December 11, 2009
Tips for a Successful IEP Meeting

By Toni Lapp

If you’re the parent of a student with an autism-spectrum disorder, you have most likely participated in an individual education program (IEP) meeting for your child.

For many families, the annual meeting is a stressful event in which educators converse using unfamiliar acronyms and bewildering jargon, and parents rubber-stamp their signatures to a document that they don’t understand and didn’t have a hand in developing.

It needn’t be that way.

As the legal education decision maker for the student, parents often do not realize the power that they wield.

As a result, parents may fail to fully exercise their influence at these meetings, says Jeanne Holverstott, an Overland Park autism specialist. Sometimes parents just don’t know what they can ask for.
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June 6, 2009
Persistence Pays off When Pursuing Higher Education

By Kate Duffy

Sometimes my students at the college worry about how long it is taking them to get through their course work.
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May 7, 2009
Kate’s Law Defeated, But Supporters Are Not

By Jeff Nessel

Just after our son Elijah was born, my parents sent me one of those Hallmark style books about fathers and sons. You know the kind I mean, the one with the sage advice on how to raise your son using homespun sayings that greeting card companies love: Always play catch if your son asks, never be his best friend, always his father, teach him to respect his mother and he’ll always respect women. Unfortunately they never addressed what to do when you find out your son is on the autism spectrum, because in a Hallmark world autism spectrum disorders don’t exist. (Unless it’s the basis for a Hall of Fame Special.)
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Games to Enhance Turn-Taking, Sportsmanship, Social Skills

By Jeanne Holverstott, M.S.

Q. I read that when Temple Grandin was a young girl, her mother hired a nanny to play turn-taking games with her to improve social skills. What sort of games do you recommend? Are there any that you don’t recommend?

A. After every holiday meal, my family would gather around the dining room table with a game purposefully selected by my mother for this occasion. I remember Taboo, Scattergories, Trivial Pursuit, Outburst. No matter the age of the player, the expectations were the same: follow the rules, win with humility, lose with grace, do your best, and never, ever complain. Games make up the fabric of a childhood and, perhaps, a lifetime, and appropriate game play opens doors to respect, friendship, and fun.

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DEVELOPING TALENTS

Intervene, Intervene, Intervene

By Kate Duffy

A while back, Toni, the SpectrumConnection editor, asked me to write about how far parents should go to help their teens on the spectrum land a job. Since then, several of our Hot Topics parents have shared their kids’ job search stories with me, and I realized there was no easy answer to her question. For the most part, though, their stories revolved around the kids’ inability to accurately read situations, to remember instructions and to multitask to make a deadline. Looking at that list, it sounds like business as usual on the job for most of us — which is why it is so very important that our kids start learning about the world of work as soon as they can.

That’s why the short answer to Toni’s question is this: do what you need to do.

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