In So Many Words

Special Diets for Special Kids
Volumes 1 and 2 Combined

by Lisa Lewis, Ph.D.
Future Horizons, 2011
375 pages

About the Book

Praised as a modern-day classic by celebrities and readers all over the world, the first edition of Special Diets for Special Kids has been helping children and adults with autism, ADHD, celiac disease, and other disorders since 1998. Special Diets for Special Kids Two followed up in 2001 by providing more recipes and updated research.

Now, this revised and expanded edition offers both books in one, complete with the latest research, revised recipes, and color photos throughout!

The first part of the book describes dietary intervention in detail, from both a scientific and a personal approach (the author’s son has autism and has been on a GFCF diet for many years). In a nutshell, certain enzymes are required to break down gluten and casein. If those enzymes don’t function well, or are not present at sufficient levels, serious neurological problems can result. Studies have shown that children with autism have a marked deficiency of these enzymes, which may explain why GFCF diets have yielded positive results for many children.

Among many other helpful topics, Dr. Lewis explains:

• The Biology behind Dietary Interventions
• “Leaky Gut”
• Allergies, Sensitivities, and Intolerances
• Antibiotics and Probiotics
• Vitamins and Minerals
• Testing and Nutritional Support
• Other Diets and Interventions
• How to Go GFCF

The second part of the book is an easy-to-follow cookbook. This section contains nearly 200 recipes, including many you would have never thought possible on a GFCF diet, such as:

• Banana-Nut Pancakes
• Blueberry Muffins
• Tortillas/Wraps
• Chicken Nuggets
• Shepherd’s Pie
• Mock Mac and Cheese
• Chili
• Turkey Dressing
• Cakes and Cookies
• And many, many more!

Best of all, this book comes with a FREE CD of printable recipes, so you can easily print out recipes as you use them and keep the book away from counter spills and drips!

My Thoughts

As anyone who has been involved with the GFCF diet knows, there is often much more involved than just eliminating gluten and casein. Other food sensitivities and digestive issues often exist and require specific types of adjustments with diet and supplements to see improvement in a child’s health. In the first fifty-plus pages of this book, Lewis gives an overview of many of the related issues and provides a solid foundation for both the why and how of a special diet.

The rest of the book is a colorful explosion of recipes, ranging from the three main meals a day to holiday treats and desserts with lots of other stuff in between. Everyone should find something to tempt their child’s taste buds and/or texture requirements!

Discount Opportunity: If you order Special Diets for Special Kids directly from Future Horizons, you can use the code INTERRUPTED to receive 15% off and free shipping in the continental US.

Note: I received a review copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own. I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using the promotional code provided. You can use the code INTERRUPTED when ordering books or other materials – or even conference registrations – to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US.

Exploring Feelings
Cognitive Behavior Therapy to Manage Anxiety

by Dr. Tony Attwood
Future Horizons, 2004
79 pages

Winner of a 2008 Teachers’ Choice Award!

About the Book

Anxiety can be debilitating for anyone, but it can be especially confusing for a child. Learning about emotions helps children recognize connections between thinking and feeling, and helps them identify the physiological effects of anxiety on the body (sweating, increased heart rate, crying, etc.).

This book provides a guide for caregivers and then the workbook section allows children to identify situations that make them anxious and learn how to perceive the situation differently.

My Thoughts

From what I can tell, the book seems to be set up in a format that would be easy for a psychologist or other group leader to implement. The opening section provides a good overview of the goals and methods used, followed by a section with all the worksheets needed for the six sessions, and ending with a breakdown of the timeline and resources needed for the facilitator.

As Dr. Attwood explains, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) focuses on aspects of both cognitive deficiency and cognitive distortion, both of which are seen in people on the autism spectrum. To address these areas, the program starts with affective education, the goal of which is “to learn why we have emotions, their use and misuse and the identification of different levels of expression.” From there, it moves on to cognitive restructuring, which “enables the child or adult to correct distorted conceptualizations and dysfunctional beliefs.”

Another great strategy that is used is the introduction of an emotional toolbox, or collection of ways to fix the problems associated with negative emotions. There can be a variety of types of tools, including physical, relaxation, social, thinking, sensory, special interest, etc. Inappropriate tools are also discussed to help the participants learn to evaluate when and how a tool should be used (or not used).

I am extremely impressed by this book and could see it being used effectively with kids who have developed some skills in identifying their own emotions and who are willing to engage in group activities on this topic. At age 9, I don’t think my son would be quite ready for this, but I could see him benefiting from it within a few years (or possibly from a modified version now).

Discount Opportunity: If you order Exploring Feelings directly from Future Horizons, you can use the code INTERRUPTED to receive 15% off and free shipping in the continental US. There is also an Exploring Feelings workbook focused on managing anger.

Note: I received a review copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own. I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using the promotional code provided. You can use the code INTERRUPTED when ordering books or other materials – or even conference registrations – to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US.

The New Social Story Book, Revised and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition
Over 150 Social Stories!

by Carol Gray
Future Horizons, 2010
265 pages

About the Book

Social Stories™ provide REAL social understanding! Carol Gray developed the Social Story™ in 1991 to promote social understanding in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Now, nearly twenty years after their inception, Social Stories have become a standard approach for teachers and parents all over the globe, and the stories are more effective than ever!

This 10th Anniversary Edition of The New Social Story™ Book offers over 150 of the most requested Social Stories, each one professionally written by Carol Gray. But it doesn’t end there—Carol also teaches you how to write Social Stories yourself! Years of experience and trial-and-error have led to updated Story guidelines. Carol explains her fine-tuned process in the included ten-step learning module The Social Story™ 10.1 Tutorials—perfect for parents and teachers!

INSIDE ARE GEMS SUCH AS:

• Mistakes Can Happen on a Good Day
• It Was Fun but Now We’re Done
• When It Is My Turn to Listen
• Saying What I Think with Respect
• Learning to Respond to Bullying
• Telling My Teacher about a Problem
• Fire Drills at School
• Moving to a New Home
• Children Grow Kind Of Slow
• The Truth about Messes
• This Place is Busy
• and DOZENS MORE!

PLUS, to jump-start your story-writing journey, this book comes with a CD containing each Social Story in ready-to-print PDFs AND easy-to-edit Word files! With the CD, you can customize story content and insert images relevant to your child or student’s individual experiences. An invaluable bonus!

My Thoughts

I can’t tell you how fast I jumped at the opportunity to review this book! I have loved Carol Gray and Social Stories for years and am so thankful for teachers and therapists who have helped me write stories for my son on a variety of topics.

With these resource, I can definitely take it to the next level. Not only can I use the stories in the book as they are, I can also modify them for specific situations using the included CD, or I can follow the 10-step tutorial in the beginning of the book to write my own custom social stories.

My son and I have actually read sections of it as part of our bedtime routine and have been able to refer back to them when we encounter a challenging event during the day. Just recently, he has been having more difficulty with handling games, and I was able to print out the relevant stories to be read before games are played both at school and at home. Such an incredible tool to have at hand when it is needed!

Discount Opportunity: If you order The New Social Story Book directly from Future Horizons, you can use the code INTERRUPTED to receive 15% off and free shipping in the continental US.

Note: I received a review copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own. I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using the promotional code provided. You can use the code INTERRUPTED when ordering books or other materials – or even conference registrations – to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US.

Autism and Reading Comprehension
Ready-to-Use Lesson Plans for Teachers

by Joseph Porter, M.Ed.
Future Horizons, 2011
394 pages

About the Book

The predictable format, repetition, and routine of these lessons will create a relaxed learning environment, while the variations in the topics will hold students’ attention and help them generalize the reading skills they need to succeed!

Starting with Level 1 (The Cat) and ending with Level 9 (The Lizard), special-educator Joseph Porter has developed an amazing 90 hours of animal-themed, whole-group instruction. There are two student worksheets for each of nine animals, totaling eighteen worksheets. Each worksheet has four variations, and there is a ready-to-go lesson plan for each one!

There are also two sentence-building exercises for each animal theme, which will build students’ observation skills and help them transform those skills into conversation and written language. In addition to the step-by-step lesson plans, Joseph provides a detailed description of what the lessons will look and feel like in the classroom, complete with valuable, first-hand advice. In the back, you’ll find an appendix with numerous suggestions for complementary activities for each animal theme, so you can supplement on the “off” days with art projects, music, books, and videos.

There is even a section containing Data-Collection Sheets, assessment forms that will help you record students’ progress, per IEP standards. And the companion CD contains all of the worksheets, lesson plans, visual tools, and assessment forms for quick-and-easy print!

My Thoughts

This is an incredibly detailed curriculum, with explicit instructions for how to implement every aspect of the program. The worksheets combine both coloring and writing, mostly filling in the blank or copying a sentence, and they offer lots of practice on following directions as well. There are also several different graphic sentence-building tools that can be used as the students gain confidence and skill.

The book also includes an easy-to-use CD containing printable lesson plans, worksheets, visual tools, and assessment and data collection forms. This program would definitely be most appropriate for beginning readers at the elementary school level.

I like that Porter recognizes real-world limitations and presents lessons suitable for small group instruction rather than only one-on-one interactions. I also greatly appreciate his understanding that comprehension – whether in reading or in conversation – is about having an active relationship with the words that goes beyond simple recognition of basic meaning.

Discount Opportunity: If you order Autism & Reading Comprehension directly from Future Horizons, you can use the code INTERRUPTED to receive 15% off and free shipping in the continental US.

Note: I received a review copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own. I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using the promotional code provided. You can use the code INTERRUPTED when ordering books or other materials – or even conference registrations – to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US.

Taken from the article “Social Anxiety and Social Skill Competencies” by Michelle Garcia Winner, Autism Asperger’s Digest, www.autismdigest.com

Note: This is Part II of the article; click here for Part I, where Michelle outlines the key strategies she teaches for reducing social anxiety. I think the visuals are great – they remind me of what some of my favorite Aspie bloggers refer to as “loops”!

The Spirals of Social Success and Social Failure
Visual representations are strong—and welcomed—tools in helping our students understand the interrelationships that exist in social thinking and social processing. To help our students understand the concepts outlined in this article, I developed two graphic representations of the thought processes used in working through social situations. The Spiral of Social Success summarizes these concepts:

• You will encounter some stress approaching this situation. In the past your anxiety would prompt you to bail out of this situation. Instead of starting by doubting yourself, explore what strategies you can use to help yourself deal with the uncomfortable social situation.
• Use your inner coach to remind yourself how much better you will feel once you use your strategies—that you are capable of using these strategies as well as choosing specific strategies to use.
• You feel better about yourself when you are demonstrating your abilities or social competencies.
• This encourages you to use the strategies.
• In doing so, you are training your brain that “you can do it” better than you have done it before!

Conversely, the Spiral of Social Failure illustrates what happens when our clients fail to embrace their social-learning–social-anxiety reducing strategies:

• You encounter the same stressful situation, one you previously avoided.
• Your anxiety prompts you to think of excuses for why you won’t engage in this situation today.
• Your self-defeater voice assures you that you can’t do it and that you have never been able to do it.
• You have negative emotions about your inability to get through this situation.
• You avoid putting yourself in the situation.
• You teach your brain one more time that you cannot do it! Your memory now reflects your inability and your self-defeater voice grows stronger.

The purpose of the Spirals of Social Success and Social Failure was to help our students understand how best to place the strategies they were learning in the context of their own functioning.

Our students helped us adjust the spirals so the wording more clearly matched their own experiences and emphasized how they related to the content of each spiral. This visual presentation paired with lessons that taught them the key concepts outlined in the graphics—increased accountability, self-learning, letting go of excuses, and embracing change—led to some very positive results.

They discovered they could choose positive behavioral responses to anxiety-laden situations and retrain their brains to learn new ways of acting and reacting. While the situations still caused anxiety, our clients gained confidence in attempting to push through their anxiety, further reinforced by the success they could achieve within the interaction. However, this learning process takes time. It may take years to help our students, through active learning of these strategies, to get them onto the Spiral of Social Success.

Some level of anxiety is inherent in every social situation we encounter. This set of strategies does not offer a cure for the anxiety experienced by individuals with social learning challenges. However, it can help minimize some of the anxiety by helping our students better appreciate how anxiety affects us and giving our students a toolbox of options to use when anxiety arises.

Such coping strategies are beneficial—not just for individuals with social learning challenges, but for us all!

Michelle Garcia Winner is the founder of Social Thinking®. She works in her clinic in San Jose, CA, has written numerous books, and speaks internationally. Visit her website, www.socialthinking.com, for more information.

Excerpt was reprinted with permission. You can get a 15% discount on a subscription to the AADigest when you use this discount code: INTERRUPTED.

Taken from the article “Social Anxiety and Social Skill Competencies” by Michelle Garcia Winner, Autism Asperger’s Digest, www.autismdigest.com

Note: Because this article is fairly long, I have broken it up into two parts. In Part I, Michelle outlines the key strategies she teaches for reducing social anxiety. I so appreciate her outlook on the responsibility of each individual to take ownership for what we need and want to improve in our social lives.

My goal was to find a way to help our clients decrease anxiety while increasing their social competencies. The result was a treatment strategy called the Spirals of Social Success and Social Failure.

I developed this approach for high-level teens and young adults who had first developed social competencies and were now ready to explore social anxiety. We discovered this teaching strategy helped motivate them to challenge their anxiety by giving them alternative strategies to use when stressed by specific social situations. An overview of the social concepts we shared with clients, as well as the description of the spirals, follows.

Social anxiety has deep tentacles; once it disrupts our functioning it likes to keep that power in place! Once it inhabits a person, anxiety will not go away without a fight. This means as our students recognize they have increased social competencies, they have to actively work at reducing their anxiety. This involves learned strategies, as well as their own shift in perception in making a choice in the moment: are you going to default to anxiety or use your strategies?

Some of the key social learning–social anxiety reduction strategies we teach our clients include:

1. Take ownership; be personally accountable for what you need to learn. After many years of working with adolescents, I realized that while I understood they had social learning differences, as long as I prompted them to use their strategies, I was the one taking ownership of their problems. Now I realize that as I teach them these strategies, they have to work at using them, which first means they have to realize these strategies are theirs and not ours (the teachers and parents).
2. Accept that your job is to become more comfortable with social discomfort. The neurotypical teen and adult world is filled with social discomfort. Using strategies does not mean our clients won’t feel discomfort. Their job is to work at learning how to be comfortable with the fact they will be uncomfortable socially at times! The mentor’s job is to encourage the client to use the treatment strategies even when experiencing discomfort.
3. Recognize and celebrate the small steps of progress being made. We need to help our students feel intrinsically proud of themselves for their progress. Avoid using token rewards for progress as these provide extrinsic but not intrinsic motivation.
4. Use your inner coach, rather than your self-defeater voice, inside your head. You and I use an “inner coach” or “private voice” in our heads to encourage and motivate ourselves through difficulties. Our inner coach may say to us: “You can do this!” “Just do it and get it over with!” “Remember last time this wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be, so just go do it!”
   Unfortunately, many of our students have a “self-defeater” voice in their heads. This voice discourages rather than encourages: “You’re bad at this.” “You’ve never been able to do this, so you won’t be able to do it now.” Individuals who have a loud self-defeater voice in their heads will default to avoiding the uncomfortable task at hand; those with an inner coach have a far better chance of pushing themselves through the uncomfortable task. We need to help our students be realistic about their strengths and challenges while reinforcing their choice to use their inner coach as much as possible.
5. Stop making excuses for avoiding social encounters. Those with strong self-defeater voices tend to find a lot of benign excuses for avoiding the task at hand. Many of our students don’t recognize that what they are saying is, in fact, an excuse for not pushing themselves through an uncomfortable moment. Instead, they automatically default to their excuses.
   Our strategy is to explore the personal excuses they make as we assign them tasks that provide opportunities to practice social competencies and use their anxiety-reducing strategies. Once students begin to notice and then take ownership of the fact they are making excuses, they further progress.
6. Your brain always learns; whether it learns positive or negative ways to cope, it is always learning! We discuss how our brains are always learning, all the time, that anytime we are awake we are learning from our experiences. If we “default” to what we are accustomed to doing, we constantly teach our brains we can only do it the way we have done it before. If students want to teach their brain a new set of skills, they have to try to do things differently.
   This idea may seem elementary, but it can be difficult for our concrete-thinking, rule-bound students to change the way they do things, especially their thinking patterns. I often ask them a direct question: “Do you want to teach your brain you can’t do something, or do you want to teach your brain you can do something?” Hopefully their answer is a “can-do” response, and we circle back to our other strategies to help them retrain their brain.

Watch for Part II of this guest article tomorrow, where Michelle illustrates her spirals of social success and social failure.

Michelle Garcia Winner is the founder of Social Thinking®. She works in her clinic in San Jose, CA, has written numerous books, and speaks internationally. Visit her website, www.socialthinking.com, for more information.

Excerpt was reprinted with permission. You can get a 15% discount on a subscription to the AADigest when you use this discount code: INTERRUPTED.

Taken from the article “Autism: From Mind Blindness to Context Blindness” by Peter Vermeulen, Nov/Dec 2011 Autism Asperger’s Digest, www.autismdigest.com

Note: You can get a 15% discount on a subscription to the AADigest when you use this discount code: INTERRUPTED.

Remember the scene in the movie, Rainman, where Raymond is trying to cross a street? In Raymond’s mind when the sign displays “Don’t walk,” it means only one thing: “Don’t walk.” We laugh when the sign changes from “Walk” to “Don’t walk” and Raymond stops in the middle of the intersection. Raymond does not understand that “Don’t walk” means many different things, depending on the situation or context. When you’re halfway through the crossing, it means “hurry up” instead!

Here is another example of context blindness: When the doorbell rang, the mother of a seven-year-old boy with autism asked him to open the door. He opened the back door instead of the front. His reaction was logical, but his choice of door was out of context.

Emotion recognition training is immensely popular in the field of autism. Typical materials used in this training are photographs or pictures of facial expressions of emotions. Although these materials can help children with autism learn about different emotions in a rote manner, they do not reflect emotion recognition as it happens in real life.

First, we rarely see faces out of context in real life. When we try to figure out what a person feels, we look at context as much as we do facial expression: the situation, what that person says, body language, our past experiences with similar situations, etc. In fact we don’t even need a facial expression to recognize emotions…. Studies on how people process facial expressions have shown that when we look at faces, our brains always spontaneously encode the context and that in certain instances, context plays an even bigger role in emotion recognition than the facial expression.

The second problem with traditional emotion recognition training is the underlying assumption that there is a direct relationship between an emotion and its facial expression. This assumption goes back to Darwin’s idea of universal expression of emotions in which each emotion has its own distinct facial expression. Unfortunately for people with autism, facial expressions are not that straightforward and quite often are ambiguous.

Take tears for instance. What do people feel when they have tears on their cheeks? It could mean sadness. But it could also mean happiness or pride. Or it could be an allergic reaction or the result of dicing an onion. How can a brain tell the difference? It uses context.

In recognizing emotions—the same is true for all mental states—the human brain relies on context. When people with autism find it hard to empathize, it is because their brain lacks contextual sensitivity. They are affected by context blindness, rather than mind blindness.

We can teach people with ASD a lot of rules and scripts, but for social understanding and competence to flourish, scripts and rules are insufficient. To effectively teach emotion recognition and social understanding to people with ASD, we must add context to the materials we teach. Even using a term such as “socially appropriate behavior” becomes misleading unless context is specified; behavior that is socially appropriate in one situation might be inappropriate in another context!

Social competence is not about knowing whether a certain behavior is socially appropriate or not, it is the knowledge of when that behavior is appropriate and when it is not.

Research has shown that more able people with ASD know quite a lot of social rules, but they have difficulty adapting these rules to changing contexts or making exceptions to the rules. Most social skill training programs focus on teaching generic social skills (e.g., how to start a conversation). However, having a conversation while waiting in the dentist’s waiting room or visiting someone at the hospital is quite different from the conversation you have hanging out with a group of buddies because the contexts are very different.

Instead of putting our focus on teaching social skills, we should focus on teaching social contexts such as visiting someone at the hospital or hanging out with friends. And then teach all the necessary rules, conversation, and behavior attached to a certain context. When you visit someone who is ill and in the hospital, what kind of present do you take? How long do you stay? What do you talk about? What should you say/not say?

The same logic about context applies to Social Stories™, a powerful tool to help people with autism navigate the social world. Instead of creating stories about certain social skills, we should build them around contexts and introduce sentences that start with if and when. In this manner a story can be adapted to different contexts. For instance, a social story about welcoming guests to your birthday party could contain the following contextual sentences:

• When the person who arrives is a close family member, you kiss them and say “hi.”
• When the person who arrives is not a close family member, you shake hands and say “hi.”

Social competence requires more than social skills; it demands contextual sensitivity— something difficult for people with ASD. Training programs designed to help people with ASD navigate the social world should therefore emphasize social contexts, not just focus on teaching social skills.

Peter Vermeulen, PhD, is a senior lecturer and consultant at Autisme Centraal in Gent, Belgium. He has written 15 books on autism, some of which have been translated into several languages.

Excerpt was reprinted with permission. Added emphasis is mine.

The holiday season is upon us, and people everywhere are fretting over what to get for their loved ones, searching for meaningful gifts that will enlighten and inspire.

Well, no need to fret any longer! Future Horizons has put together three suggestions for great books for parents of a child with autism. Put these books on the top of your shopping list and you will give a gift that will bring smiles not only through the holiday season, it will be also something your friend or family member will hold dear for all the days next year and thereafter.

Or, make gift-giving easier for someone else! Put the books on your own wish list and receive a gift that keeps on giving—to you and your child!

1.) Apps for Autism is a book written as a primer on the newest technologies so a parent can confidently access and utilize tools that are just a touch away to maximize your child’s success.

For those new to apps, worry not! The author takes you by the hand and teaches you how to get started (from selecting a device, to opening an account, to downloading your first app). Apps include just about any subject imaginable—communication, language, math, literacy, hygiene, sign language, aphasia, music, eating gluten free—you name it, and you’ll find an app for it. The author guides you through, explaining what each app can and cannot do. Finally, the world’s best digital tools are right at your fingertips!

2.) Bobbi Sheahan is not only a beautiful writer, she is frank and funny. People just can’t put down her book What I’d Wish I’d Known about Raising a Child with Autism. She and her coauthor, psychologist Kathy DeOrnellas, Ph.D., take readers on a personal and professional tour of autism—from the moment parents realize their child is different (“My, what a quiet baby I have!”), to self-righteous moms on the playground, to holding a marriage together in the realm of routines.

No one could read this book without both laughing and crying. So if you want some humor and understanding in your life this holiday season, read Bobbi Sheahan’s book. Her candidness and her coauthor’s expertise will help you help the child you love.

3.) The holidays are the single most stressful time of the year for many reasons: long to-do lists, financial strains, traveling, preparing for houseguests, and more. It’s a time when families get together with relatives they don’t see frequently, including some they may not see again because of their age, infirmities, or illness.

Catherine Faherty’s masterpiece Understanding Death and Illness and What They Teach About Life: An Interactive Guide for Individuals with Autism or Asperger’s and their Loved Ones is, without doubt, the best book ever written about teaching the children you love about how to act, what to say, and, in the process, how to grapple with your beliefs about death and illness and their relationship to life itself. This book is really for people of all ages and abilities, but it’s particularly a Godsend to the parents of a child on the spectrum. Beautifully, caringly written, this book gives meaning to the holiday season in a way you can’t imagine.

If you take my advice and give this list to your nearest and dearest, he/she can order the book(s) – or any items from the Future Horizons online store – at a 15% discount from www.fhautism.com by using the special coupon code INTERRUPTED.

You not only get something memorable, you’ll get it at a bargain!

And, if you’re looking for a great gift for a child with autism or sensory processing disorder, check out Sensitive Sam. It’s a charming illustrated story that will help children understand more about what it’s like to have Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). It is written and illustrated by Marla Roth-Fisch, a happily married mother of two, including a son with SPD.

Note: I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using this code. You can use the code INTERRUPTED when ordering books or other materials to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US. Discount also applies to conference registrations.

I’m finally getting back to my notes from the National Autism Conference. After the great afternoon spent learning about motor planning, I was more than ready to hear this presentation on physical education the following morning.

The speaker was Garth Tymeson, a Professor of Adapted Physical Education in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Wisconsin – Lacrosse. Initially, the session was advertised as being on adapted physical education, but Dr. Tymeson revised it to the broader topic of “Preparing for an Active and Healthy Lifestyle in the Community.”

Following are some of the notes that I took during his presentation:

Collaboration Between Teachers and Parents

The starting point for any physical education program is the goals, and the goals should reflect the functional skills we want to see them using in the community.

In order to create goals that will mean something for the student after they leave school (for the day or for good), there must be collaboration between teachers and parents. Teachers must find out what parents what their kids to be able to do.

So, what do parents was their kids to do? Parental goals for physical education usually include things such as:
- socialization
- learning basic skills
- acquiring functional physical fitness
- finding things that provide success and enjoyment
- having a positive self-concept, reduced anxiety and frustration

More specifically, parents most often want their kids to learn to:
- ride a bike
- swim
- play individual sports
- know the basics for sports of interest
- understand how to use exercise equipment
- BE SAFE

His main point was that the goals should reflect these things. One of the most useful things a student can learn is how to utilize fitness equipment and set goals and routines for themselves related to ongoing physical fitness. That is far more helpful than knowing how to play dodgeball.

Program/Class Challenges

Another important area to look at is what is preventing a child from achieving in physical education and deriving these benefits. Is it related to social communication difficulties? Physical/motor issues? Staff?

Dr. Tymeson strongly recommended that kids with ASD who are in regular PE classes have an assessment done by an adapted PE teacher to determine what physical skills they need to develop. They may need specially designed instruction, possibly in a smaller group, and/or the regular PE teacher may need ongoing consultation on adapting the class for the student.

Sample Assessment Tools
Test of Gross Motor Development 2 (TGMD-2)
Brockport Physical Fitness Test
Fitnessgram
Peabody Developmental Motor Scales 2 (PDMS-2)
Adapted Physical Education Assessment Scale (APEAS II)

He also pointed out that adapted physical education does not have to be all or nothing. A student may be able to participate in the regular class but need an extra session each week to work on specific skills.

I remember during first grade that we would have the physical education teacher let us know what sport or skill was going to be introduced next. Since the school insisted that they were not able to provide any pre-teaching due to the lack of available time and staff, we could at least find books related to that topic at the library and help our son gain some familiarity with what was coming.

Considerations for Students

In the Adapted PE program at the University of Wisconsin, learning management and instructional techniques is considered to be just as important as the rest of the curriculum. The focus is on how to make things predictable and successful for the students, and they are taught to use things such as:
- picture and communication boards
- lanyards with laminated icons in place of the usual whistle
- schedule boards
- visual aids
- social stories
- smart boards and iPads

For kids at home, he strongly recommends getting them up and moving and playing outside as much as possible. The use of active video games, such as the Xbox Kinect or certain games on the Wii (like Outdoor Challenge, Dance Dance Revolution, or Wii Fit), can also be very helpful in motivating kids to engage in physical activity.

During the break, I asked Dr. Tymeson about my son’s biggest challenge, which is competition. He can make anything into a competition, even an individual sport.

His response was to teach my son that there are other ways besides winning to have success are improvement and accomplishment. Practical suggestions might be giving him a pedometer or heart rate monitor and helping him set a target so that he can focus the competitive aspect on himself.

IDEA requirements for Physical Education

Under IDEA, physical education is a required service, not a related service or therapy. A variety of placements should be available and placement should be made based on an assessment of the unique needs of each student.

Dr. Tymeson’s advice is to “Get it on the IEP and KEEP IT THERE.” I would say this is much easier said than done.

I did ask for an assessment by an adapted PE teacher and was told no because the team feels he does not have gross motor issues and that his problems in PE are related to his autism and could be addressed by the autism consultant. This seems to be a reflexive no on the school’s part, especially since he has not had any formal evaluation of his gross motor skills in well over 4 years, but I chose not to pursue it since the teacher he was assigned for PE this year is one who works very well with him and with the rest of the team.

I would be greatly interested in hearing if any of you have had success with convincing your school district to pay attention to this area of your child’s education, especially with regards to accommodations and specially designed instruction.

Recommended Reading

Physical Education (PE) & Adapted Physical Education (APE) on Wrightslaw.com

Adapted Physical Education and Sport – 5th Edition, Edited by J. Winnick

Asperger’s From the Inside Out: A Supportive and Practical Guide for Anyone with Asperger’s Syndrome
by Michael John Carley
Perigee (2008)
250 pages

Asperger’s From the Inside Out was written by Michael John Carley, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s shortly after his son was given a diagnosis. He has since become involved in helping others with AS and is the Executive Director of GRASP, which is the Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership.

The opening chapters cover some background information on Asperger’s Syndrome, as well as Carley’s own experience being diagnosed and then examining his past through that filter. The book also brings out the issues surrounding disclosure and provides some possible coping strategies, a discussion of special interests and, finally, a fascinating look at what happiness really is.

I really like what he has to say about the diagnosis of AS:

Diagnosis is not intended as a eulogy, but almost instead as a starting point, a context, or a filter through which to discover the person’s individuality–far quicker that without it.

He makes another great point in the chapter about coping strategies, talking about how strategies that are offered in books like this are theoretical and are not going to work the same for every person. He stresses that they are not foolproof but are worth trying – in quantity – in order to find the ones that make a difference.

All in all, I think this would be a great book for anyone who either has Asperger’s Syndrome or is close to someone who does. Carley provides a tremendous amount of helpful information while emphasizing the individuality of every person on the spectrum.

Note: This is Book #108 of my 2011 Reads (master list here).