I work with a child who’s hard to connect with. Why is it so hard? What can I do to make it easier? Great question! Relationships are one of the things that make life worth living. For children with autism, differences in communication skills, sensory processing, interests and behaviour may all contribute to problems developing and nurturing relationships. Whether you’re […]
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Manitoba schools are in the process of changing from one special needs funding model to another, and many parents are asking questions. Every change is an answer to a problem. The following is an explanation of what is happening, why it was thought necessary, and what parents should expect from their child’s school. Many thanks to Karen Fraser, who wrote […]
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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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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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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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Do you think that every child in Manitoba has access to an education that meets their needs and equips them for a satisfying and useful life in their community? As a result of a recent forum on accessible education in Manitoba, there was a call to action to draft a letter to go to Minister Scott Fielding and his colleagues […]
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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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“Communication is life. It is the only vehicle we have for connecting meaningfully with others.” Joseph Grenny, author Our daughter began speaking with words when she was 3. When she was six, she spoke mostly with sentences that she’d memorized or with short words and phrases. She shared requests or comments about what she wanted or was doing in the […]
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Credit for these ideas goes to Marlaine Willborn, a speech therapist in Winnipeg. This post is based on ideas she had compiled and shared with me when I was trying to get better at engaging my children in play. Her resource came primarily from ‘Giggle Time: Establishing a social connection’ by Susan Aud Somers. One of the most daunting […]
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Christopher Ulmer is a special education teacher. In his third year of working with the same class of students, he wanted to highlight what he saw in his students – their brilliance, humor, and beauty. His first idea was a book in which his students would explain life from their perspectives, but when that didn’t work out, he started videotaping and […]
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