Brenda Kosky Deskin is the parent of a child with Autism and Founder and Editor of AutismBeacon.com, a one-of-a-kind website and online directory dedicated to providing vital resources and information to the international Autism community.
Years of research has demonstrated prompts to be an effective teaching tool for people on the Autism Spectrum. Prompts are therefore an important and integral part of most ABA programs. However, their benefit doesn’t end there. Prompts can be equally useful for helping people both with and without special needs. Have you ever pointed your [...]
Since we home-school my autistic son, Michael, we are always looking for new places to take him to expand his horizons, provide different environments in which he can practice and generalize his newly learned skills, and simply to have fun. Read on for some tips on how to come up with places that would be [...]
Visual timers can play a vital role in the lives of many individuals who have special needs, making participation in important events and necessary activities more tolerable and manageable for all involved. In this post I cover five situations where a visual timer will be very very helpful. 1. Transitioning Visual timers are ideal in assisting [...]
While achieving complete independence may not be a realistic goal for many individuals who have special needs, “independence” should be considered a spectrum, just like many physical and developmental challenges themselves. Just because someone can’t be completely self-sufficient (who really is?), doesn’t mean he or she shouldn’t strive for partial independence. Any task or undertaking [...]
In my last post, I discussed the many benefits of chores for children who have special needs. I’d like to follow up today by suggesting some chores that may work well for your child, as well as describing how some typical household tasks can be easily modified to better accommodate your child’s unique abilities. 1. [...]
As parents and caregivers of children with special needs, we all share a common desire to have our children lead full and happy lives and to become contributing members of society, of course to the best of their abilities. One thing that is often overlooked but can very helpful to the development of your child [...]
Many individuals who have special needs are very capable of learning new skills, but need to have these novel tasks broken down into more manageable segments in order to master them. Grocery shopping is a perfect example. There are so many steps and goals involved in a visit to the grocery store that it may [...]
Traffic-related mishaps account for a large number of deaths and injuries amongst our society’s children and youth. When a child has special needs, the risk factor can increase dramatically due to several factors including: Lack of awareness of danger Heightened distractibility Difficulty or inability to filter out background stimuli Higher levels of impulsivity Higher levels [...]
