Posts
P.S. We are growing out the boys hair to get a new style/cut, so that's why both of their hair looks disheviled!
Here's a video of Tyler and I playing with the remote control car. Both Tyler and Ben like to watch the car spin on it's side. We took 4 small video clips and I struggled with which one to post cause they all have different things I'd like to highlight. I decided to show you the first one we took cause it's the one where he's the most interested and happy and it's so fun to hear him giggle. So the things that you'd see in the other ones and miss in this one is that I was just getting him engaged in this so i didn't turn the car on/off as much as I do towards the end. First you want to make sure yuo can hold his interest so my demand is a bit lower on him. Also, you'll notice that he gets very stimmy with the car at one point, turning the wheels with his hands. In the next set of video clips you'll see how I handle this which is to basically ignore (not reward the behavior) and I turn the car over to get it to be functional again and then engage him appropriately rather than inappropriately. In this clip, he comes out of the stim on his own rather quickly. Also, since he is so excited, it's hard to hear the "ah" which he's using to request for "on' in between the giggles and laughter, as the future video clips go on, I actually was able to get a pretty clear "ahhhhhhn" out of him so that was pretty cool.. slowly working towards the "N" sound. What's great about this video in general is it shows that Tyler is wanting to use sounds to get something the way he watns it rather than signs. Not that signs aren't great, they are, but it seemed that his sounds had diminished as he was learning more signs. This is not uncommon by the way, they concentrate on learning one skill at a time. So just a few weeks ago, he would have been signing "go" instead of using a verbal cue to get the car to go. So it's nice to see that he's wanting to use verbal cues as well as signs now. Funny how I can write so much about a little clip!
Here are the pictures I promised from Easter and amazing enough we were able to get 2 pictures each that have both boys in it, sorry they aren't looking at the camera though. one day :)
Here is an article about Dr. Lord from the University of Michigan autism and communication center, she was recently awarded Michiganian of the Year or something similiar. Without Dr. Lord and her work, Tyler would not be where he is. She's the director for all the studies that TYler has been involved with through U of M and hence one of the main reasons Ty is doing so well. Anyway, it's just great to see her be recognized. Susan Risi is quoted in the article, and she's the one that actually diagnosed Tyler. I can think of many turning points in our journey (in the right direction of course) and I remember when the study became available to us and it was right when we were getting ready to sign up for another project and I wasn't sure what was in the best interest of Tyler. I spoke to his behavioral peditrician who said, "Melissa, you cannot get any better than Dr. Lord"... well that settled it for me! The christmas cards from UMAAC all have personalized messages from each of the staff including dr. lord, they are just some of the nicest people. The study coordinator, Julie McCormick, actually played with Ben for an hour the other day while Tyler was in his evaluation with Dad. They are all just fantastic and love kids and have such a strong desire to help. It's great. So anyway, thought you may want to see the article. We certainly have a lot of people to be thankful for!
Catherine Lord: U-M child psychologist a groundbreaker in the world of autism and related disorders
March 28th, 2009
http://www.detnews. com/article/ 20090328/ SPECIAL02/ 903280335
On any given day, you may find University of Michigan professor Catherine Lord fiddling with baby dolls, balloons or bubble wrap.
Her passion for finding the perfect plaything belies a serious mission: to make a fundamental difference in the lives of autistic children and their families.
As a clinical child psychologist, research scientist and director of the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center in Ann Arbor, Lord uses toys to gain insight into the behaviors of individuals locked in the mysterious grip of autism and autism spectrum disorders, which now affect one out of 150 American children.
Through four decades of work in the United States, Canada and England, Lord has become world-renowned for developing procedures to diagnose autism that are the international gold standard. She's also known for groundbreaking research that involves following a large group of autistic children from toddlers through their teen years to study changes over time.
Colleagues say Lord has a knack for working with families struggling to cope with autism and Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning condition in which individuals may be verbally adept but lack certain social skills.
"She's good at communicating the complexity of the disorder to parents and helping them understand," says Susan Risi, a longtime colleague at U-M's autism center. "She's a great bridge between the research and the families."
Now on sabbatical and serving as interim director of the Asperger Institute at New York University's Child Study Center, Lord is intent on fine-tuning the autism diagnostic procedure she developed with colleagues so that even babies as young as 12- to 15-months-old can be identified.
"The idea is that if you see a child who clearly has a lot of signs for autism at a young age, there are things -- interventions -- that you could do that might shift the child's development (in a way) that would help them," she says.
Forty years ago, when Lord entered the field as an undergraduate at UCLA, autism and related disorders were little-known and less understood outside limited scientific circles.
Today, Asperger's syndrome is increasingly familiar to the public, thanks to a recent spate of characters in movies, books and TV, including the lawyer Jerry Espenson on ABC's "Boston Legal."
Lord has mixed feelings about the series, which ended its run in December. "The good thing is that the show represented someone with Asperger's who was able to do many things and was clearly very intelligent -- yet it drives me crazy because they didn't quite get it right," she says. "But the fact that people are trying and that so many more people know about autism and Asperger's syndrome, in the end that's good because people will be more understanding of families and more accepting."
