Tag: autism

Posted on Arts therapies

Dynamic Play Therapy, Harnessing the power of collapse and renewal – An Interview with Dennis McCarthy (Part 2)

“With rare exceptions, the academic and professional world doesn’t support a dynamic approach to play therapy (or often the use of play in therapy at all). There is an ever-greater thrust to pathologize the child and the family and this is often where the therapist/therapy stops: diagnosis leads to stasis. This needn’t be so. We can and should have an understanding of what is going on in the child and in their life, but unless we then engage the child in real play, we have not accomplished much. Children need to be allowed to be children and speak their language not ours.”

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Posted on Arts therapies

Helping Things Fall Apart, The Paradox of Play – An Interview with Dennis McCarthy (Part 1)

“The deeper [sand]box, with its capacity for burying and sinking and erupting, fit the overall view I have developed which I call Dynamic Play Therapy. My approach is interactive and encourages and even provokes what I see as contained wildness in the service of healthy ego development and a natural sense of self-regulation. The work and my thinking about it still continue to evolve. Even as I write these words new ideas are surfacing based on sessions this week with several children. … My interest has been to understand how children experience their lives and best speak about them, knowing that their language is fundamentally different than ours as adults. They speak in images just as we dream in images. So I spend my days offering them materials and a safe space in which to speak thus.”

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Posted on Autism

Maisie Voyager: A positive heroine with a unique outlook on life – An Interview with Lucy Skye

“I began writing the book without thinking any of the characters would have autism, but as I was writing, I began to realise that much of Maisie’s personality could be seen as being quite autistic. I was very keen however, that Maisie didn’t become an ‘autistic’ character. I just want her to be Maisie, and explore the world in her own way. The fact she might have autism is just one element of her personality. Perhaps part of me also hopes that we can start to see people for being more than just their autism, we need to be open to all that they are and can be.”

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Posted on Autism

Combining ideas from SLT and OT to Speak, Move, Play and Learn with Children on the Autism Spectrum – An Interview with America Gonzalez and Corinda Presley

“The idea was born out of a spirit of collaboration that came up when we noticed that our students were working on similar projects but with an OT or SLP spin. Another way we came together was when the speech team would make quesadillas with the students to work on sequencing, vocabulary and describing goals. And the OT would say, “Can I jump into your activity to practice cutting the quesadilla into triangles with my student?” And so we began to purposely create activities around both OT and SLP goals. We recently found out that the University of California – San Francisco has built therapy rooms for the explicit purpose of the collaboration between therapists. This is a wonderful step towards collaborative therapy.”

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Posted on Arts therapies

Story Drama in the Special Needs Classroom – An Interview with Jessica Perich Carleton

“The formula (called the Dramatic Formula) in the book presents each step with a specific skill that the students need in order to succeed in the drama, while at the same time balancing the level of stimulation for the students so they can focus on each section. Structure and balance of stimulation are the two main factors which give this book success. These two elements allow the students to succeed in a safe and nurturing environment.”

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Posted on Autism

How professionals can help empower parents of a newly diagnosed child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“Professionals need to feel comfortable as facilitators of parents’ learning and engagement with their child at home, rather than seeing themselves as therapist experts who work one-on-one with children. While the latter is sometimes necessary, the former is where we can have the biggest long-term impact on helping parents realise their full potential and assisting them to maximise their daily interactions with their child so that they become more responsive to their child’s needs and communicative attempts. This builds positive parent-child relationships.”

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Posted on Adoption and Fostering

An Interview with Josh Muggleton, author of ‘Raising Martians’

“There is lots of information in the book, and I really hope that people take that on board, but to me, what is more important is that they gain an understanding of, and an insight into life with Asperger Syndrome. If you understand someone with Asperger Syndrome, then knowing that it is named after Hans Asperger is redundant. While that sort of information might be interesting, it is far more useful to know how the person with Asperger Syndrome thinks: what he or she might find hard and why, what things might set them off, and what things will calm them down, what things they will be really good at, and what things they might struggle at.”

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