Terra Vance’s writing is impeccable and the post is very interesting, informative, and full of “Greater Good” values. It speaks so much to the journey I go through with the wonderful people I work with.

It reminded me of one of those wonderful people, and when I read to her the book “The Night Before Kindergarten.” It was supposed to be a fell good about your first day of Kindergarten; it is exciting and not scary. At the end of the book, all the kids are all having great day as their parents watched:

“The children were happy. They loved Miss Clare.
It was she who would show them a great deal of care.
When what to her wondering eyes should appear
but sad moms and dads who were holding back tears!”

She cried because she didn’t want the parents to cry. She is my queen of grand emotions and I love being part of her journey learning how to manage and express them.

You can find 20 different super cute printable templates including the paw prints above, here: https://wp.me/a5s6Pb-fy

Long way but not there yet. I cannot remember the last time I talked to someone, familiar or new, who had not heard the word autism, spectrum, or known someone on it or closely related to that someone. We are not there yet, though, when it comes to how to help. Call it treatment, educational approach, therapy, coaching. It could be because it is that much harder with a spectrum condition. Individuals are very different, as are their strengths and weaknesses, therefore one can expect that their choices wold have to also differ. Also, mostly families of young children or young adults are making choices for them, based on their own beliefs and experiences, and the information they have access to. What can we do and how to choose when the information is all over the place? We recommend choosing what has been studied scientifically; been through rigorous testing, just like with any medical treatments and educational approaches, it is safest to use what has demonstrated the desired results. Find organizations that do not profit from giving information and making general recommendations and call on those who speak outside of their scope of knowledge and practice. Beware. Unfortunately, it is still a wild world out there.

And we need practitioners to truly understand what constitutes a mand and be able to assess motivation and current controlling variables when helping an individual to learn to mand. Mand training is too often poorly done and it is both because to be done well, it takes a practitioner who is very fluent in verbal operants and because it is not always easy to assess motivation and control all the contingencies necessary to establish the mand repertoire, especially with individuals with very limited strong motivation for items controlled by others, and with long histories of absent, weak, or aberrant behavior functioning as mands.

This article by Mark Sundberg discusses 30 points about motivation from Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior: http://goo.gl/oDg1yK.

These cards are a cute way to let the neighbors know we understand that maybe our kiddo is not holding the basket or bag open, or bolted into the house without an invite, or dropped the bag and is covering his/her ears, or threw the candy back right at them, or stepped on the decorations, or even on another child they were trying to beat to the door.

Hopefully you have friendly, loving neighbors who are familiar with you and your child, from happy or challenging circumstances you have shared, and they will be ready. Maybe you have even prepared everyone during practice. But you may have new neighbors or be trick or treating in someone else’s neighborhood and could use this little postcard to leave a special thank you and make them aware that kids with autism trick or treat *sometimes* a little differently.

Enjoy the sweetest time of the year!

Read the Wall Street Journal’s article here: http://goo.gl/bfOYYU