way. I realized that we already had several books that were a springboard to back-and-forth […]
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“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” -O. Fred Donaldson What would you think if your school told you that they had a plan to help your child with autism make friends and enjoy playing with them? Most of us have fond memories of times we enjoyed stretching our imaginations with our friends. […]
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