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Choosing the right school for your child with autism

How do you choose the right school for your child? Not only do you want to find the school that will give them the best possible education but somewhere that they will be happy, make friends and discover new interests.

This is a difficult and challenging process for most parents but if your child has autism, making the right decision becomes even more important.

Do your research

Get as much advice as you can

Talk to family, friends, other parents and professionals who have knowledge of provision in your authority
e.g. Educational Psychologist, Parent Partnership or Parent Support group

Look at the school website and brochure

This should give you a general view of school policies & structure.
Under the new SEN Code all schools must now have details on their websites about their policy for children with SEN too.

Arrange a private visit to the school

Open days are useful but to get a real feel of a school arrange a private visit during school hours and preferably over a break or lunch time.
This gives you the chance to observe how pupils behave and interact with staff and their peers. You can also get a feel for the more practical issues – how busy are the corridors, how noisy is the school canteen, etc.

Important questions to ask when visiting schools

As well as general questions on issues such as uniform, opening hours and holiday dates, you will undoubtedly want to ask questions on autism specific issues.

Here are some ideas for important questions you might want to know the answers to.

    Staff knowledge and training

What experience and knowledge do the staff have of autism? Have they had any specific training?

Are all staff aware of the associated difficulties of being autistic e.g. sensory issues, dietary needs?

Do teachers use autism-friendly communication strategies e.g. visual cues, key words, clear and unambiguous classroom language?

 

Individualised plans

Would the school be able to offer a tailored curriculum to take into account your child’s needs?

What resources does the school have to accommodate your child’s special interests?

Is one-to-one support available – how much and how often?

Is homework differentiated where appropriate and clarified for a child with autism?

Are there opportunities to learn life skills such as cooking and self care skills?

Pastoral care

How is bullying dealt with and what steps have the school taken to understand the particular vulnerability of children with autism?

What is the system for home-school communication? In my experience, good communication between staff and parents is the key to a successful school placement!

Is there a designated quiet area or room available that children can go to when necessary?

Are there any break time or lunch clubs where your child could go for support or that would match their interests?

Does the school have any system of peer support in place e.g. circle of friends or buddy schemes?

Useful links

The Autism Education Trust have just published a really useful guide that will help you in your search to find a new school, whether it be primary, secondary, mainstream or special school. There’s even plenty of room to make notes so why not print off a few copies to take with you on your school visits.

A parents and carers’ guide to finding a school for your child with autism

 

 

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Fine motor skills

Fumbling in my purse for loose change today, I’m reminded how important fine motor skills are for daily life.

What are ‘fine motor skills’?

Fine motor skills are the small muscle movements in the body. They enable activities such as writing, grasping small objects and fastening clothes. Children who have a weakness in fine motor skills struggle to develop strong muscles in their fingers, hands and wrists. They may also have poor eye-hand coordination.

Why are fine motor skills important?

Problems with fine motor skills can have a detrimental effect on education and impact on life in general. For example, the ability to hold a fork and eat, write legibly and complete personal self care tasks such as washing and dressing all depend on the coordination of small actions.

My own son still struggles with pen & paper tasks, his ability to tie shoe laces remains a work in progress, not to mention the hours of frustration spent battling with fiddly zips!

What can I do if my child needs help?

There are lots of inexpensive resources and ideas to help strengthen fine motor skills.

Drawing, colouring and craft activities can all help build these skills in a fun, informal way.

We’re lucky to have Star Tree Studio nearby who host a range of craft and creative classes (as well as art & craft birthday parties) where kids can ‘play-create-learn’ without messing up the house! Check out your local free papers and family magazines to find something similar in your area.

The imagination tree has a great blog post ’40 fine motor skills activities’

OT Mom Learning Activities has some useful suggestions for fine motor activities for older kids

Make it fun

Kids learn best when they don’t realise they’re learning! For example, we always recommend that children are involved with putting together their own TomTag ready to use. As well as helping them to understand their own routine it is a very tactile and fun activity that can help strengthen fine motor skills. Peeling off and sticking stickers onto buttons requires hand-eye coordination and pincher grip – both important for writing. Hand and finger muscles come into play too when clicking buttons into tags and removing them.

Zip it up!

Getting hold of a zipper to fasten up a jacket, bag or pencil case can be incredibly difficult for children with fine motor difficulties. We’ve now got funky zip pulls to help with those fiddly zips!

We’re giving them away free right now to anyone who recommends TomTag to a friend who then places an order.

We’d also recommend Zipz by MERU – colourful, ergonomically designed zip pulls which are also great for glove wearers: skiers, bikers, winter & outdoor activities lovers.

 

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TomTag for all the family

Reading through our recent blog posts you could be forgiven for thinking that TomTag is just for children with special needs. As an avid list-maker and user myself, I know that it can be a useful tool for any member of the family.

I find the last few weeks of school a frustrating time. All the good habits my children had at the start of the year are falling by the wayside and I’m powerless to stop them. What’s the point of trying to enforce a routine when all they care about is the end of term school trip and staying up late to watch TV?

So I’ve decided that if I can’t change things now then I’ll prepare for a time when I can whilst the problems are still fresh in my mind. I’m fortunate to have two fairly independent and reasonably well organised children – one already in secondary school and another about to start in September. Yet somehow I still seem to find myself sounding like a broken record when they come home from school every evening!

Using TomTag, I’ve made a list for each of them which will hang by the coat hooks or on the bedroom door. To paraphrase the famous saying, hopefully these pictures will save me 1,000 words.

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TomTag for all the family

 

 

Do you think it will work? Check back in September and find out!

Have you got any interesting ideas for how to put TomTag to use in your house – why not share them with us and our readers?

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June news

  • Our first trip this month will take us to Stafford visiting the NAS branch support meeting there this week to talk to the group about TomTag and how it might help their children.
  • Anyone visiting Kidz South in Reading should pop along to the Disabled Living information table where they will be able to find a supply of our leaflets.
  • Next stop, on 19th June, will be Lincoln for the Dyslexia Guild Annual Summer Conference. We are particularly looking forward to this as without Dyslexia Action, we might never have had the idea for TomTag and we wouldn’t be here today! Hoping to wow them with what we’ve acheived from taking part in one of their courses.
  • On the same day, Clare will be a delegate at the Wordswell, Towards a Positive Future Conference where we are also conference sponsors featuring in the conference booklet.
  • Big thanks to Rosy&Bo who will be taking TomTag with them to sell at the Autism Show in London on 13th and 14th June. Good luck Rosy & Bo!
  • Final stop on June 27th 10am – 2pm – we are venturing even further afield and will be at Devizes Corn Exchange for the Wiltshire Parent Carer Council SENDIS Event. See you there!
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April and May news

In April, we celebrated Autism Awareness Month with a series of blogs from our personal experiences of living with autism.

Firstly we touched on helpful strategies for coping with anxieties in Autism – understanding and managing anxiety, moved on to tips to develop conversation and pragmatic skills in Waiting for others to come to you? and finished off with issues of sensory sensitivity in Sensory strategies for personal care.

We hope you enjoyed these insights and found them useful.

 

In May, we were thrilled to be invited to exhibit with Disability North at their first ever Paediatric Open Day in Newcastle. What a friendly bunch they all were!

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Sensory strategies for personal care

Our lives are full of sensory experiences. We take in information about the world around us through our senses – we touch, move, see, hear, taste and smell.

Many people with autism have difficulties interpreting this sensory information. Sensory sensitivity can significantly impact an individual’s behaviour and ability to develop independence in life skills.

Here are a few of the personal care strategies that have helped me to better manage my son’s sensory-driven behaviours.

DRESSING

  • Use comfortable clothes – consider particularly the type of fabric and length of sleeve
  • Cut off care labels from inside clothes
  • If seams cannot be tolerated try wearing undergarments (eg leggings under trousers) to reduce friction
  • Wash and dry clothes in unscented products
  • Dressing in front of a mirror can help provide visual cues to improve sequencing and body awareness

PERSONAL HYGIENE

  • Use non-perfumed soap
  • Apply firm pressure when shampooing or drying with a towel
  • Be aware of bathroom lighting levels and reduce any loud noises e.g. run the bath before the young person goes into the bathroom
  • Provide deep touch using a towel to head, hands and feet

HAIR CARE

  • Use a firm stroke or pressure as you comb or wash their hair
  • Count or have the young person count as you comb, wash or cut their hair
  • Give a definite time limit to the task e.g. brush or cut until you or they count to 10

 

TOILETING

  • Use moist toilet roll if the young person is sensitive to toilet tissue
  • If feet don’t reach the ground when sitting, using a stepping stool to rest feet on will help the child feel safer
  • Try a padded seat insert if the young person doesn’t like how the toilet seat feels

It’s important to talk to the young person to try and understand their individual issues and to explain each step of what you are doing to help them.

Visual aids can also be used to help the young person understand the activity and remember the order or sequence of actions. Our TomTag self care pack is designed to help guide self care tasks such as dressing, washing, toileting etc.

We also recommend Little Grippers socks which use “stay on technology” to help them to stick rather than grip the skin so they don’t fall down or move around. 

For more tips, this friendshipcircle blog has some really useful information.

Please feel free to share and let us know which strategies have worked well for you.

  • Back-to-School Toolkit

  • I Can Do It Brush My Teeth Mini Kit

  • I Can Do It Learn At Home Kit

  • I Can Do It Self Care Skills Kit

  • I Can Do It Toilet Routine Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect – Morning and Evening Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect At Home Kit

  • Self Care Sticker Pack

  • Toilet Training Record Sheet

  • Toilet Training Toolkit in collaboration with Clear Steps Consultancy
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Waiting for others to come to you?

How to develop conversation and pragmatic skills in autistic children – a personal view.

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Like many people on the autistic spectrum my son has difficulties with conversation and pragmatic skills (the social use of language). For example, if we have visitors over it’s embarrassing when, after an hour or so,  he will say to them “Are you going now?”. It’s not that he’s being rude, it’s just that he’s still learning how to use language appropriately in social situations.

Now that he’s a teenager, keeping up with adolescent conversations is a real struggle as they tend to be fast paced, flitting in and out of topics and replete with metaphor, innuendo and sarcasm.

Pragmatics involves three major communication skills that most of us take for granted:-

  • Using language for different purposes

e.g. greetings, requesting

  • Changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation

e.g. talking differently to a baby than to an adult, speaking differently in a classroom than in a playground

  • Following rules for conversation

e.g. reciprocal conversation, introducing topics of conversation, how to use facial expressions and eye contact

We have been fortunate enough to work with a very skilled speech and language therapist who has introduced the concept of conversation as two-way traffic and has been working with him using a highly individualised intervention programme. Over the last 4 years my son has been taught the anatomy of a conversation – he’s learnt about greetings and conversational openings, how topics develop and how they’re used to keep the conversation going.

friendsHe still needs help in initiating conversation topics so we use a Conversation Topics book where he lists what he knows about an individual – things like their job, hobbies and interests and also what they talked about last time. The aim is to use this visual resource to assist him in generating a topic and enable him to use specific questions to follow up on something previously discussed.

It’s a time-consuming process and will require lots of practice. He will need continued support and opportunities to develop his conversational skills but I believe it will be time well invested. Like every parent, I want my child to enjoy the experience of having friends and close relationships.

The reality is – if you can have a conversation, you can have a relationship.

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North, South, East and West

The first quarter of 2014 has seen us out and about with TomTag again.

We introduced our new information resource packs for professionals which have been really popular. Feedback suggests you are finding these a great way to present TomTag as a useful resource to the families you are working with.

Information pack
Information pack

In February, we braved the high roads and high winds to get to the Autism Networks Conference in Crewe and then headed south tothe Greenmead Equipment Fair in London.

March brought us nearer home with trips to Leeds for the EPIC SEN Martketplace and Starting Point Live, Wakefield’s information Market Place event for families of disabled children/children with additional needs.

We even managed to collect a few pebbles from the beach at South Shields on the way home for the Listen 4 a Change information day!

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We rounded off the month in the Midlands at the fantastic Autism West Midlands Conference where we had the opportunity to speak to some adults with autism and ASD who said they would have loved to have had TomTag when they were younger. Good to know we’re on the right track!

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Autism – understanding and managing anxiety

We all experience stress during our daily lives but for many autistic people the experience of stress can feel very intense and cause severe difficulties.

stress

Like many young people with autism, my son has been experiencing anxiety related to an overly-literal understanding of what it means to follow school rules and when he is faced with an unplanned change both inside and outside the school setting. He has a very narrow view of what it means to be in the correct uniform or be on time for lessons or appointments. When he is feeling stressed he will rock on his feet, pace the floor and ask repetitive questions. In these situations, he finds it difficult to respond to any reassurance.

Together with his Speech and Language therapist  (‘SLT’) and Occupational therapist  (‘OT’) we have been using some strategies to help him. We have taught him that the concept of feeling overwhelmed means either too many feelings all at once or a very strong reaction to a situation. He can now use this word to express how he is feeling. He has been taught a format for identifying the worry and setting out actions to help resolve it. The actions relate to what he can think, say or do to make things better. We’ve taught him the phrase self talk and he is beginning to understand what a trusted adult would do or say to him  in that situation to help and to use this as self talk. We are sharing this work with his teachers and support staff to ensure a consistent approach to talking about worries and solutions.

On the suggestion of my son’s OT we are trialling a tactical breathing programme developed for the military and emergency services to use in times of extreme stress. We wanted to have activities that were discreet and applicable to the classroom environment. Tactical breathing is a great strategy as no one needs to know that he’s doing it and he can use it to prepare for stressful situations as well as once he is feeling stressed.  We’ve incorporated tactical breathing into an anxiety busting resource for him called the 3 O’s- Overwhelmed, OT, OK.

One of the resources we’re using is a simple free app called ’Tactical Breather’ which I’ve downloaded onto his phone so it’s readily to hand for stressful situations. I’m also encouraging him to use his phone to record worries and solutions so that these can be kept and built up to form a ‘library’ of helpful strategies for managing situations.

It is hoped that over time and with continued support in this area he will become more able to self soothe and manage his anxiety. Incidentally, studies have shown that stress levels of mothers of kids with autism are similar to that of combat soldiers. Perhaps I should download that app for myself too!

Recommended products:

  • Back-to-School Self-Talk Prompt Sheet

  • Back-to-School Toolkit

  • Feelings & Emotions Sticker Pack

  • Feelings Tag-O-Meter

  • I Can Do It Learn At Home Kit

  • I Can Do It Manage My Feelings Kit

  • I Can Do It Share How I Feel Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect – Halloween and Bonfire Night Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect – My Vaccination Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect At Christmas & Birthdays Kit

  • I Know What To Expect At Home Kit

  • I Know What To Expect-My Christmas Day Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect-My COVID Test Mini Kit

  • cover image product feelings notebook

    My TomTag Feelings Notebook

  • STICKER SHEET SHOWING 20 WIDGIT SYMBOLS

    Non School Day Routines Sticker Sheet

  • Phoebe’s Green Christmas Kit in collaboration with Embracing Arts & Christmas For Kids

  • Phoebe’s Green Christmas Sticker Pack in collaboration with Embracing Arts & Christmas For Kids

  • Primary Years Classroom Bundle

  • School Morning Routines
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Mumpreneur’s award

Happy new year!

How embarrassing that this is our first blog post of 2014.

We decided that a new year needed a new start so we spent some time doing a spot of refreshing our brand and our website to incorporate our new products and prepare for the direction we see ourselves moving in over the coming year.

Even though the process is not quite finished and there are still some more improvements we need to make to our website, we’re delighted that we have just been given a Bronze Website Award from Mumpreneur UK!

Why not spend a few minutes to take a look around and see what you think.

Bronze_Website_Award