How Can You Help Your Autistic Child Create Friendships?

Friends are important to people. Having friends and creating friends for your autistic child could be challenging. How will you be able to accept this challenge and help your child who has the disorder of autism, create friendships?

It is imperative to know your child.Know his or her weaknesses and strengths. Consider the social limitations your child may have. Not only participating with autistic children, but non-autistic children. Each child is unique and may need various kinds of help or coaching for encouragement and to gain confidence.

Some autistic children may have difficulty in expressing their verbal language. In addition, not being able to understand verbal language from other children. This can make it a challenge to communicate and create friendships with other children and autistic children.

Therefore, it is wise to determine the limitations your child may have, before you decide, your child should socialize and create friendships.

By taking this action, you will learn what your child is expressing and what he or she is able to handle. This will determine what kind of friends are appropriate for your individual to socialize with, when trying to create friendships.

Set a play date for that is fun for your child and other children. This could be done at school, or outside of the classroom. Take time to find the right situation for your child and other children to participate in.

When you do find the time that will work for all of the children, and the place, keep the time short and limited. This will eliminate stress, frustration and rejection from other children. By being aware of this and taking charge of the situation, your child will probably want to continue this activity or another one. It will help to create friends at his or her own pace.

If your child does not like crowds, bright lights, loud noises, confusing activities, multiple activities, take this into consideration. Do not force your child to take part in areas, where you know he or she will become upset. What is a fun activity or place for some children, could be extremely overwhelming for a child with the disorder of autism.

Another way you can help your autistic child create friendships is, if you have made many attempts for your child to participate in activities, new places, new times, to socialize and it does not seem to be working, perhaps it is time for you to be creative with a new idea or plan.

If you know your child, you will know if he or she needs more time to adjust to other individuals, activities, new places, etc. Be sure you are not placing an enormous amount of pressure on your child, by having too high expectations for him or her to socialize on your terms and thoughts. Instead, take into consideration each individual is different. You will want to evaluate your motives for encouraging creative friendships and socialization for your child.

If your child feels comfortable with one friend and is having fun, that may be all that is necessary for the present time. You may find you do not need to create more friendships or have your child participate in more social activities. Keep the pace simple for creating new friendships. Do not push your child into new friendships, when one or two friends could be enough and it will avoid unwanted stress.

Bonita Darula operates a web sight==> http://www.autismintoawareness.com/ SIGN up to RECEIVE your COMPLIMENTARY WEEKLY AUTISTIC NEWSLETTER on current TOPICS. For example: How can you help your child create and have friends? Order your Autism updated information from your Complimentary Autistic Newsletter to help your child and you.

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Benefits of Small Class Size for Students With Disabilities

One of the students referred to us spent a whole year sitting and staring before he was even referred. Another used to scream at a high pitch for hours before he was referred. Still another used to run around the room an not focus on anything. Another used to beat up his mother and get away with it before he was referred. Because we had a small classroom size and support we were able to deal with the behavioral challenges these children have with learning. It is extremely important to have a child's attention and focus to learn. Also, distractions should be kept to a minimum. This simply does not happen in the average American classroom, which is busy, noisy, bright and overwhelming to a lot of children with learning challenges.

The importance of relationship building for children with autism can not be overstressed. Social skills building needs to be a priority and children need much help in learning proper social skills and behavior. Because the behavior is challenging and difficult and learning and change does not happen rapidly, teachers without the understanding, experience and training just often give up. Believing the child can learn and will learn if one is persistent and does not give up is a necessity. The individual child has to be a priority. This simply does not happen in the mass production concept of American education.

Another difficulty in American education is that children with the same problems are dumped together but not given anymore help than if they were in the average American classroom. Thus, inappropriate behaviors are reinforced by children seeing other inappropriate behaviors. The Lord of the Flies concept happens with children leading the classroom rather than a strong adult leader. This is not a teacher's fault. If a teacher has to spend all of their day correcting behavior, it leads to very little time for learning. That is why I am against classroom sizes of fifteen to twenty for children with autism. Even eight students is too many. I as a teacher have had my greatest success with children with autism in a classroom with no more than four students and one aide.

As you can imagine, education can get very expensive when one does the right thing by a child. I have not even included the therapy and other services that autistic children can benefit from. Moreover, the special schools that autistic children need are often denied as school districts often refuse to pay for the private non-public schools that autistic children benefit most from. Thus, policy has to change and doors have to be opened for parents to be able to pick what works best for their child. Small class size is a start. And parents being allowed to pick non-public schools that work well is also a great start.

Give children a chance to learn and enroll them in a school that insists on a small student to teacher ratio.
The way you learned is not the way your child with autism will learn. They will be lost in the shuffle in most classrooms and then be blamed for not learning or their behavior. I have seen what children can accomplish when given what they need and I hope you will veto the mass education high number classroom that is usually the American way.

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Web Cams and Autism Treatment

Unfortunately, my computer recently took a turn for the worse and prompted me to seek a newer model. While webcams and built-in cameras have become standard issue on most laptops and tablet computers, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that my new desktop PC also included one. I was even more pleased to find that this particular model included a face-recognition software program which gradually 'learns' my face and signs me into the system as well as gives me the option to replace physically entering passwords and usernames for most sites that I use (a particularly useful feature if you're tired of typing and remembering these).

Inevitably, the folks on Madison Avenue have noticed this new technology and are now developing TVs with built-in cameras as well as software which will, eventually not only recognize your face when you are browsing the net, but also be able to tell if you thought that last commercial or ad was humorous. Putting aside the Orwellian aspects of this in respect to society in general, there may be unforeseen benefits associated with these developments. Autism researchers have begun to explore uses for this technology as well.

It has long been observed that individuals on the autism spectrum have displayed challenges in social situations - in the area of emotion interpretation in particular. According to a study by Lawton and Reichenberg-Ullman (2007), 66% of respondents with ASD and other developmental challenges have trouble recognizing faces. While these and similar studies suggest that children and adults with autism have challenges recognizing facial patterns - and therefore associating the individualized, social significance that they represent, recent focus has been on their reaction to typically emotion generating facial expressions in general. These factors may well be connected since typically developing peers learn very early on that their parents' faces and facial expressions are significant - and the child's recognition of these expressions is rewarded. Studies have shown that a significant number of very young children with ASD respond differently to images of their parents' faces. In other words, if there is an early challenge associated with recognizing the significance of parents' faces, (and the reinforcement generated from this is therefore absent) the skill of emotional reading may not develop later in life.

If this is the case, it would seem that any future efforts associated with using facial recognition technologies in the world of ASD need to be introduced very early on to be most effective. How this technology takes shape in the autism field is still being explored. The University of Victoria's Centre for Autism Research Technology and Education has developed a facial recognition game which requires the user to match facial expressions displayed on a screen to level-up. There are also several apps which children on the spectrum can access on I-Pads that have been designed for this issue, such as "Look in My Eyes: Steam Train" and "Smile at Me". While the nuances associated with facial expressions (and their complicated role in social interaction) are vast, the ever increasing technological advances in computer software may be able to create effective and beneficial treatments in this area of autism treatment.

Mr. Jeffrey Young is the President and Founder of Innovative Piano, Inc. Mr. Young has published over 17 books dealing with music and autism. To learn more about the author and the program please visit http://www.innovativepiano.com/

Innovative Piano, Inc.

Offering piano lessons for students with autism - Nationwide!
http://www.innovativepiano.com/

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