Josh Muggleton’s Top Tips for people on the Autism Spectrum – Tip #1: Making Friends
In this new series of videos, Josh Muggleton gives his Top Tips on various subjects for people on the Autism Spectrum. This month, he offers…
In this new series of videos, Josh Muggleton gives his Top Tips on various subjects for people on the Autism Spectrum. This month, he offers…
By Michael Chissick, primary school teacher and qualified yoga instructor, and specialist in teaching yoga to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and author of Frog’s Breathtaking…
“Professionals and parents want the best for children and need to know how to guide them through childhood. Positive Psychology provides the evidence on which to base decisions. For example, we know that optimism is invaluable to mental health because it encourages people to be hopeful and take good care of themselves. It helps people stave off depression by reframing challenging experiences and it increases people’s overall happiness.”
“[This] is not a book about disease but about finding solutions according to different ways of gaining back one’s physical, emotional and psychological energy balance. For many, it is also a path towards empowerment and finding a new meaning in daily activities.”
“I think it’s really important to stay in communication with us, as human being to human being – because we are still human beings with a spirit. And it’s spirit to spirit that we can really stay in touch.”
In the third video instalment of Josh Muggleton‘s Top Tips for Parents, Teachers and Professionals, Josh addresses how to improve communication with young people on the…
“I think that service users can give a perspective which can be lost without their inclusion. Service users can help to cut through some of the professional ‘jargon’ which excludes people, even other professionals sometimes. Professionals are often under considerable pressures to meet targets or stay within budgets, and even with the best will in the world they can start to lose sight of why they came into the profession in the first place. Service users can help to keep that perspective and keep values sharp.”
“Ironically, as my fibre-making skills developed, my clinical skills also developed. I became better at creating relationships and more and more comfortable with using textile as an entryway to connect with women whom I didn’t know. At some point, it became obvious to me that making textiles and clinical psychology didn’t need to be two separate compartments in my life: I realized that I was already integrating the two.”
“When I first started, there was no support for people with dementia, as it was assumed we lacked insight. Indeed the words of an Annual Report in 2000 of an Alzheimer’s Association spoke of us as being “mindless empty shells”. At first when I spoke up, people did not believe I had dementia because I could still speak. They said that even if I was showing the early signs, I was not a credible representative of people with dementia because of my level of function. Yet since then I have met so many others who have this diagnosis who are speaking out… We are receiving so much support and encouragement, and we are being listened to and respected. By treating us as experts in what it feels like to have a diagnosis of dementia, services and support are being much improved.”
“…historically, the intervention for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties has generally been based on behaviour improvement on a cognitive level rather than looking at the meaning behind the behaviour. For a school to accept that a deeper understanding and interpretation of behavioural difficulties is necessary to meet a child’s needs on a sustainable level is a big leap of faith. Therapy is about change and the capacity to maintain changes, and this book can help allay the fears that prevent schools from embracing this mode of intervention.”