admin

These special “sunglasses” have embedded red LED lights that flash at a prescribed interval to improve brain function. Eyelights excite the receptors at the back of the retina, which in turn fire to the brain stem in three different areas. Eyelights are being worn by children with learning disabilities in order to keep them more attentive and focused in the classroom. Personally, I find that I cannot take James into the grocery store without them!

What worked best for us:
Blue lens color
Daily usage:
R side top flashing (Serotonin Production) = 6 minutes
R side bottom flashing (Dopamine Production) = 3 minutes

Cost: about $150
www.eyelights.com

The Son-Rise Program® teaches a specific and comprehensive system of treatment and education designed to help families and caregivers enable their children to dramatically improve in all areas of learning, development, communication and skill acquisition. It offers highly effective educational techniques, strategies and principles for designing, implementing and maintaining a stimulating, high-energy, one-on-one, home-based, child-centered program.

The Son-Rise Program® innovated an educational treatment modality which included joining children instead of going against them. The program places parents as key teachers, therapists and directors of their own programs and utilizes the home as the most nurturing environment in which to help their children. The Son-Rise Program® suggests that respect and deep caring would be the most important factor impacting a child’s motivation to learn, and from the beginning has made love and acceptance a meaningful part of every teaching process. Employing this attitude, first seek to create bonding and a safe environment. Then apply Son-Rise Program® educational strategies:

• Joining in a child’s repetitive and ritualistic behaviors supplies the key to unlocking the mystery of these behaviors and facilitates eye contact, social development and the inclusion of others in play.
• Utilizing a child’s own motivation advances learning and builds the foundation for education and skill acquisition.
• Teaching through interactive play results in effective and meaningful socialization and communication.
• Using energy, excitement and enthusiasm engages the child and inspires a continuous love of learning and interaction.
• Employing a nonjudgmental and optimistic attitude maximizes the child’s enjoyment, attention and desire throughout their Son-Rise Program®.
• Placing the parent as the child’s most important and lasting resource provides a consistent and compelling focus for training, education and inspiration.
• Creating a safe, distraction-free work/play area facilitates the optimal environment for learning and growth.

The Verbal Behavior (VB) methodology was created to address the language deficiency of kids while utilizing the science of ABA. Here is an excellent Verbal Behavior Training Manual.

Verbal Behavior Therapy teaches communication using the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and the theories of behaviorist B.F. Skinner. By design, Verbal Behavior Therapy motivates a child, adolescent or adult to learn language by connecting words with their purposes. The student learns that words can help obtain desired objects or other results.

Therapy avoids focusing on words as mere labels (cat, car, etc.) Rather, the student learns how to use language to make requests and communicate ideas. To put it another way, this intervention focuses on understanding why we use words.

In his book Verbal Behavior, Skinner classified language into types, or “operants.” Each has a different function. Verbal Behavior Therapy focuses on four word types. They are:

• Mand. A request. Example: “Cookie,” to ask for a cookie.
• Tact. A comment used to share an experience or draw attention. Example: “airplane” to point out an airplane.
• Intraverbal. A word used to answer a question or otherwise respond. Example: Where do you go to school? “Castle Park Elementary.”
• Echoic. A repeated, or echoed, word. Example: “Cookie?” “Cookie!” (important as the student needs to imitate to learn)

Verbal Behavior Therapy begins by teaching mands, or requests, as the most basic type of language. For example, the individual with autism learns that saying “cookie” can produce a cookie. Immediately after the student makes such a request, the therapist reinforces the lesson by repeating the word and presenting the requested item. The therapist then uses the word again in the same or similar context.

Importantly, students don’t have to say the actual word to receive the desired item. In the beginning, they simply need to signal requests by any means. Pointing at the item represents a good start.

This helps the student understand that communicating produces positive results. The therapist builds on this understanding to help the student shape the communication toward saying or signing the actual word.

Importantly, Verbal Behavior Therapy uses “errorless learning.” The therapist provides immediate and frequent prompts to help improve the student’s communication. These prompts become less intrusive as quickly as possible, until the student no longer needs prompting. Take, for example, the student who wants a cookie. The therapist may hold the cookie in front of the student’s face and say “cookie,” to prompt a response from the child. Next, the therapist would hold up the cookie and make a “c” sound, to prompt the response. After that, the therapist might simply hold a cookie in the child’s line of sight and wait for the request. The ultimate goal, in this example, is for the student to say “cookie” when he or she wants a cookie – without any prompting.

In a typical Verbal Behavior Therapy session, the teacher asks a series of questions that combine easy and hard requests. This increases the frequency of success and reduces frustration. Ideally, the teacher varies the situations and instructions in ways that catch and sustain the student’s interest.

Most programs involve a minimum of one to three hours of therapy per week. More-intensive programs can involve many more hours. In addition, instructors train parents and other caregivers to use verbal-behavior principles throughout the student’s daily life.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) uses picture cards to communicate. It’s a great way to encourage/teach non-verbal kids to start communicating by pointing at the cards. Here is a pdf of our actual PECS notebook for you to use as an example.

PECS begins by teaching an individual to give a picture of a desired item to a “communicative partner”, who immediately honors the exchange as a request. The system goes on to teach discrimination of pictures and how to put them together in sentences. In the more advanced phases, individuals are taught to answer questions and to comment.

The PECS teaching protocol is based on B.F. Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior, such that functional verbal operants are systematically taught using prompting and reinforcement strategies that will lead to independent communication. Verbal prompts are not used, thus building immediate initiation and avoiding prompt dependency.

PECS has been successful with individuals of all ages demonstrating a variety of communicative, cognitive and physical difficulties. Some learners using PECS also develop speech. Others may transition to a voice output system. The body of research supporting the effectiveness of PECS continues to expand, with research from countries around the world.

You can make your own PECS at home by taking pictures with your phone (or from the internet), printing/typing the word underneath each image, cut into squares, laminate, cut into squares again. Put velcro on back and put into a notebook.

This webpage has even more PECS links for sourcing images and creating your own PECS.

To do your own Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy at home:

Typically a small kid-sized table and 2 kid-sized chairs are used for ABA therapy.

Children are given very small treats as “reinforcers” each time they participate / say the word / follow the command / get the right answer. I like to use very small pieces of dried fruit. (for example: cut raisins in half or into quarters) I like to wear the treats in a fanny pack or apron.

Behavioral Intervention for Young Children With Autism: A Manual for Parents and Professionals by Catherine Maurice, Gina Green and Stephen C. Luce

How Do I Teach This Kid?: Visual Work Tasks for Beginning Learners on the Autism Spectrum by Kimberly A. Henry