AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
CREVE COEUR • The coach sits in the control room, wearing headphones as she watches the action on the monitor.
“Don’t give him attention right now,” autism training specialist Anna Duke instructs a mother through an earpiece as she tries to play a board game with her child who would rather play with a toy.
The parent training program at Easterseals Midwest is a two-week course that teaches families strategies for behavioral and communication challenges with their children with autism.
Autism affects 1 in 59 children, up from 1 in 68 children identified with the developmental disorder in 2014. That translates to 2.5 percent of boys and nearly 1 percent of girls, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracked thousands of 8-year-olds at several sites across the country, including St. Louis.
The local training program, which runs for eight hours each day, includes individual and group instruction and activities for the children and parents.
During the first week, therapists work with the children in three daily activity sessions while the parents watch and take notes from a separate room. Parents take over the sessions in the second week, while the trainers watch and offer guidance through the earpiece.
“I’ve learned to change the way I speak to him,” said Karly Gadomski, 30, about her son Tenzin Harris. “Instead of telling him ‘no,’ ‘don’t’ and ‘stop,’ I’m telling him what he can do instead.”
Tenzin, 8, was diagnosed with autism at age 2. Gadomski, a single mother, said her biggest challenge was communicating with Tenzin, who is nonverbal. When he got frustrated during a training session, Tenzin threw the tablet computer he uses to communicate and shattered the screen.
“If he doesn’t feel like I know what he wants, that leads to acting out,” Gadomski said.
Tenzin is fascinated by ceiling fans and will climb on furniture to get a closer look. He has broken several fan blades in their home, but he’s also interested in how they work. Once he ordered a fan on eBay and built it himself, Gadomski said.
Anna Duke, an autism training specialist with Easterseals, put a fan in the training room with Tenzin to challenge him to focus on his assigned tasks.
“We want to see these behaviors during training so we can work on it,” Duke said.
Autism is marked by delayed or impaired speech and difficulties with social interactions. It was not commonly diagnosed before the 1980s, when rates started to increase. Doctors said the recent rise in the autism rate reflected continued improvements in identifying the disorder, particularly among black and Hispanic children. The CDC campaign “Learn the Signs, Act Early,” which launched in 2004, could also be a factor.
“There’s no such thing as an autism number, there’s no test that you run, so this is clinicians’ applying their judgment to who is impaired by this condition,” said Dr. John Constantino of Washington University, one of the authors of the CDC report.
Constantino said that when today’s definition of autism is applied to populations of children studied in the 1960s, the true rate of the disorder is virtually unchanged.
“It’s just that we were either missing it and not aware of it, or not diagnosing it, or for many cases diagnosing it as intellectual disability,” he said.
The Easterseals program in Missouri is free for families, with help from state mental health programs and fundraising. It is the only parent training program of its kind in the country but is threatened by state budget cuts, according to leaders in the nonprofit organization, which focuses on people with disabilities.
The trainers follow up in the families’ homes and in the community for real-world practice of the coping techniques they learned in the program. For Tenzin, that is likely to involve a trip to the grocery store, where Gadomski has had to abandon the cart several times and leave when her son has had a meltdown.
During the two-week training session, Gadomski has learned to give descriptive praise such as , “I love the way you are sitting in the chair,” instead of a simple “good job.”
She now gives Tenzin small tasks, such as turning the pages when she’s reading him a book. The trainers teach parents to give commands instead of asking questions — “Sit in the chair” instead of “Can you sit in the chair?” They are also told not to say “please” when giving directions and to reserve “thank you” for unprompted good behavior.
One of the biggest misconceptions about autism is that it is associated with aggression or violence, Duke said.
“It’s bigger than that. It’s a communication deficit,” she said. “If someone is doing something highly inappropriate, there’s something blocking that communication. And knowing what it is, we can respond to it effectively.”
Source (with images) - Autism on the rise again: 1 in 59 children in St. Louis are diagnosed by age 8
CREVE COEUR • The coach sits in the control room, wearing headphones as she watches the action on the monitor.
“Don’t give him attention right now,” autism training specialist Anna Duke instructs a mother through an earpiece as she tries to play a board game with her child who would rather play with a toy.
The parent training program at Easterseals Midwest is a two-week course that teaches families strategies for behavioral and communication challenges with their children with autism.
Autism affects 1 in 59 children, up from 1 in 68 children identified with the developmental disorder in 2014. That translates to 2.5 percent of boys and nearly 1 percent of girls, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracked thousands of 8-year-olds at several sites across the country, including St. Louis.
The local training program, which runs for eight hours each day, includes individual and group instruction and activities for the children and parents.
During the first week, therapists work with the children in three daily activity sessions while the parents watch and take notes from a separate room. Parents take over the sessions in the second week, while the trainers watch and offer guidance through the earpiece.
“I’ve learned to change the way I speak to him,” said Karly Gadomski, 30, about her son Tenzin Harris. “Instead of telling him ‘no,’ ‘don’t’ and ‘stop,’ I’m telling him what he can do instead.”
Tenzin, 8, was diagnosed with autism at age 2. Gadomski, a single mother, said her biggest challenge was communicating with Tenzin, who is nonverbal. When he got frustrated during a training session, Tenzin threw the tablet computer he uses to communicate and shattered the screen.
“If he doesn’t feel like I know what he wants, that leads to acting out,” Gadomski said.
Tenzin is fascinated by ceiling fans and will climb on furniture to get a closer look. He has broken several fan blades in their home, but he’s also interested in how they work. Once he ordered a fan on eBay and built it himself, Gadomski said.
Anna Duke, an autism training specialist with Easterseals, put a fan in the training room with Tenzin to challenge him to focus on his assigned tasks.
“We want to see these behaviors during training so we can work on it,” Duke said.
Autism is marked by delayed or impaired speech and difficulties with social interactions. It was not commonly diagnosed before the 1980s, when rates started to increase. Doctors said the recent rise in the autism rate reflected continued improvements in identifying the disorder, particularly among black and Hispanic children. The CDC campaign “Learn the Signs, Act Early,” which launched in 2004, could also be a factor.
“There’s no such thing as an autism number, there’s no test that you run, so this is clinicians’ applying their judgment to who is impaired by this condition,” said Dr. John Constantino of Washington University, one of the authors of the CDC report.
Constantino said that when today’s definition of autism is applied to populations of children studied in the 1960s, the true rate of the disorder is virtually unchanged.
“It’s just that we were either missing it and not aware of it, or not diagnosing it, or for many cases diagnosing it as intellectual disability,” he said.
The Easterseals program in Missouri is free for families, with help from state mental health programs and fundraising. It is the only parent training program of its kind in the country but is threatened by state budget cuts, according to leaders in the nonprofit organization, which focuses on people with disabilities.
The trainers follow up in the families’ homes and in the community for real-world practice of the coping techniques they learned in the program. For Tenzin, that is likely to involve a trip to the grocery store, where Gadomski has had to abandon the cart several times and leave when her son has had a meltdown.
During the two-week training session, Gadomski has learned to give descriptive praise such as , “I love the way you are sitting in the chair,” instead of a simple “good job.”
She now gives Tenzin small tasks, such as turning the pages when she’s reading him a book. The trainers teach parents to give commands instead of asking questions — “Sit in the chair” instead of “Can you sit in the chair?” They are also told not to say “please” when giving directions and to reserve “thank you” for unprompted good behavior.
One of the biggest misconceptions about autism is that it is associated with aggression or violence, Duke said.
“It’s bigger than that. It’s a communication deficit,” she said. “If someone is doing something highly inappropriate, there’s something blocking that communication. And knowing what it is, we can respond to it effectively.”
Source (with images) - Autism on the rise again: 1 in 59 children in St. Louis are diagnosed by age 8
