Focus of Treatment

PLAY. One of the primary focuses of our treatment is the teaching of functional play skills. We place a particular emphasis on teaching kids to be kids. For us, that means teaching children to play the games and activities typically developing children play. More specifically, we teach our clients to ride scooters, bikes (no training wheels), skateboards, and skates. All of our clients learn to play board games, swinging on the swings, and age-appropriate games on the Wii gaming console.

In this field, the ratio of male to female therapists trends to 1:4. In contrast, children diagnosed with autism trend to 4:1 boys to girls. Given this disparity between a mostly female staff working with a mostly male autism population, we must be cognizant of the roles we model and the skills that we teach our clients. We provide all of our staff training to teach "girls to be girls" and "boys to be boys." For us, that means teaching our clients the skills to engage in those more gender specific activities that typically developing children play. We teach boys the correct techniques to play baseball, soccer, football, and basketball. We teach girls the correct techniques to play hopscotch and jump rope. That is not to say that we do not teach girls to play baseball or soccer, or prohibit boys from playing hopscotch, but that we need to emphasize our teaching to effectively impart the necessary skills to our clients so that they may readily integrate with typically developing peers in the natural environment.

Please recognize that this is not an attempt to force gender stereotypes, but rather an understanding that gender differences do exist and that for us to be successful in getting your child to socialize and be accepted by peers, we need to teach them the skills to blend into age-appropriate peer groups.

COMMUNICATION. We utilize a variety of methods to teach your child to effectively communicate his or her needs. This can take the form of teaching your child to point to desired items, exchange pictures for desired items/activities, asking for desired items or activities, replying to questions with "yes/no," and/or making gestures to indicate preferences (e.g., nod for "yes," shake head for "no").

BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT. We pride ourselves on our ability to effectively and meaningfully decrease inappropriate behaviors (e.g., protests, tantrums, aggression) and increase appropriate coping skills (e.g., waiting, deep breathing). An intervention program is a failure when a child's inappropriate behaviors continue to manifest in the same way and in the same situations 6 months to a year after services have begun. A successful intervention program not only succeeds in teaching a child appropriate skills, it meaningfully decreases the child's inappropriate behaviors, at home and in the community.

PARENT AND FAMILY PARTICIPATION. The research shows and our experiences have conclusively demonstrated that family involvement is critical to a child's progress and longterm prognosis. Therefore, we require active parent and family involvement and participation. Parent training is mandatory for all parents in our program. We also involve everyone who plays an active role in the child's life in our training. Consistency is the key to any successful program.