Monday 26 May 2014

Summer Camp for Kids with ASD

My colleague, Melanie Walker of DynamicsDiscovered.com and I are collaborating to create an effective, child centred summer camp for children in the Lower Mainland.  With a home base in Ladner, BC we are ready to offer day camp activities that will focus on the physical, emotional, and behavioural abilities of each participant.

Both Malcolm and Melanie have extensive experience working with children and young adults with ASD and would like to focus on reducing anxieties by promoting physical literacy and well being, cognitive processing of emotion and sensory issues, and successful experiences in daily excursions to the city and our fantastic green spaces in the Lower Mainland.
As we develop our program we welcome input from parents in the form of the following survey:
What I want in a Summer Camp for my Child with ASD

Warm Regards,
Malcolm and Melanie

Summer Camps and ASD

Please take the time to answer 4 questions about Summer Camps and ASD


Sunday 18 May 2014

Collaboration Time

Looking forward to doing some collaboration with Melanie Walker of  Dynamics Discovered.  We crossed paths after many moons since high school graduation only to discover that we both work for the same school district, both do/have done foster care, and both work with children with autism and their families.

Stay tuned.  I think there might be some interesting stuff coming up!


A note about my client logs

The excerpt came from this particular clients session log.  I try and keep a running log of each session I do with my kids.  It enables me to track their progression.  Probably not enough to be considered DATA by a certain group of behaviour practitioners...but it is still a referenceable document!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kRSYLb6l8kxR2hNZYjk-BI5_4CCtKMyMA5CEt9d1qN0/edit

Sometimes it is more in depth and other times not so much.

Successes

This was a good week!
This video shows one of my guys riding a bike...actually riding!  I had to look back and recall what I wrote about him when he first sat on his bike:


  • and then I mentioned something about the training wheels coming off...
    • ....... D was visibly upset about the prospect of the wheels coming off .......
    • together we ascertained that he was just scared...much talk about my job (keep him safe) and his job (to listen)
    • success in small measures:  D twice sat on the bike without the training wheels
      • will gradually get up to more


This progression took 8 months.  His bike came to me with training wheels and the first thing I did was take them off.  The next thing I did was take the cranks off.  Now we had a scooter and D could manage the balancing and gliding.  A little way through I put the cranks back on and he continued to glide mostly but was able to occasionally get his foot up on one to stop.
 


Then I got a text from another mum:
Hi Malcolm! Sports day today. K and I were noticing how much more confident and capable and willing to try new things J and L were this year and we think that has everything to do with YOU!
Thank you.
I sometimes wonder when and where we get to see improvements...this week we saw a couple of things happen.
Pretty happy with my guys!!