“Music is a medium that can be non-threatening, encourage participation, encourage attending skills, and encourage stimulation or relaxation. Because of these outcomes and more, music can be used to reach a child that may be hesitant to respond to other forms of communication.”
This week, JKP attended the National Autistic Society (NAS) Professional Conference for the first time, and we are pleased to say that it was a resounding success!…
By Charlotte E. Thompson, M.D., author of Grandparenting a Child with Special Needs. It is a great responsibility to care for a grandchild, particularly one…
“Parents felt that, with a few exceptions, social workers did not and could not understand what it was like for them as parents of children growing up in care. There was stigma to bear as well as the emotional loss. In contrast, social workers talked of being aware of the parents’ distress and loss, but often not having the time to see parents, because they were focussing on work with and for the child, or simply not knowing how to help parents.”
Claire Golomb is a Professor Emerita of the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts. For over 40 years she taught courses on child…
“I always knew that my father seemed different from other fathers, but back then I didn’t know there was a name that described this difference or that there might be other people who had similar issues in their families. Once I realized that my father had an ASD, it helped me better understand and get along with him. I have found that over the past ten years there has been an exponential increase in the amount of information available to parents to help them understand their ASD children, but almost no information for children or teens to help them understand their ASD parents. I wrote this book to begin to fill that gap.”
“Therapists are increasingly required to learn and work using an approach which is unfamiliar to them; this is the case for many therapists seeking employment within the NHS, where CBT is often the treatment of choice. The FIT approach meets the current need to incorporate additional or new approaches within their work, and to utilise an integrative approach which is flexible yet clear and consistent, rather than confusing to the client.”
All relationships require constant care and attention, but the love between an “Aspie” and a “Neuro-typical” comes with its own set of challenges. Celebrate Valentine’s…
“Some things that our children say or do can be especially poignant in certain situations and, quite often, they can say things that are so truthful, we just wouldn’t dare say them ourselves! There shouldn’t be anything sad or embarrassing about situations like these. We should see the humour in it and not feel guilty to laugh out loud. I think it is important to embrace moments like these as we have enough of a hard time and laughing can help redress the balance. Laughter is very good for stress too, so there’s no excuse!”
” I find that older people are often patronised, and their ability to recover and make changes in their lives is often not acknowledged. Dr Martin Blanchard speaks in the Foreword of a ‘therapeutic nihilism’ that exists in attitudes towards the client group described in the book. One effect of this is that older people are often expected to fit into generic treatment systems, when they clearly have needs that will not be met by those systems. Thus the need for a specialist approach such as the book describes.”