Their own world

Here I am sitting. Just sitting. Doing nothin' but sitting. Where am I going with this? No where, except that I had an idea to write about and as soon as I opened it up to write it down my mind went blank and so here I sit just waiting for that thought to come back to my mind. Do you ever have that happen? So I thought I would just type what I was actually thinking hoping that my original thought would reveal itself. Guess what? It just did!

For the last couple of days I was busy in a workshop learning how to be a behavior interventionist for children with Autism. It was so interesting to say the least. Each day was 6 hours of lecture and I could have sat there for so much longer. It heightened up my passion and excitement to work with children with special needs and now I'm on fire. Poor B, that's all he gets to hear about lately...so I thought I would give his ears a rest and come and tell you :) Aren't you lucky!

The thing that hit me most was that they said a child with autism could be compared to a child who is blind in a way. When they have to change their environment it is scary because it's not familiar. Think about it, a blind child would take the same path to school every day because they know it's safe. It's the same thing for a child who is Autistic. So for a "new" way of doing things it's unfamiliar and "unsafe" to them. They also don't read facial expressions, they need to hear tone in your voice, distinct tone and if they don't receive those than they don't see what's coming and it can be frightening to them. These children are anxious and cling to the familiar. I just think it's so interesting. Oh, the speaker was hilarious herself. She was so entertaining and to give you an example of one of the things she said here is one of her stories.

Her daughter has a learning disability and would get her b's and d's mixed up. After many months of trying to figure out how to tell her which side of the o the line goes on she said, "Ok, so d is for dog and the tail (the line) goes in the back. And b is for boy and the tail (the line) goes in the front. This may be crude but her daughter never forgot after that. She said it made her laugh each time she heard her daughter talking it through while doing her homework. haha.

I thoroughly enjoyed my two days at the workshop. I learned so much. I was able to pick up on some different techniques and also able to see some of them being implemented. All in all it was a great week...now if only my neck would loosen up.

Oh and last night I went to the movie "Dear John". Super cheezy but I was in the mood for over the top cheese movie. So I enjoyed it. I was also more into it than the average person because it was centred around Autism. Just a great way to end the week

Until next time
Michelle