A Therapy Diary
I get a lot of emails lately from parents who have children on the autistic spectrum, some of them have just begun therapy of one sort or another. Some are veterans who have tried a number of therapies, with varying degrees of success. I think it is safe to say that everyone has made progress with their children, some have made so much progress that the kids are pretty much like typical children now, or can manage their own autism sufficiently so that they no longer suffer much from the troubles that ASD can cause.
I am often asked how my own son, Nick, is doing. I often wonder that myself, in fact, and have begun to keep a diary of what we try, how responds, what is going on in his life generally. I wondered if it would be helpful to parents if I blogged the diary. I cannot promise it will always be exciting, or funny, or particularly well written (I’m writing a new novel at the moment and so all my really good prose goes into that anyway). I cannot promise I will offer any great insights, either. But what I can do is open up my life to those who may want to take a closer look. After all, Nick presented very definitely with full blown autism at the age of 2, with a diagnosis at aged 3. He had no language, no play skills, and though he always seemed attached to me – me in particular – he was otherwise aloof to people. Oh, and he stimmed, had obsessions, seemed perpetually in ya-ya land. Just finding him in his own house took a while as he didn’t respond to my calling. So, he was not an Asperger child, nor a particularly “high functioning” child. He was in a world of trouble.
We pretty much did what was written in Daniel Isn’t Talking, a structured, playful skill-based program that endeavoured to help move Nick up the developmental ladder. It was behavioural in approach, but no mass trialling.. Well, we did some mass trials early on but I later vetoed them. We did “mixed drills”, always made sure he was willingly and happily engaged, and we didn’t take much data. It was about as play-based as ABA can get.
These days we are focussing on a different approach. It isn’t that he no longer has any structured teaching – we working on him learning to tie laces and we do it through structured teaching, for example – but the backbone of our approach can be described best as focussing on his social and emotional abilities.
This is not to say that he has perfect language or academic skills, that he presents pretty “typically” but just needs some fine-tuning – no way. But we’ve discovered what is holding him back at this point is his own motivation to be part of a social scene of any sort. He has to be HIGHLY motivated to engage in a group. So, he’s pretty chatty, bright and fun at Robotwars events, for example. But anything else, from regular school to a drama club to going to a friend’s house or getting through a birthday party sends him inside himself. And he is suffering from not being able to get his point across, whatever language he has, simply because he doesn’t imagine the point of view of the listener. Well, I could go on, but I’ll stop there. It will become abundantly clear exactly where Nick is in any case, just by reading what I blog in the weeks to come.
There are two places to go if you want to learn more about the therapy we are doing. One is www.rdiconnect.com where you can begin to learn a little about Relationship Development Intervention. The other is www.barryprizant.com where they advocate what is called the SCERTS model. SCERTS stands for “Social Communication Emotional Regulation and Transactional Support”, not that this will help you any. But you can download two excellent articles right off Barry’s homepage that will explain exactly what it is. RDI and SCERTS do not do exactly the same thing, these two organizations seem to be working off the same kind of research. Take a look if you like, and you’ll be hearing how Nick and I are getting on with it in this blog. |
