12 Things Parents and Professionals Must Understand About Educating Students with Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders

By: Nicole Beurkens, M.Ed.

Working with parents and educators for over a decade has taught me some important lessons about what it means to provide a meaningful education to students with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. It is easy to get bogged down in the moment-to-moment challenges and lose perspective on what we are trying to accomplish. Too often we employ strategies that address an immediate problem, without figuring out how to build the foundations that are required for addressing the challenge over the long-term. In searching for the elusive "quick fix" we fail to implement some basic but powerful concepts that support learning for all students.

Here are 12 important concepts every parent and professional should consider when designing appropriate educational opportunities for students with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders:

1) Attitude: Your attitude is the most important tool you bring to your work with students. You do not need to have experience teaching students with neurodevelopmental disorders in order to be successful with them, but you do need to build trust through acceptance, patience, mutual respect, and a willingness to learn.

2) Remediation and Compensation: Solutions that solve a problem in the short term may not create foundational change in the long term. A balance of short-term and long-term strategies is needed for students to be truly successful.

3) Relationships are Essential for Growth and Development: We learn and grow through our relationships with others. Behavioral and emotional self-regulation begins with being able to regulate with others.

4) Our Communication is a Powerful Tool: Speaking and communicating are two very different things. The ways in which we use verbal and nonverbal communication has a significant impact on our students' communication development.

5) Processing: Neurological disorders impact students' abilities to take in, make sense of, and respond to information. We need to learn to slow down in order to speed up in order to support and improve their processing.

6) Promoting Independence, Thinking, and Problem Solving: The most important outcome of the educational process is to teach students to think. We need to create daily opportunities for students to think about and flexibly respond to what is happening around them.

7) Environments Make a Difference: The physical environment plays a significant role in student success. We need to take the time to observe and understand how the physical environment is impacting student functioning.

8) Promoting Competence: Students who feel incompetent do not learn and thrive. It is crucial to find ways to help all students have meaningful roles in the classroom, help them know they are supported, and send the message that we know they are capable.

9) Labels: The names we give students, classrooms, and programs are far less important than understanding their unique characteristics. It is easy to give children labels, and much more challenging to understand what really makes them tick so as to best support them. Labels should be viewed as a beginning, not an endpoint.

10) Obstacles: Everyone has obstacles—challenges that impact their ability to function at their best. The responsibility for identifying and resolving behavior obstacles and challenges lies much more with adults than it does with children.

11) Families as Partners: Parents are the primary players in the growth and development of their children. Professionals and families must be more than a team for the purpose of completing required paperwork. A working relationship based on trust and mutual respect is required for students to reach their highest potential.

12) Collective Visions: Having a vision of what constitutes a satisfying quality of life for students and their families allows us to create educational plans that accomplish meaningful outcomes. Shared visions created by parents and professionals provide a powerful map for moving forward.

Approaching the education of students with neurodevelopmental disorders with these 12 powerful concepts in mind provides a more meaningful and successful experience for everyone involved. Application of these principles allows us to best guide students to reach their highest potential in school and beyond.

Source: http://horizonsdrc.blogspot.com/

Siblings of kids with Special Needs 2

Continued from:http://commadvocates.blogspot.com/2010/05/siblings-of-kids-with-special-needs.html

13. Weigh the cost of actions to all children against the benefit to one.

14. Find manageable ways to spend quality time individually with sibling.

15. Look for workshops and seminars offered by community groups.

16. Remember that the siblings of special needs kids are kids first. Before "blaming" sibling problems or family issues on the challenges around living with special needs, first see if there is another reason that is unrelated to the special needs. Maybe the sibling is acting out because he or she is having a hard time at school or a problem with friends or a girl/boy friend. Look at the whole child first, before assuming that it is the issue of special needs that is causing the problem. Again, when parents feel guilty, the situation is more easily confused.

17. Think positively. A positive attitude about situations and yourself is your most important asset in coping with stress.

And at last but not the least important …….

Please remember that you, as the parent or caregiver for a special needs child, are a special person too. Be kind to yourself. Watch out for burnout.

Source: Delores Curran,"100 ways to reduce Family Stress" Family Support Bulletin

Siblings of Kids with Special Needs

Caring for a child with special needs along with all the other demands of work and caring for the rest of the family can be very challenging. If the demands and the stress level are high in your family, it is difficult for everyone. Siblings of children with special needs have special needs themselves. Their sister or brother with special needs will get a bigger share of attention. While having a special needs sib presents challenges, it also comes with opportunities. Here are some suggestions for supporting siblings:

1. Don't expect children or teenagers to accept adult roles, particularly in caring for the family member with a disability.
   
2. Don't imply that the sibling without disabilities has a lifetime responsibility to care for their brother or sister
   
3. Integrate the whole family into community activities: sports, music groups, church or civic organizations.
   
4. Encourage siblings to observe their sibling with a disability in therapy.
   
5. Set reasonable expectations for all of the children in the family.
   
6. Seek Family counseling if any member experiences prolonged periods of depression or anger that cannot be relieved.
   
7. Relay information to siblings so they feel like part of the family.
   
8. Use family conferences to provide an open setting for siblings to ask questions and acknowledge feelings.
   
9. Prepare siblings for changes in home life before they actually occur.
   
10. Understand that each child has different needs. Allow siblings to set their own pace for learning and involvement.
    
11. Legitimize reasonable anger. All children behave badly sometimes.
    
12. Help siblings to develop their own identities, seeing the differences and similarities between themselves and a child with special needs, and achieving successes without guilt.
    

To be continued……

Source: Delores Curran"100 ways to reduce Family Stress" Family Support Bulletin.

Rate your community’s implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act!

People with disabilities, their family members, and their advocates are invited to complete the survey so that their voices are heard when accessibility issues are being addressed in their communities! We want to know what you have to say!

SPEAK YOUR MIND! The survey is available online at:

www.TheADASurvey.org

The ADA has been in effect since 1990 - nearly 20 years have passed for communities to remove physical, programmatic, and attitudinal barriers that prevent people with disabilities from becoming active participating citizens. Progress has been made, but there is still need for further compliance. The ADA SURVEY asks citizens from Michigan to identify how they view current implementation of the ADA in their own communities. Here is your opportunity to provide opinions and ideas about where to improve accessibility!

The results of the ADA SURVEY will be used to "grade" your communities on their response to the ADA and will become a tool to educate policy makers, administrators and the public about the ADA. We hope that you will join us in this effort to learn more about community responses to the ADA.

To request the survey in an alternative format, or for additional information, contact Dr. Vicki Pappas by phone: 1-800-825-4733 or e-mail: beheard@indiana.edu.

This survey is being conducted by the Great Lakes ADA Center

and the Michigan ADA Steering Committee

in conjunction with the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community

5th Annual Kalamazoo Wraps National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day Carnival

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Kalamazoo County Fairgrounds (Hazel Gray Building)

4:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Each year the Kalamazoo Wraps National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day

Carnival is bigger and better. Over 1,200 were in attendance last year!

As in years past, this year's event will focus on education regarding children's

mental health issues and awareness of the services available for youth and their

families, within our system of care. This event also serves to reduce the stigma

of receiving mental health services and having mental illness.

In addition, we will also focus on: the positive effects/results of youth who receive

the mental health and substance abuse services they need, thereby increasing

graduation rates and decreasing their involvement with the juvenile justice system.

The carnival also provides a rare opportunity for parents, youth, families, service

providers, community members, and business owners, to spend time together in a

relaxed and comfortable atmosphere, promoting better communication, while building

relationships and trust within our system of care.

The event is open to the public and is entirely FREE: Attendance, Food, Games,

Prizes and Entertainment. We serve hotdogs, cotton candy and popcorn. A clown, who

makes animal shapes, hats and jewelry out of balloons, walks around throughout the

event, delighting everyone... KIDS LOVE THE BALLOON MAN. There are "bouncy

castles", professional face painters, and "experiential" games, organized by the

KCMHSAS Adventure Group staff, on the lawn. In addition, each organization that

participates has a game, or some fun activity, at their booth. Each year we have live

music and dancing, and "entertainment with a purpose" activities like instrument petting zoos.

For more info: http://www.kalamazoowraps.com/

ASPERGER’S SYNDROME: EXPLORING THE GIFTS AND THE CHALLENGES

Don't Miss out the opportunity to see Dr. Nick Dubin's presentation:

Asperger's Syndrome:

Exploring the gifts and challenges

Wednesday, May 12

6.30 pm to 8.00 pm

Hicks Banquet Hall

Kalamazoo College

If you want to learn more about Dr.Nick Dubin,you can visit his website: http://www.aspergerwisdom.com/

Sponsored by the Kalamazoo College Autism Awareness Group, the Autism Society of Kalamazoo/Battle Creek, the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, and the Kalamazoo College Student Development Office

Contact Bruce Mills at bmills@kzoo.edu if you have questions.

Kalamazoo County Interagency Coalition a Children’s Foster Care Collaboration

Presents:

What: Join the Kalamazoo Interagency Coalition for a day of training, Q & A session, and dinner

When: May 21, 2010, 1:00-8:30 (Attend part of the day or the entire event)

Where: Christian Life Center, 1225 W Paterson, Kalamazoo, MI 49007

Attend part of the day or the entire event!

Schedule of Events:

• 12:30 Registration begins
  
• 1-3:00 Speaker Jeanne Fowler
  

*Jeanne grew up in foster care

*Author of Peter's Lullaby

*Visit her website at:
http://www.bigfamilyofmichigan.org/

• 3-4:30 Q & A Session-There will be foster parents, foster youth and representatives from local
  

Foster care and adoption agencies available to answer any questions.

• 4:30-5:30 Dinner/Snacks
  
• 5:30-8:30 Panel, Session 9-The panel includes foster parents, workers and foster youth.
  

You can pre-register by contacting Julie Urbanski at 269-337-5034 or urbanskij@michigan.gov.

Pre-registration is required if you wish to receive a dinner. If you do not pre-register, snacks will be provided.

*Trainings will be facilitated by Kalamazoo County Interagency Coalition Members from the following agencies: Kalamazoo County DHS, Bethany Christian Services, Family & Children Services, Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, Starr Commonwealth, and Catholic Charities of West Michigan.