Conference on Autism

On Monday and Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending an Autism conference run by the Anne Carlsen Center in Bismarck.

It was presented by Dr Stacey Goresko who has an Autistic son.

The focus of this conference was to present a treatment for Autism that was developed by Dr Steve Gutsein, a psychologist, who himself apparently has ADHD.

His theory is that the children with Autism deserve a "do over".
Their social development comes to a halt when they become Autistic and if they are taken back to the same time, this is a little hard to express, but basically they need to learn the social skills of babies or toddlers.
They need to go through a stage where they discover for themselves that they can learn from their mentors or guides. (parents or caregivers)

From what I could determine, it is a social basis for the child to draw on.
ABA teaches children to remember things by rote e.g. if I do this then this happens.
That is nice, but the world is not in black and white. If you throw something out of the ordinary at these children, they can't cope with it as they may not have a learned behaviour for it.

I can see what Dr Gutstein means. His consultants teach the parents/teachers who teach the child with positive dynamic interaction to think about why things are happening rather than giving them the answer and expecting them to learn it.
This way, the child has something to fall back on and also, this can be built on so the child has more episodic memories to draw on.

It teaches them to think for themselves.

I think that some of this can be used with my three children and will probably attempt it several times a day to see how it works.

The consultants, once they have done their initial face to face assessment conduct the rest of their coaching via videos posted by the parents on a website.

To contact them www.RDIconnect.com

I really missed my kids while I was gone. I had a couple of good friends who stepped in for me. I think that the kids were happy to have me back too. Thanks so much to those who helped me attend this and to West River Special Ed for providing the opportunity.
Later