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Practicing with Compassionate Care: A Missing Piece in Behavior Analytic Training
Becoming and practicing behavior analysis is often synonymous with a strong understanding of the technical components of behavior change procedures. Our training often emphasizes skills such as the memorization of terminology until it becomes second nature, evaluating and conducting research, and...
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Autism Education: What More Do School Districts and Parents Need to Do?
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a country to provide lifelong supports for someone with autism. Parents, school districts, and local, state and federal governments need to collaborate to ensure that individuals on the autism spectrum are provided with programs designed to meet...
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Guidelines for Parents on Addressing the Needs of Siblings
There is little doubt that those of us raised with siblings have been influenced by that relationship. Living with a brother or sister with an autism spectrum disorder adds more significant and unique experiences to that relationship. Throughout numerous accounts of parents and siblings of children...
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How to Best Support Siblings of Individuals with ASD
Typically developing siblings of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a unique set of needs that often go overlooked and unnoticed. These needs are generally social and emotional in nature and can affect siblings at any age during their lifespan. When one family member has a...
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Autism Through a Different Lens: A Sibling’s Perspective
In my profession, I often write articles from a parent’s perspective about having an 18-year-old daughter (Annie) with severe autism, and intellectual and developmental disabilities. My overarching goal with these stories is to provide compassion, understanding and hope to families, caregivers...
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Utilizing Digital Media to Enable Continuity of Autism Services
For over a decade there has been an abundance of professional articles and seminars on the potential of telehealth and distance learning services. Outside of the medical world, the movement of state licensing bodies and insurance payers to permit use of telehealth services by licensed behavioral...
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A Unique Program to Support Autism Educators During COVID-19 Distance Learning
The COVID-19 crisis has led to unprecedented school closures and a rapid transition to distance education which severely disrupted educational services for students on the autism spectrum. Distance learning will likely continue beyond the acute crisis as social distancing efforts persist. The...
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Helping Parents Address Challenging Behaviors During These Challenging Times
There is a clear consensus that children with disabilities are the most vulnerable to both short- and long-term effects of COVID-19 (United Nations, 2020). This is particularly true for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (here forward autism) for whom the sudden disruptions in educational and...
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Assembling an Emergency Toolkit for Children with Disabilities
In the journey of parenthood, one of the most challenging things caregivers of children can encounter are the inevitable injuries and emergencies. Last year, I had to take my daughter, Annie – who has autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities – to the emergency room (ER). Going...
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Why Autism Parents Say: “I Can Never Die”
The caregiving workforce shortage is and will be a crisis for so many Americans. “I can never die.” This is the rallying call of autism parents everywhere. Why do we feel that way? Because many autistic adults live with their parents – 85%, according to autism researcher Peter Gerhardt....
