How to Help Your Child With Autism Begin The School Day

The beginning of the school year, and the start of each school day, can create potentially stressful situations for you and your child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Most children with Autism not only need routines, they require them in order to cope with an ever-changing environment. This article is designed to help prepare your child for the transition to a new year and for the beginning of each school day.

For children with autism, who typically have difficulty with transitions, the daily requirement of getting up and ready for school can cause tremendous stress and frustration. Starting school can present extreme difficulties for children with autism because children with ASD are required to conform to unpredictable and demanding schedules, rules, behaviors, and social norms.

As you prepare your child for a school year, begin by introducing new school supplies gradually. When purchasing clothing attempt to keep within the parameters of what fabrics, colors, and textures are suitable for your child. Tags may need to be cut out of clothes and all items should be clearly labeled. Depending on your child's specific needs, select materials that will appeal to his or her unique interests. For example, your child may want a certain cartoon character on his or her lunch box. For another children, this might pose too much of a distraction. Item can be purchased, set aside out of view, and introduced gradually. By the time school begins, however, your child needs to have the chance to become acquainted with each new item.

Visit the school, discuss, and walk through routines. For example, pack your child's lunch box and have a picnic in the lunch area at the school prior to the beginning of the year. As teachers begin to set up their new classrooms plan to visit the school. If possible take your child to see the classroom, the nurse's office, the library, etc. You also have the right to arrange a meeting before the school year starts. This is a good opportunity to get to know the team members and to make certain that your child's Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is up-to-date. Discuss concerns with the support staff and let the school know what your child needs in order to be successful. Request a follow-up meeting a week or two after the year begins to iron make adjustments.

Many children with autism respond well to visual stimuli and are comforted by what is familiar; establishing and maintaining a daily routine helps your child feel secure. Create a daily picture schedule to help your child prepare for the day and to transition between home and the external world. You may want to use picture cards. These cards can be laminated and attached with Velcro to laminated cardboard. This daily schedule will help your child with transitions. The picture schedule includes photos in chronological order that represent key transitional activities. Pictorial schedules may, but do not have to, include captions. If a picture schedule is used at home it may readily be adapted into the school setting. A picture symbol, such as a question mark, can indicate when an unexpected or unpredictable event may occur. Becoming familiar with such a symbol will help even the unexpected become more predictable. Another idea is to use timers and alarms to indicate the time for a transition from one activity to another. Your child's temperament will help in determining which schedules and devices will alleviates rather than promote anxiety.

Social stories that explain procedures and routines may also help your child to understand events and behavioral expectations.

Keep an open line of communication with the school, particularly the principal and teacher(s). While email is helpful, communication logs provide a hands-on method for relaying information between home and school. A small notebook for daily comments can eliminate hours of frustration for your child and his or her caretakers/teachers. Any change in routine can be documented in order to facilitate an understanding of unsettling events or changes in your child's routine.

While every child with ASD is unique the suggestions listed above have proven helpful in preparing for a smooth transition to a new school year and, with minor adjustments, to the daily school routines.

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Can Autism Diets Help Recover a Child From Autism?

With autism among children rising to astounding rates of 1 in 150 children worldwide, it is the fastest growing childhood epidemic of our time. The number of children affected by this whole-body disorder is expected to rise even further over the next decade. According to research reports, more children will be diagnosed with autism this year than cancer, diabetes, Downs Syndrome and AIDS combined. Approximately 1 million individuals in the United States have autism---as of today, there is no known cause and no known cure.

You know the statistics. You are keenly aware of how interesting your path has become-a life you didn't exactly imagine you would be in. You see the autism awareness ad campaigns on television. You hear a new president dedicate himself to helping children with autism through research dollars and insurance coverage requirements. You are connected to your local autism support group. You participate in lively debate over genetics, vaccines, ABA therapy and a new topic-biomedical intervention and autism diets.

You may be watching your child carefully stack cans on top of one another---over and over for hours, instead of playing with toys and other children. You serve French fries day after day, because they might be the only thing your child will eat. You've decided that "hope for recovery from autism" is an interesting collection of words-but do they really fit into your world?

You hear the word "recovery" more and more lately. How can your child recover from autism? Is it really possible? Parents you know are coming back from conferences enlightened and hopeful. The terms "biomedical intervention" and "autism diet" are rising to the top of conversations, literature and web sites. Of course you would be curious.

Pursuing recovery is not about "curing" autism. Pursuing recovery is about believing in and taking action toward improved health and healing. The term "recovery" is best explained by esteemed autism organizations such as Autism Research Institute and Generation Rescue, the use of this term is intended to convey the extent of the possibility that exists for these children--to reach their potential of health and happiness - whatever that may be. As Jenny McCarthy analogy explains, while you can't be cured of getting hit by a bus, you can recover. Indeed, thousands of children have, and are, recovering from autism.

Many parents today are learning things they can do to help their children thrive and pursue recovery. Autism pediatricians, researchers and nutritionists are now suggesting that parents consider implementing autism diets, autism-specific nutrition and specialized supplementation, in addition to traditional behavioral therapy and other proven treatments.

Doctors now know that the body of the child with autism is quite unique and requires very specific care-special enzymes for digestion, medical treatment for yeast infections and other conditions found during testing, attention to digestive issues, special dietary requirements (autism diets), nutrient and fatty acid supplementation, behavioral therapy and more.

Specific autism diets can help children improve in many ways. When diets are correctly implemented by parents, improvement in gastrointestinal problems, diarrhea, constipation, language, learning, focus, attention, eye contact, behavior, sleep difficulties, toilet training, skin rashes/eczema and body pain have been observed. Since every child is unique, improvements will vary.

There are several diets that are used by parents, autism nutritionists and pediatricians. These diets include the Gluten-Free Casein-Free (GFCF) Diet, Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Diet, Low Oxalate Diet, Body Ecology Diet, Feingold Diet and Weston A. Price dietary principles. Most practitioners suggest parents begin with the GFCF Diet-removing all gluten and casein from the foods they serve their children.

Autism Research Institute (ARI) surveyed thousands of parents and found that 65% of those applying the GFCF Diet saw improvement. For the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, 66% noted improvement.

Successful parents begin with simple steps: they serve fresh fruits, vegetables and grass-fed meats whenever possible. They read labels for ingredients and they clean out their cupboards. They shop for organic foods in order to remove antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and PCBs from the dinner table. Parents choose to no longer serve their children easy-to-serve pre-packaged, canned or frozen foods that contain preservative, additives, colors and artificial ingredients. They immediately decrease the amount of sugar they feed their children. The guidance of a qualified nutrition profession is always recommended.

After the initial clean up steps are completed, parents embark on the finer points of an autism diet, which often means removing gluten and casein-as implemented in the GFCF diet. Gluten is the protein found in wheat, rye, barley, commercial oats, kamut, and spelt. Casein is the protein found in dairy. The GFCF diet has become popular for autism and the general population, and there are many GFCF foods available in stores. Parents who are successful with applying a GFCF diet cook from great recipes they find online and in autism diet friendly cookbooks. They actually enjoy the process.

For the parent of a child with autism, the food that they choose to serve their children is vitally important to their healing. Autism diets are an important first step all parents should consider as they are creating a recovery program for their child.

Julie Matthews, a top US biomedical autism diet/nutrition specialist and Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) Practitioner, helps parents recover children from autism. She is a parent/physician educator and creator of "Nourishing Hope for Autism: Nutrition Intervention for Healing Our Children" (Book) and "Cooking to Heal Autism Nutrition and Cooking Classes" (DVD). Visit http://www.NourishingHope.com to study autism diets and view video presentations.

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Autism - Dancing With Rhythm, Can it Help?

Dancing with autistic children teaches them rhythm, exercise, movement and most of all will encourage them to climb out of their isolated world where it is a challenge for them to communicate and socialize. Rhythm dancing to music will enable children with autism, to communicate to peers, help with motor skills, teach them to follow instructions, and keep time to the music.

Most autistic children have a repetitive behavior. By teaching them to dance with music, they will use their repetitive behavior to learn new music, words, beats, and interact with others. This gives them an opportunity to release their frustrations that most of them have.

The choices of music that should be selected is chosen as to how, the autistic individual will respond to what has been given to them. For example, some might enjoy a good loud beat that will be acceptable and others may want to hear soft soothing instrumental music. There are those who simply enjoy singing with solo voices or choirs.

Introduce a variety of music. It is important to remember, not to introduce too many variety ranges of music compositions all at one time to the individual child, with autism. This will create anxiety, frustration and could keep the person from having any future joy of understanding what music can do for him or her.

Dancing with rhythm can be accomplished by using a large round ball that the child can hold, setting up a large mirror and having the child view his or her steps by watching with the pupil, their body movements, as you are dancing with them. They can also hold your hand and you can dance with them, by teaching them steps, singing, dancing, being creative with costumes or fun painted faces, using hats, and props.

It is exciting for autistic children to see and hear a person play the piano for rhythm and dancing. Singing, using a tape recorder, watching a video with dancing on it, playing a musical instrument, for example a flute, guitar, or clarinet is excellent, to acquaint the children to new ideas, and sounds. By doing this, encourages the child with autism to expand and grow.

Dancing with rhythm is helpful for autistic children to learn to touch and laugh, by clapping their hands, following the instructions of the teacher and learning new songs with variation of words and beats. In addition, it develops better eye contact, social skills, motor skills, they have become more calm, gained self-confidence and have become better listeners, with articulation that has made their speech become more clear.

Have fun with this exercise of dancing with rhythm. It is best not to push autistic children to dance or become angry with them, if they do not perform, get the correct step or movement. Clapping is another way to add joy to the ingredient of dancing.

Be creative, use your imagination. Remember, some of the children may have their own special songs that they would like to sing or dance to. Allow them to do it and you could vary the music with different beats and words.

Dancing to rhythm with autistic children has developed many positive attributes for the child as well as the parents or caregivers. It is worth the effort for just fun and joy.

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