(Photo of Theresa Van Lith, assistant professor of art therapy in FSU’s Department of Art Education)

A researcher is working with art therapists to find better ways to treat children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Researchers were able to develop a set of guidelines for delivering art therapy to children who have ASD.

A Florida State University researcher is working with art therapists to find better ways to treat children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

At the end of each school year, I reflect on what we have learned over the previous nine months. My son T.J. will be a senior in high school this fall, and while this annual period of reflection is always a critical part of our planning, this year has been particularly enlightening.

When T.J. was diagnosed with autism at age 2, we went through all the emotions, and tried every therapy we could find. We privately mourned the loss of the life we thought we would have, while happily and confidently accepting our new reality. We embraced his diagnosis with optimism, and even through tough times, our strong love for our children was always the driving force.

That hasn’t changed, and it never will. What has changed this year, however, are some of our expectations.Our motto in those early years was “Throw everything at him and let’s see what sticks.” We gave him every possible learning opportunity. Flexibility was key. If one thing wasn’t working, we tried something else. Our teams of teachers and therapists were always willing to change course as needed to ensure T.J. could succeed at school.

But now, at age 17, T.J. is pretty much who he is going to be as an adult. Yes, many things are still up in the air and could change as he experiences the world, but he has largely been shaped. He is wonderful and smart and funny and caring and affectionate. He loves animals, Harry Potter, Pokémon, Power Rangers, Star Wars and Pixar. He is curious about the things that interest him. He gets stressed out easily in a variety of situations and, with some assistance, can calm himself down. He has a bad-boy streak, which manifests as a love of things deemed “inappropriate” in school (swear words, South Park, Family Guy).

When T.J. started school, we aimed for the stars. For my husband and me, that meant trying to get him to college. I grew up with that mind-set. But I’m learning now that it’s not the best path for everyone. So this past winter, as we watched friends with children T.J.’s age plan college tours and prepare for the SAT, we quietly let go of that definition of success.

Our coming to terms with this is the best thing for him, and for us. It’s not what he is meant to do. At least, not in the typical leave home and go to a four-year university way. T.J.’s academic struggles, and his capacity for dealing with stress, are evidence that his path to happiness and success will be uniquely his.

We never let T.J. see that we were struggling with that realization. We didn’t want him to feel responsible for our preconceived notions of what his life should look like.

Along the way, we have talked with T.J. about what he wants his future to look like (a hard and scary concept for a boy who has said “I want to live with you forever”). Now, with his input, we are trying to find the best way to honor his ideas, while tossing in some challenges here and there to help him keep growing. His special educator is on board with this plan and is suggesting options for his future.

We visited a great residential program over spring break, which allows kids on the spectrum to live together, with 24-hour supervision, and provides opportunities to take a college-level course here and there. We can work with T.J. to structure this program to meet his needs, so that he is challenged while not being overly stressed. It’s a delicate balance, but we’re working on it.

So while we quietly mourn our own selfish ideas of what we thought his future would be, we are actively planning his actual future, with him involved every step of the way. It doesn’t look like the college tours a typical high school junior takes, but we are happy with what it is: opportunity, challenge, hand-holding (for him and us!). Slow and steady.

We will find our way, together.

Lauren Swick Jordan 

Researchers have found that kids with autism spectrum disorder who did yoga at their elementary school behaved better than kids with autism who weren’t doing yoga.

The researchers surveyed teachers at a school in the Bronx who said a daily yoga program reduced the kids’ aggressive behavior, social withdrawal and hyperactivity.

Kristie Patten Koenig, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at New York University who led the study, says that yoga was effective because it seems to play to the strengths of kids with autism, while also reducing stress.

“We know that anxiety fuels a lot of the negative behavior, so the yoga program gives them a strategy to cope with it,” Koenig tells Shots. “And if it’s done every morning, it becomes an integral part of the day that sets the status of the classroom and allows the kids to become calm, focused and ready to learn.”

According to the researchers, yoga is increasingly being used in classrooms across the U.S. to get kids to behave and perform better in school. Early research suggests that yoga exercises help kids concentrate and focus, and improves their strength, motor coordination and social skills.

Many researchers argue that kids with autism need behavioral therapies early on, when they do the most good. Intensive interventions like the Early Start Denver Model, which has therapists work with children in their homes four hours a day, five days a week, also appear to be effective.

Autism spectrum disorders can be mild or severe, but they interfere with a person’s ability to communicate and understand social cues. People with the most severe version are unable to speak.

According to the latest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 88 children has been diagnosed with autism. Rates have risen steeply in the last decade, which may be due to better detection.

The yoga program is being implemented in more than 500 classrooms across the city of New York among students ages 5 through 21 with significant disabilities. The results of Koenig’s study were published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy.

[Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/10/12/162782583/classroom-yoga-helps-improve-behavior-of-kids-with-autism ]

July 4th is a wonderful holiday to celebrate, it’s also a noisy and busy one. This can present challenges for those on the spectrum.

For starters, I suggest thinking about what size of celebration is right for your family and child. It could be sparklers after a family backyard barbeque. Or maybe it’s going to town for full-out fireworks.

If you decide to attend a fireworks display – or even a big party – here are some tips to consider:

1. Prepare your child in advance.  Talk about what’s going to happen at the party or fireworks display. You can show him an Internet video of fireworks – perhaps playing it quietly first, then slowly turning up the volume. If your child responds to visual aids, you can create a story about the day with pictures or photos. Explain that there will be lots of people.

2. Focus on the fun! Tell your child why you enjoy fireworks or a holiday barbeque with friends. Let him see that you’re excited to attend. This will help him get excited too. Describe the activities you know he’ll enjoy, whether it’s seeing a friend or the ice cream cone he’ll get as a treat.

3. Bring along favorite items such as toys, games and snacks. This can provide a crucial distraction if your child gets antsy while waiting for activities to start.

4. Have a blanket, towel or chair for your son. Creating a defined space that’s “his own” can help a child with autism feel more comfortable in a crowd.

5. Consider bringing headphones to help block out excessive noise. As we all know, fireworks can pack a lot of sensory stimulation!  Also consider sitting some distance from the display – someplace you can still see the colorful explosions, but without the intense noise.

6. Make sure your child knows how to ask for a break from the crowd or noise. If your child is verbal, he may only need a reminder.  However, many children on the spectrum do best with a visual aid. For example, provide your child with a special card to hand to you when he needs a break from the stimulation.

[Source: https://www.autismspeaks.org/tips-autism-friendly-fourth-july ]

Every child wants to grow up to be independent — to leave their parents’ home, find work, build a life of their own.

But that seemingly simple step into adulthood can be a monumental challenge for children with developmental disabilities like autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, or any of a range of other such disabilities that affect about one in six American children, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most of them remain dependent on their parents and families for support well into adulthood, or they end up living in a home under the care of professional caregivers. Only a fraction of adults with developmental disabilities end up finding steady employment.

But some people are finding work and a path to self-reliance by working in the food industry. Parts of this industry are particularly well-suited to many people with developmental disabilities, like Victoria Reedy of Schenectady, N.Y.

Reedy is 23 years old and lives with her parents and two sisters. When I met her in her parents’ home, she was dressed casually in a sweatshirt and wore sparkly nail polish. She’s of average height now – about five feet five inches – but growing up, she says, she was a very small child.

She has a condition called panhypopituitarism, which is a problem in her pituitary gland that causes it to not produce enough hormones, including growth hormone.

Vicky’s condition affected the development of her brain as well. She struggled with a range of learning problems while growing up, and school felt extremely hard. “I struggled at just about everything but art,” she says. “I had a really hard time reading, [a] hard time writing, and learning things in general.”

Her speech was affected, too. And she shied away from social interactions. As she grew up, she depended on her parents and a close friend for everything outside her home, from getting around to handling money.

But today, Vicky is a very different person. She’s more confident and independent. She even takes the bus everywhere, all by herself. “I take the bus just about everywhere I have to go, unless I’m traveling with Mom or Dad or any of my friends,” she says.

That’s because a year and a half ago, Vicky got a job at a bakery in downtown Schenectady.

Puzzles Bakery & Cafe in downtown Schenectady is bright and spacious. The winter sun filters through the glass door and windows and fills the front of the café. On the day I visit, it’s packed with customers sitting down for lunch at the small white tables lined on either side.

Vicky is a senior café attendant here. She stands behind the counter, matching orders coming out of the kitchen, making sure the right order goes to the right tables.

Vicky also handles customers herself sometimes. She trains interns, organizes food and clean tables when necessary. Some of her favorite tasks, though, involve working behind the scenes, in the kitchen. She loves doing dishes, slicing meat and cheese on an electric food slicer. It’s mechanical, somewhat repetitive work that takes time, but Vicky says she finds it satisfying.

In the time that she has worked here, Vicky has even made new friends among her colleagues. Her colleagues say she has grown tremendously at the job. She’s now one of the few employees who have a key to the store, so she can open and close the café when necessary.

Sara Mae Pratt, 26, is Vicky’s boss and the owner of the cafe. She says she’s very proud of Vicky. “She’s come such a long way.”

As have many of her other employees, who have some sort of a developmental disability. Pratt opened Puzzles Bakery & Cafe in April 2015 with the goal to employ people with special needs, who otherwise struggle to find jobs. “There [are] not a lot of opportunities, certainly not in the way of employment,” Pratt says. Once they graduate from the school system, they often “kind of fall off a cliff,” she says.

And statistics back up her point. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of working-age people with disabilities who are employed is about one-third of the percentage of people without any disability. And some 50 percent of people who are employed struggle to complete their tasks due to their disabilities, according to the BLS. Many face compensation gaps and discrimination at their workplace, according to the Arc of the U.S.A, an advocacy group for the developmentally disabled.

The BLS also finds that those who are unemployed report many obstacles to finding employment, including the absence of sufficient and appropriate training.

Pratt knew a lot of this from her personal experience. Her 23-year-old sister, Emily, has autism. As her sister approached adulthood, she says, she and her parents worried what her sister would do once she graduated high school and no longer had any support from the state education system. “I certainly struggled with what my sister will be doing for the rest of her life. She has a very long life ahead of her.”

Her sister is too disabled to work – she recently moved out of their parents’ home and into a group home, where she could have round-the-clock help. But Pratt wanted to help those who could work, to find a sense of self-reliance and purpose in their lives.

Before deciding to open a café, she did a lot of research and found that working with food is a particularly good fit for many people with developmental disabilities. For one, “food is very forgiving,” she says. “If you mess up, [it’s] not a big deal. You can throw it away, try it again.”

And it’s no surprise that Vicky enjoys simple, repetitive tasks like doing dishes and slicing and arranging food, she says. “It can be quite therapeutic to kind of do the same thing day in and day out, and it’s something many people with developmental disabilities can actually excel at.”

There is another factor about this work that helps people like Vicky overcome their struggles with social interactions. “They actually get to take part in the creation of this food and bring it to the customer and see that smile on their face,” says Pratt. “They’re seeing this day in and day out. That’s the really wonderful thing about food, it really connects people.”

Similar bakeries and restaurants exist elsewhere in the country. Some, like Jack’s Bar & Grill in Arvada, Colo., employ people with special needs. Others, like Sunflower Bakery in Gaithersburg, Maryland, also train and then place such individuals at other businesses in the food service industry.

Today, more than 50 percent of Pratt’s employees have a developmental disability, she says. That includes 23-year-old Madaline Hannon, who has autism. She has limited vocabulary and according to her parents, she has always been painfully shy.

Now, though, Hannon works four days a week at Puzzles. She only works three hours a day and spends a lot of it serving customers, mostly during the lunch rush.

Dressed in a loose T-shirt, jeans and a baseball hat, Maddy stands behind the counter, keeping an eye on every plate of food that comes out of the kitchen through a little window on the wall behind the café’s counter. She matches the food on the plate with the orders flashing on a little screen above the window, then she calls out the order loudly to find the right customer. “Order for Mary Ann!” she says, holding a plate with a sandwich in her hands. When the customer raises her hand, Maddy walks over the plate of food to her, then wishes her a good day. She rarely makes eye contact, but she interacts with every customer as she serves them their plate of food.

And she tells me she enjoys the work. She’s been working here for about a year and a half, and she says she now has big dreams for her future.

“I wanna work at Disney World, in a bakery,” she says. “They have more gourmet stuff.”

Maddy still lives with her parents and unlike Vicky, she still depends on them to bring her to work and take her home at the end of her shift. So, I ask her if she’d be willing to leave her parents’ home and move out of Schenectady to pursue her dream. “Definitely, yes,” she says with a smile.

Her mother, Kathleen Hannon says, this job has transformed her daughter.

“[The] Maddy that walked in here the first day probably didn’t say hello to people who’d come in,” she says. “Today, she’s out there. I know she will talk to the customers. And we’ve seen a big difference at home. She’s happy!”

The job has given Maddy a sense of belonging, she says. “It’s her job. It’s her friends. It’s her responsibilities. And that’s important. We all want that. We all want to fit in. We all want to belong. We all want friends. And I think that’s helped a lot.”

She says her daughter recognizes that she’ll always need extra support, but the job has made her realize how much she can do on her own.

“She’s wandering further and further away from us,” says Kathy Hannon. “She’s looking for more independence.”

People’s Care ?

[Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/01/14/508602730/for-people-with-developmental-disabilities-food-work-means-more-self-reliance ]