Is medication a good autism strategy? More often than not, the parent of a child on the autism spectrum, or of one who’s been diagnosed with a learning disability, has faced the question of whether medication is a good autism strategy. The same question holds true with professionals–‘Is medication a good autism therapeutic intervention tool?’....
Which autism intervention strategies are best for your child? Here are three things to avoid. Discussion: To help your child relate, communicate, and think, it’s important to create the best intervention program available. There are a number of strategies that your child may respond positively to, but there are also interventions that you should avoid....
How should a parent integrate different autism treatment strategies? How can a parent know whether an autism treatment strategy is right for their own child? Discussion: In addition to the Floortime therapy, you may want to consider new and innovative interventions that are coming to the fore, suggests Dr. Greenspan. “No one intervention, no matter...
Discussion: “What if you’re in a situation where you need to set a limit?” asks Dr. Greenspan. With Floortime, it’s very important for limit setting to take place under the umbrella of calm, back and forth interaction. “The child with autism should learn in a negotiated way,” reminds Dr. Greenspan. The ideal way to set...
How can a therapist identify short-term goals when implementing the Greenspan Floortime approach? Discussion: It can often seem difficult to quantify Floortime progress, but it doesn’t have to be. The question we seem to be asking ourselves is: “how do we use the DIR model in terms of getting funding when the funding agency wants...
Discussion: How do you identify what approaches work best for a particular child? If you are a clinician, how do you help parents figure out what approach is best for their child? “These are questions that can be answered during the assessment process,” says Dr. Greenspan. “In the assessment, have parents play with their children....
Discussion: School does not mean education. What should an ideal educational program have? You have to look at the school environment in terms of how well it can provide support for the six functional milestones, and then the higher milestones beyond that. How well can an educational setting provide remediation for the different processing areas?...
Discussion: One of the real challenges with children with special needs is grappling with how you help them master reflective, analytic thinking – seeing the big picture and making inferences. In studies comparing children with autism to children without autism, who are matched for IQ, the separating factor isn’t academics. “What separates special needs populations...
Discussion: “For most of the kids who are older and on the autism spectrum, the big problem is service and educational communities giving up on them,” states Dr. Greenspan, and abandoning thinking skills in the process. We shouldn’t stop challenging older children simply because they are autistic. That isn’t to say that life skills aren’t...
Discussion: As a clinician or therapist doing the family assessment, you will be able to sense if there will be a deeper resistance from the parents, states Dr. Greenspan. “They will speak about what they do and don’t do, and the ways they are comfortable or uncomfortable interacting.” After that happens, suggest that they try...
