BC on Autism 20: What do I do for therapy?
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I get asked all the time about what therapies or interventions I use for our child. Outside of school we simply live life. That's it, but here are some snippets.
Run time is 4min 44sec.
Run time is 4min 44sec.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)
posted by Bartholomew Cubbins @ 11/05/2006 01:00:00 AM
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10 Comments:
That light-up keyboard looks like fun!
Excellent!
When I was on a listserv for my son's severe speech disability I was dismayed at all the "therapy this and therapy that" stuff (the real therapy stuff... not the chelation and cranialsacral therapy, which really threw me into a rage!).
I did try to tell people to let their kids just be kids. There are places to let kids be kids in small doses for those who have trouble with big crowds. The swimming pool was a big favorite, as were small playgroups.
Actually this weekend we are doing another kind of therapy... cutting him off from the Internet by disabling his MAC of his laptop from our wireless network so he cannot play either Guild Wars or City of Villians. He is supposed to be rewriting two American Govt. essays and working on his Senior Project... or he may be repeating 12th grade next year (which may not be a bad thing).
Some forms of therapy change as they get older.
This is very cool! I bought some educational board games that my kids (both) really enjoyed. One of them required simple adding and substracting in order to play the game, I was surprised at how helpful it was. My NT kid figured out money REALLY young, 10 pennies equals a dime, like that.
I love good quality toys for kids, not the garbage that fills most the toy shelves at WalMart, though one might find something useful there, too, and there's nothing wrong with balls, trucks and dolls (especially if they don't have goofy advertising on them). I want to see kids use their imaginations, and being outside of the house in a park or yard is fantastic, when it's possible.
We did some swimming when the kids were about 7-10 years old and we lived where there was a pool. The ASD kid could take amzingly cold water (or I'm a sissy and couldn't take what others considered normal)... but I'd have to drag xem out when xe was turning bluish.
I wanted to add, my mom was a ballet teacher, and I got lots of "physical therapy" and brain therapy from ballet classes. Ballet for little kids includes teaching them to listen to the beat of the music and clap along with it. I'm naturally uncoordinated, and I was always a lousy ballerina, but I had to do it, and I liked some of it. My mom never made me feel ashamed for not being able to do what the other girls could, that's pretty cool considering she was the teacher of some of the classes I took. She had a little girl with Prader-Willy in her "kinderdance" class years and years ago. She was about 3 feet tall and quite heavy, but she was there with her leotard and tights, getting excercise with the other kids.
no, it's: Prader-Willi
thanks all, it sounds like the hidden hoard has been hoarding good toys and productive family activities for some time.
How about karate? Both my offspring took karate for several years and loved it. They were (and to some extent, still are) big-time anime fans, so motivating them to try karate was a piece of cake. Karate helps to improve a person's motor coordination, sense of their body in space, and self-defense skills (which can be useful for kids who get picked on a lot). It's very ritualistic, and there's lots of cool terminology to memorize, especially if the teacher puts a lot of emphasis on history and traditions of the school they're associated with.
Eh, telling time's overrated. Does anybody really know what time it is?
I've invented a Ouija Abacus. Lets me receive finance advice from the other side. Very useful.
Would you mind sharing the brand of that light up keyboard? Might be on the holiday wish list this year.
casio/radio shack. got it new for under $100. there are variants out there including ones that plug into the TV (ours doesn't, but the TV is always a plus for capturing attention in our case). Ours has 100 songs, light up keys, a computer voice and a LED display with a hand for fingering cues.
There are also versions where you can download new songs using a usb connection I think. One more bit on the TV-capable versions - I think they have a bouncing ball on the words kind of thing like the old cartoons and they show the keyboard keys, the right finger of the hand, and the words on the screen.
Karate seems very cool. Having studied KungFu (wing chun), I appreciate the concepts of self-control and peace through physical repetition. I've hesitated to do the sporting varieties, but we did try Taekwondo, which due to the militant nature of the club, didn't work out too well. In hindsight it was funny as hell that one kid was spinning circles every time he punched the bag. To hell with conforming.
Bart,
Just an FYI on that clock thing, try FLIX animated time. It's an excellent (and easy) program to work up to telling time. Sorry that I don't have the link, but google will bring it up. There are other programs and they even will give you a free download to sample.
Enjoy it and have fun.
Regan
PS--I don't get a cut on FLIX programs. I just love them because they're cheap and do the job.
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