In So Many Words

I wanted to let you know about some upcoming conferences run by Future Horizons. I attended one last year with Dr. Tony Attwood, which was wonderful, and am excited to be able to go to one in just a couple of weeks with three amazing speakers – Dr. Temple Grandin, Eustacia Cutler, and Paula Aquilla.

There are still spots open for the September 9th conference in the Philadephia/New Jersey area. You can learn more about it and register at the Future Horizons website.

Future Horizons has a number of different conferences planned for the fall and winter all around the United States. The speakers vary somewhat at each one and include, in addition to those already mentioned, Carol Kranowitz, Rebecca Moyes, Lucy Miller, Dr. Tony Attwood, Dr. Jed Baker, and others! Click the link to see the entire list of upcoming conferences.

One other thing – you can use the promotional code INTERRUPTED to get 15% off any purchase made through the Future Horizons online store, including conference registration. Simply enter the code once you have added the item to your cart and then click the update cart button to recalculate the price. If you are purchasing books or other materials, the code will also give you free shipping in the continental U.S.

I have received a complimentary registration to the conference. The promotional code provided is an affiliate link for which I will receive a percentage. I am promoting Future Horizons because I believe in the quality of their products and conferences.

So, Michael and I have made it to State College, and I am eagerly awaiting the start of the National Autism Conference tomorrow morning.

We were supposed to drive an hour the other direction for a family reunion before coming up here, but Michael was so upset about getting here late at night and then having to go to the conference first thing Monday morning that I decided to bring him up early enough to play with his cousins today. They have been happily ensconced on the Wii for the last hour, although from what I can hear at the moment, he is not too happy about losing a MarioKart race to his cousin Jake.

I am so thankful for the hospitality of my brother- and sister-in-law, who happen to live less than 10 minutes from the conference center, and that the fee for a PA family member is only $25 for the week. Quite a bargain for the amount of information provided, even when you take into account missing a week of work!

The conference kicks off with a session on Autism, Politics, and Law by Lorri Unumb. She is a lawyer and parent of a child with autism who has been heavily involved in advocating for healthcare coverage for autism therapy. I am also attending a parent advocacy session with her later that day, so I am hoping that she provides some useful information for me.

I am especially looking forward to a couple of sessions later in the week – one on Motor Planning and another on Adapted Physical Education. These are areas that I haven’t heard much about and could definitely use some guidance in.

At previous conferences, I have tended to focus my time more on communication, social skills, sensory issues, and educational strategies, but this year I am going in a bit of a different direction. In addition to the parent advocacy session on Monday, I am also going to a legal issues session on Wednesday and a Thursday session on evaluating autism treatments and distinguishing science from pseudoscience.

I am hoping to have lots of great stuff to report here as well as to help me in moving forward as an advocate for my son as well as for other families I encounter along the way.

I am very excited to be going to the National Autism Conference in State College, PA in a couple of weeks. I have gone three times in the past, although I skipped last year because we took a big family trip out to the Midwest to see my family as well as some Grant Wood sites.

This year Bob is taking some much needed vacation time to give his mind a break from work and putter around at home or go to the music studio while Michael is at day camp and then will be doing fun stuff with him when he gets home in the afternoon.

I, meanwhile, will be enjoying the peace and quiet of the guest room at my brother-in-law’s house and spending most of my time learning about a variety of autism-related topics. Can you tell I am looking forward to it?

One of the great things about this conference is that it brings together professionals from many different disciplines, as well as parents and other family members. The keynote speakers are often adults who have autism sharing their stories and insights. Plus, it’s only $25 for the entire week for PA parents, and they provide lunch as well as great snacks and even a continental breakfast spread in the morning.

The first year we went as a family, and Michael was able to take part in their Children’s Institute. They now give preference to children who have not been there before, so we were unable to get him in again, and I didn’t even try this year.

I’ll be sure to post what I learn, and if anyone reading this is going to be in attendance, please let me know! I would love to connect with you there.

Here are the sessions I’m signed up for. Let me know which ones you are most interested in hearing about:

• Opening Keynote with Brian Abrams
• NIH Autism Research Update (in which they tell us yet again how crazy we are for thinking autism has anything to do with environmental issues)
• Implementation Science and Practice (this is a research symposium)
• Teaching Flexibility: The Development of an Intervention for Children with ASD
• Using the National Standards Report to Inform Training Agendas
• Family Struggles: Living with ASDs
• Collaboration: The Key to Successful IEP Teams
• Practical Hints and Tips for Success at Home, School and the Community (I have heard these speakers before and really liked them.)
• Crisis Management for Families
• Innovative Use of Technology to Support Students with Autism (this is a promising practices session)
• Intensive Clinical Models Designed to Modify Behavior in the Regular and Special Educational Settings (another promising practices session)
• Closing Keynote with Deborah Lipsky

P.S. I just remembered that this year they are going to be posting the handouts online instead of handing out copies at the conference. They aren’t all up yet, but you can check it out if you’re interested in seeing any of them. This change is ostensibly to save paper, although I think the main reason is the handout trolls who would sneak into the sessions they were interested in but not attending to snatch the handouts, making it so there weren’t enough for the people who actually had signed up for the session. (Now there’s an interesting study in group behavior!)

This is a bit of a catch-up post, since I keep thinking of all the things I have been meaning to share but haven’t gotten to yet.  ‘Tis a bit long as well; my apologies – it was either this or four shorter posts and that would overwhelm even me!

First, the Wordle

The image at the top of this post is called a Wordle – have you seen these yet? They are very fun to play around with; you just enter some text or a URL with a feed and it creates a word cloud. Then you can play around with the font, colors and the layout until you get it how you like it. Yes, I know there’s no real reason for me to make one, but they are fun!

The Timer Revisited

I posted earlier at 5 Minutes for Special Needs about using a timer, and I wanted to also share a way that the staff at Michael’s summer program are using it with him.

When he is called to an activity such as art time and refuses to come, the staff, instead of arguing or giving a timeout, will simply tell him they are starting the timer. The timer is started and not stopped until he joins the activity. Then when free play starts, the staff member tells my son, “Oh, you owe me [x number] minutes of art time before you can start playing.”

The best part is that it’s working.   Now when they say they will start the timer if he doesn’t come, he will often say, “No, not the timer!” and come right away.

Root and Sprout

Root and Sprout is a website dedicated to supporting moms and dads in providing “gentle, hands-on parenting” to their children.  New articles are published monthly, and the August Edition is now up.  Yours truly actually wrote one of the articles this month and am honored to have it accepted and published in the Wildflowers section.  If you scroll down, it is the second article. (Wait, what I meant to say was read the first article and then you will get to mine!)
Updated to add: Root & Sprout is now using a blogging platform so that each article has a permalink and you no longer have to scroll through each section.

Feel free to explore the other sections and consider submitting an article yourself.  It is a fairly painless procedure and the editor doesn’t bite (well, not that I am aware of, anyway!)

And Finally

Phew!  I am so happy to have all of that off my brain!  I need to clear the space because tomorrow will be my first day at the Penn State National Autism Conference. I wasn’t able to attend today’s opening sessions, but am all registered and ready to go in the morning.

Tomorrow I am scheduled for Asperger Syndrome: Strategies for Young Children in the morning.  This session deals primarily with self-regulation and social/emotional competence; I am figuring that Michael is high-functioning enough that a lot of this should apply to him, and if not I am sure I could use some help in this area.  My afternoon session is Strategies for Successful Inclusion of Learners with ASDs.  It is directed at teachers, but hopefully there will be some things I can offer to the team as we move forward.

To anyone who made it all the way to the bottom of this post, I really appreciate you!!

To all who stopped by while I was away at the DAN! conference this weekend, I will be back very soon. The hotel, which had advertised a free broadband connection, did not have one that could actually connect with anything, so the extra trip to borrow a laptop from a friend was in vain.

I was also kept up Friday night until after 2:30 am due to a group of loud young men in a nearby room – although I complained to the desk, they were unable (unwilling?) to really make a difference, and so I attended the conference and drove home last night on very little sleep. To top it off, I realized the in-room hair dryer didn’t work about 10 minutes before I had to leave for the conference!

Regardless of all that, I learned lots of great information and saw Jenny McCarthy from the second row – pretty cool! I also have several days worth of autism resources to post and will definitely do so, but we have had a family crisis here that needs to be dealt with, so it will probably not get done today. Also, I just learned that my grandmother (age 94) is in the hospital with the flu and would appreciate prayer from those of you who do so.

Thanks everyone.

I am so excited. I can hardly believe this has all worked out, but I am going to be attending 2 days of the DAN! conference in Cherry Hill, NJ tomorrow and Saturday. I had really wanted to go but couldn’t afford it, plus I know they will eventually have most of the sessions on their website as videos.

Well, yesterday morning an email came around that one of the exhibitors for the conference, Kirkman Labs, was looking for parent volunteers and would pay their registration for the conference. When I talked to the person in charge, she said they still needed someone for Friday and I could attend the sessions in between helping at the booth (just missing the first and last few minutes of each one).

By limiting my hotel stay to one night instead of two, we are able to pay my way to attend on Saturday as well, so I will be leaving at the oh-so-early-for-me hour of 5am to get there in time tomorrow morning and coming home Saturday night. Praise God that my husband was on board with the idea right away, my boss let me have the day off, I found someone to pick up the Little Guy from daycare and watch him until my husband gets off work, and another friend loaned me her laptop so I can type up my notes and hopefully get online tomorrow evening!!

Even though it will be a couple of long days and pretty tiring, I’m sure, it will also be nice to be learning a lot and meeting new people (hmm, that sounds a lot like when I started blogging!).