The first book I decided to look through is from a really good series of books entitled Topics in Autism. This particular book is called Visual Supports for People with Autism: A Guide for Parents and Professionals.I'm about 40 pages into it, and I have gotten some great ideas on implementing visual supports for things like doing chores, remembering to bring your dirty items down from your room, as well as school-related things like multiplication and labeling parts of a sentence, and using graphic organizers for various things outside of school (like scripting a phone call). It also talks about Video Self Modeling, Social Stories, Thinking Stories and Power Cards; all things that I think could definitely assist my child.
Once I get through the entire book, I will be able to see what will be workable in our school day and what will actually benefit him. I don't want to throw so much at him that I can't tell what's really working and what isn't.
I also got STOP That Seemingly Senseless Behavior! FBA Interventions for People with Autism. This is another in the same series. I've flipped through this one a bit, and I think I need to get the companion book (actually the first of these 2 books), called Functional Behavior Assessment for People with Autism: Making Sense of Seemingly Senseless Behavior. I am actually pretty familiar with Functional Behavior Analysis (or Assessment), but I think it would be an interesting read nonetheless. I may go ahead and purchase the book.
Other books I purchased:
Big Picture Thinking: Using Central Coherence Theory to Support Social Skills, A Book for Students
- This looks like a really good book. It goes through things like Feelings and Emotions, Self-Control, Perspective Taking, Communication, Relationships, Interactions, etc
- I haven't gotten a chance to look through this one at length, but the premise seems straight forward. It seems to dovetail with the other books I've gotten
- Another book I'm not sure about, but it looked interesting on the shelf. This one may be a book for later in the school year.
- I chose this book because PRT has science behind it, and this book explains what PRT looks like and examples of how to use it. Specifically, this book was of interest because it explains the principles behind:
- motivating children with natural reinforcers
- reducing disruptive behavior
- encouraging communication and social initiations
- developing a challenging curriculum
- assessing children meaningfully in natural environments
- helping families weave interventions into everyday routines
- ensuring that children generalize skills to other setting
- I chose this book because it looked very kid-friendly. At first glance, it looks like something that M will choose to read on his own...once we tell him about this newest diagnosis (no, we haven't told him yet...). I think it will be valuable for him to have a resource, other than a parent, that he can go to when he has questions and doesn't want to discuss things with us. What's nice about this book is that it has lots of sections on a variety of topics, including but not restricted to social skills. It goes into things like hygiene, sleeping, stims, eating, etc.
So I'm starting with the books that I think will help me with school the most. I will update as we get into the school year on what things seem to be working and what things seem to be a waste of time. I'm both looking forward to this and dreading it. On the one hand, if we come across something that works, then YAY! On the other hand, I want to get the most bang for my buck and my time. Gathering all this information is incredibly time consuming, and I haven't even started putting it together with the academic curriculum! I probably should have given myself more than a week....oh well. ADD here too. :P
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