They have one line and they just repeat one line. It is a very bizarre sense of autism.

If we remember European history we learned back in high school, we know that when the French talk about the British (or vice versa) it is likely to be disparaging. But did France’s Europe Minister need to include a disability label to make his point? I don’t think so.

Individuals with disabilities experience enough barriers because of societal perceptions. Using disability labels to describe the questionable behaviors of politicians just contributes to these barriers. Let’s keep the use of disability labels out of name-calling.

“Within, I would say, a week, I noticed enormous changes,” Ms. Vaccaro said of (her son) Milo, whose autism impairs his ability to communicate and form social bonds. “More and more changes have happened over the months as their bond has grown. He’s much calmer. He can concentrate for much longer periods of time. It’s almost like a cloud has lifted.”

Dr. Melissa A. Nishawala, clinical director of the autism spectrum service at the Child Study Center at New York University, said she saw “a prominent and noticeable change” in Milo, even though the dog sat quietly in the room. “He started to give me narratives in a way he never did,” she said, adding that most of them were about the dog.

The changes have been so profound that Ms. Vaccaro and Dr. Nishawala are starting to talk about weaning Milo from some of his medication.

We’ve all heard stories about dogs and other animals — whether service and therapy animals or family pets — helping their human companions feel better. Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll have scientific evidence that shows just how much interacting with animals affects typical development and health, and whether human-animal interactions have therapeutic and public-health benefits.

While Easter Seals has been facilitating day programs in the Milwaukee area for many years, we are new to the Kenosha area in terms of providing direct care. Susan Klawien coordinates our new inclusive Adult Day Center in Kenosha, and I am pleased to introduce her as a guest blogger. Susan will share her thoughts on how the program operates and the level of support necessary.

Adults with autism thrive at new inclusive adult day center
by Susan Klawien

Our Kenosha Adult Day Services program is set up in an organized fashion — from a daily schedule of activities, to the room layout. There are places for our participants to receive sensory breaks within the room. We also give our participants the opportunity to select the activities they wish to do. This promotes independence and choice.

Through our collaboration with the YMCA, we have jobs for the participants, such as folding towels and sheets, caring for the indoor plants in the fitness area, and planting seeds in the gardens. They also learn specific activities of daily living skills each day.

Being an inclusive environment at the YMCA helps our participants adapt to surroundings and changes. YMCA patrons and staff have been welcoming in their daily interactions. Children in the YMCA’s after-school, day care, and summer camp programs have been curious, but have also shown respect and understanding.

Communication is a big factor. Some of our participants understand through sign language or verbal cues, others use different methods. Board maker pictures of the daily schedule are on the wall, and we use a dry erase board to list activity options. The options are erased after completion.

Adults with autism can — and do — lead meaningful lives. Easter Seals believes that with proper supports, adults with autism can all live, learn, work and play in their communities. Families living with autism need supports after their loved ones leave the school system. Providers need to prepare for the future strengths, needs, hopes and dreams of those individuals living on the spectrum.

When Gus was little, his elementary school sent him home with a picture-communication-board-type thing for us to use on a trial basis. If Gus touched a picture of a cookie on the board, for example, the board would say “I’d like a snack.” The machine was about the size of a cafeteria tray and was a bit unwieldy. Once we found out how expensive a machine like this can be — a few go for $8,000 to $10,000 — we decided to stick with Gus’ grunting and lip-smacking methods.

So I was interested to hear about a new application that people with autism and other disabilities are using to communicate — Proloquo2Go is an application you can download from Apple’s iTunes onto an iPhone or iPod Touch. The total cost of the app: $149.99.

A story in USA Today describes how a 7-year-old boy with autism uses the iPhone his mother, Leslie Clark, bought for him at a local store.

A month later, JW goes everywhere with the slick touch-screen mp3 player strapped to his arm. It lets him touch icons that voice basic comments or questions, such as, “I want Grandma’s cookies,” or “I’m angry — here’s why.” He uses his “talker” to communicate with everyone …

Penn State doctoral student Samuel Sennott is a co-developer of the app. In the article, Sennott points out that using an iPhone to talk to friends provides a hip, cool way to communicate — especially important to children with autism, who can find it so difficult to try and fit in with their peers.

Using the iPhone and Touch allows developers to democratize a system that has relied on devices that were too expensive or difficult to customize, Sennott says. “I love people being able to get it at Best Buy,” he says. “That’s just a dream.”

Machines that are almost, but not quite, like a person are worse than those that are either completely humanlike or a bit further away,” Simmons says. 

That’s particularly true of robots designed to work with children with autism, who want something decidedly machinelike. Kaspar, for example, a diminutive robot being tested with children with autism in the United Kingdom, has a minimally expressive face and wires sticking out of its neck and wrists to make it clear to the kids that they’re playing with a robot. “We tested another robot that looked like a doll with eyelashes and color on its lips, and the children didn’t like that one as much at first,” says Dautenhahn, who headed the team that created Kaspar. 

Certainly no one would mistake CosmoBot, a 16-inch-tall robot designed by AnthroTronix, an engineering company in Silver Spring, for a person. And that seems to suit Libby, a 6-year-old with autism, just fine. Before being introduced to CosmoBot, Libby couldn’t imitate even the most basic actions. But after several weeks of playing with the robot, she was mirroring its motions as it led her through a Simon-says game of raising her arms, patting her head and clapping. 

“Her mother and the professionals who saw this were in tears,” says Carole Samango-Sprouse, director of the Neurodevelopmental Diagnostic Center for Young Children at George Washington University. “It was incredibly encouraging that the robot, through repetition and predictable behavior, was successful in getting her to perform the motions she had seen adults doing for years.”

The story ends with a conclusion we hear again and again about opportunities (health insurance, education, funding) for people with autism. Children and the elderly get attention, but what about  working-age adults?

“Older children who are autistic or in wheelchairs grow up to be adults with those disabilities. I’m waiting for others to identify those needs so we can analyze how robots can help.”

For children like Alex with autism, social interactions are a struggle. But Freedman is part of a team of researchers at Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Institute that has developed a course to help these kids improve their social skills. The program is called Building Up Development of Socialization, or BUDS.

Alex says he is doing better than he used to since starting the program several months ago.

“I had a perfect week last week,” he tells Freedman. “I was never going into the red zone.” That refers to a number of behaviors that get Alex in trouble.

Alex and several other children with mild autism have been meeting every week with Freedman and autism specialist Elizabeth Stripling. The idea is to teach the social skills that most kids pick up without even thinking about it.

The story follows Alex and another student, Joseph, as they go on field trips and learn to talk and listen to each other. What I liked best about the piece is how it emphasized that when it comes to kids with autism, it’s all about coaching and practice, not just rules.

“One of the problems that kids with autism can run into is that when they’re taught very rigid rules, they only stick to those rules,” Freedman explains. “So we try to help them understand some nuances within interaction.”

If you missed the story, you can hear it online. Check it out!

Yes, autism affects how autistic people socialize. We don’t do it like neurotypicals. But that isn’t the root or sole effect of autism, nor is it even enough for a diagnosis. Having a hard time socially is something many, if not most, of us experience. But many people without autism have a hard time socially, too.

There is no one thing that every autistic has, that distinguishes autism from anything else. Instead, autism is defined by people having several of a set of characteristics – not all the characteristics, but enough to be significant, and enough to distinguish autism from many other neurological differences.
Having just one characteristic (for instance, “social trouble”) is not autism.

The blogger’s web site identifies him as “an autistic adult who wants to see my people succeed and prosper in this world.”

Unfortunately, there are a lot of difficulties we experience, only some of which have anything to do with our actual autism. Many of them deal with the way society sees and treats us.

The site encourages readers to explore the difficulties people with autism experience, and it features resources that might help people with autism overcome some of those difficulties.

Please note that I enjoy being autistic. I am happy to be who I am, and that I consider autism to be a key part of my existence. You will not find self-pity here, nor will you find information on how to cure my kind of person. I hope you stick around long enough to learn why I feel this way!

I did stick around his site for quite a while, and felt rewarded for taking the time.

If any readers are interested, you can try Webwide for free for 30 days by sending an email to trialwebwide@widgit.com.

Please include your name, address, phone number, email address, and organization.

I have tried Webwide myself and know individuals with autism who are able to interpret and understand information more successfully using the symbol supports and added visual cues Webwide provides. It’s a fantastic tool — check it out!

I also happen to be blind.

A computer program called JAWS reads the text on my screen out loud to me. That’s how I’m able to read your comments to the Easter Seals autism blog. People I meet are fascinated with my talking computer -– I suppose anyone can close their eyes and imagine what it is like to be blind, so they take a special interest.

Imagining what it is like to have autism –- and how computers can help people with autism — is not as easy. So I appreciated this blog post explaining how communicating online can help people with autism develop skills they need for everyday interaction.

You see, for people with Autism, it is difficult (if not impossible) to read our society’s unwritten social rules. How do I know when someone is angry? When they are happy? When they are frightened? Most of us, from time to time, and in a given social setting, intentionally or unintentionally, give off mixed signals to the world around us. And most of us, from an early age, learn to decode and understand these signals. People with Autism misinterpret or lack understanding of these signals … The online environment simplifies those emotional states (a smiling face for “happy,” a frown for “unhappy,” etc). For people with Autism, it is a safe way to develop skills they need for everyday interaction without leaving the security of their own computer.

You know, until someone told me what emoticons were, I could not figure out why the heck my talking computer kept shouting out the words “colon right paren” after every funny line in an email message. I’m glad I found this blog post — I mean, who knew those silly smiley faces could be so helpful?

It opens with a story about 27-year-old Amanda Baggs and the popularity of her
YouTube video In My Language.

 
Later, the magazine summarizes the research of Dr. Leo Mottron, famous for his work with a man known in the literature as “E.C.” Mottron attributes E.C.’s savant skills in 3-D drawing to the “atypicalities in perception of the brains of people living with autism.”

In other research, Dr.Mottron noticed that one of his patients, Michelle Dawson, had a
unique ability to find “tiny errors and weak links in logic.” He invited her to collaborate with his research team, and she assisted with scientific analysis last summer. Dawson was the lead author in a published study titled “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence” in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science.
 
It’s great to see autism — and these people who live and work with autism — getting national attention in a magazine like Wired!