Monday, May 31, 2010

Autism Portage group

The Autism Portage Support Group will be held on Monday, May 31st, 7pm. Christine Longford, with Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Central RHA will be presenting her session on "Depression and Anxiety in Adolescents with ASD".

Do symptoms of depression and anxiety look different in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders, compared to other teens? What are the main causes of depression and anxiety? What are some of the strategies that can be used to help ease the symptoms? What are the unique challenges and complications?

All parents, caregivers, educators and professionals are welcome to attend this session, at 20 Tupper Street North in Portage

This will be our last Autism Portage support meeting of the season.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Year End Family BBQ


Come and join us for a family BBQ at Stanley Park June 19th from 5:30 to 7:30. Bring your chairs, frisbee's, bug spray, baseball gear, or just hang out on the play structure! Please RSVP at southcentralasd@gmail.com so we know how much to bring and if there are ANY food allergies/sensitivites please let us know!

This will be our wrap up to the year, and then we will start our meetings up in the fall.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Benefits of Occupational Therapy for Autism

People with autism can benefit from occupational therapy, both at home and at school. Autism is a complex developmental disorder. A person who has autism often has trouble communicating and interacting with other people. The person’s interests, activities, and play skills may be very limited.

What’s the role of occupational therapy (OT) in treating autism?
Occupational therapists study human growth and development. They are experts in social, emotional, and physiological effects of illness and injury. This knowledge helps them promote skills for independent living in people with autism.
Occupational therapists work as part of a team that includes parents, teachers, and other professionals. They help set specific goals for the person with autism. These goals often involve social interaction, behavior, and classroom performance.
Occupational therapists can help in two main ways: with evaluation and therapy.

How is occupational therapy useful for evaluation with autism?
The therapist observes children to see if they can do tasks they are expected to do at their ages. These might relate to certain self-help skills, such as getting dressed. Or they might involve knowing how to play a game. Sometimes, it helps to videotape a child during the normal course of the day. This will help the occupational therapist better assess what is needed for care. With the tape, the therapist might learn about the child’s reactions to the environment. For example the therapist might note any of the following:
-attention span and stamina
-transition to new activities
-play skills
-need for personal space
-responses to touch or other types of stimuli
-motor skills such as posture, balance, or manipulation of small objects
-aggression or other types of behaviors
-interactions between the child and caregivers

How does occupational therapy help a person with autism?
Once an occupational therapist has gathered information, he or she can develop a program for your child. There is no single ideal treatment program. But early, structured, individualized care appears to work best.
Occupational therapy may combine a variety of strategies. These can help your child respond better to his or her environment. These OT strategies include:
-physical activities, such as stringing beads or doing puzzles, to help a child develop coordination and body awareness
-play activities to help with interaction and communication
-developmental activities, such as brushing teeth and combing hair
-adaptive strategies, including coping with transitions

What are the benefits of occupational therapy for autism?
The overall goal of occupational therapy is to help the person with autism improve his or her quality of life. This includes life at home and at school. The therapist helps introduce, maintain, and improve skills. That way, people with autism can be as independent as possible.
These are some of the skills occupational therapy may foster:
-daily living skills, such as toilet training, dressing, brushing teeth, and other grooming skills
-fine motor skills required for holding objects while handwriting or cutting with scissors
-gross motor skills used for walking or riding a bike
-sitting, posture, or perceptual skills, such as telling the differences between colors, shapes, and sizes
-visual skills for reading and writing
-play, coping, self-help, problem solving, communication, and social skills
By working on these skills during occupational therapy, a child with autism may also do the following:
-develop peer and adult relationships
-learn how to focus on tasks
-learn how to delay gratification
-express feelings in more appropriate ways
-engage in play with peers
-learn how to self-regulate

What is sensory integration therapy?
You may have heard a lot about sensory integration therapy. That’s because some researchers estimate that eight out of 10 children with autism have problems processing sensory input. For example, they can’t filter out background noise. Other signs of processing issues include:
-problems with balance
-problems with body position in space
-problems with sensitivity to touch such as the feel of certain types of clothing like the seams in socks
With autism, social, behavioral, or attention problems can be partly a result of these sensory challenges. Although more research is needed, OT can help with sensory integration and some of the related behavioral problems. Research suggests sensory integration therapy is less helpful in terms of improving academic performance.
Examples of sensory integration therapy include:
-being brushed or deeply touched and massaged
-compressing elbows and knees
-swinging
-spinning on a scooter
-wearing a weighted vest

How can someone obtain OT services for autism?
You can obtain occupational therapy services either privately or at school. Public law requires schools to provide occupational therapy to those who need it. Private insurance also usually covers OT. Not sure, just ask, it won’t hurt, and besides, if YOU don’t ask, how will you ever know?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

No Child Without

The Canadian MedicAlert® Foundation is a charitable organization which is the leading provider of emergency medical information services linked to customized medical bracelets and necklets. We are pleased to be able to offer MedicAlert memberships to students (from age 4 to their 14th birthday) through the No Child Without® program in select schools. The financial support of the Government of Canada and Lions Clubs allows students to receive the MedicAlert membership for FREE.

Go to their website and see, if your school is participating in this wonderful program. If they are, apply for your FREE MedicAlert® bracelet, sport band or necklet today! If the school is not a part of the program, call them and tell them of this amazing program!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

N.S. autism report calls for 'total care centres'

The Canadian Press

Date: Tuesday May. 4, 2010 8:04 AM ET

HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government should set up a network of regional centres to provide a wide range of care for people living with autism, a team of advisers recommends in a report released Monday.

The eight-member team, which included government officials and autism advocates, submitted 53 recommendations aimed at helping the province deal with the increasing number of people diagnosed with the complex neurological disorder.

Figures from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest the prevalence of autism is on the rise. The centre says rates have soared from one in 2,500 during the 1960s to one in 110 in 2009.

Between January 2009 and November of that same year, the number of school-age children and young adults in Nova Scotia diagnosed with autism rose 22 per cent to 1,350, according to statistics from regional school boards.

Autism is now recognized as one of the most common developmental disorders affecting children. It is now more common than Down syndrome, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy and diabetes combined.

Despite its growing prevalence, a survey of 732 parents, professionals and people with autism suggests Nova Scotia has to provide more help.

The team found that once a diagnosis is given, families often do not receive resources to help them understand the nature of autism, leaving them to seek answers from the Internet or their local school.

"This process is overwhelming for families, who are often still in the grieving process after diagnosis," the report says.

As well, many families reported:

-inadequate services in the areas of psychology, speech-language therapy and occupational therapy.

-limited access to psychologists, unless there is an emergency.

-virtually no support for adult children with autism.

-lengthy wait times for children seeking assessment.

-difficulty finding health professionals who understand patients with autism.

"Families report significant stress in living with and supporting persons with (autism)," the report says. "Although the challenges may change with age, they do not disappear."

The report quoted a parent of an eight-year-old whose story is all too familiar to those with autistic children.

"He is very smart, lovable and affectionate, but his lack of communication skills leaves him frustrated and volatile," the parent said.

"With no means to say what is on his mind, he often resorts to the only thing he can do: tantrums borne of pure frustration. Imagine living in a world where, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make a single person understand your needs."

The survey found that respondents with preschool children with autism said they need more parent training and easier access to early intensive behaviour therapy.

Parents with school-age children with autism said they needed more social and friendship programs and activity programs, such as physical education, art and music.

Adults with autism said they needed access to more employment programs, friendship and recreation programs and post-secondary programs.

To address these challenges, the report stressed that the creation of regional centres is a priority.

"The unique and complex nature of the autism disorder is best served by a 'total care centre' approach," the report says.

The centres would provide access to counselling, speech and occupational therapists, behaviour therapists and psychologists, the report says.

As well, each centre should have a lending library dedicated to autism and an "autism navigator" who would guide families through the process of finding the right help.

There was no indication of how much it would cost to set up such a network, but the report says it could be done using existing facilities and services.

Education Minister Marilyn More said the NDP government is expected to respond to the report in the fall.

"We are committed to helping families in all regions of the province," she said in a statement.

Monday, May 3, 2010

May Meeting

Finding Your Voice: Advocating for Your Child

How can you be an effective advocate for your child?
How can you work more effectively with the school?
What can you do when things are not working in the best interests of your child?

Join us for an evening workshop with Anne Kresta from Community Living Manitoba.
She will help bring clarity to these issues and provide us with resources that you
can use as our child moves through the education system and beyond.

May 4, 2010
7:30pm until 9pm
Boundary Trails Health Centre in the meeting room

Don't Mourn For Us by Jim Sinclair

DON'T MOURN FOR US
by Jim Sinclair


[This article was published in the Autism Network International newsletter, Our Voice, Volume 1, Number 3, 1993. It is an outline of the presentation Jim gave at the 1993 International Conference on Autism in Toronto, and is addressed primarily to parents.]

Parents often report that learning their child is autistic was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them. Non-autistic people see autism as a great tragedy, and parents experience continuing disappointment and grief at all stages of the child's and family's life cycle.

But this grief does not stem from the child's autism in itself. It is grief over the loss of the normal child the parents had hoped and expected to have. Parents' attitudes and expectations, and the discrepancies between what parents expect of children at a particular age and their own child's actual development, cause more stress and anguish than the practical complexities of life with an autistic person.

Some amount of grief is natural as parents adjust to the fact that an event and a relationship they've been looking forward to isn't going to materialize. But this grief over a fantasized normal child needs to be separated from the parents' perceptions of the child they do have: the autistic child who needs the support of adult caretakers and who can form very meaningful relationships with those caretakers if given the opportunity. Continuing focus on the child's autism as a source of grief is damaging for both the parents and the child, and precludes the development of an accepting and authentic relationship between them. For their own sake and for the sake of their children, I urge parents to make radical changes in their perceptions of what autism means.

I invite you to look at our autism, and look at your grief, from our perspective:

Autism is not an appendage

Autism isn't something a person has, or a "shell" that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person--and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not be the same person you started with.

This is important, so take a moment to consider it: Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism.

Therefore, when parents say,

I wish my child did not have autism,

what they're really saying is,

I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.

Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.

Autism is not an impenetrable wall

You try to relate to your autistic child, and the child doesn't respond. He doesn't see you; you can't reach her; there's no getting through. That's the hardest thing to deal with, isn't it? The only thing is, it isn't true.

Look at it again: You try to relate as parent to child, using your own understanding of normal children, your own feelings about parenthood, your own experiences and intuitions about relationships. And the child doesn't respond in any way you can recognize as being part of that system.

That does not mean the child is incapable of relating at all. It only means you're assuming a shared system, a shared understanding of signals and meanings, that the child in fact does not share. It's as if you tried to have an intimate conversation with someone who has no comprehension of your language. Of course the person won't understand what you're talking about, won't respond in the way you expect, and may well find the whole interaction confusing and unpleasant.

It takes more work to communicate with someone whose native language isn't the same as yours. And autism goes deeper than language and culture; autistic people are "foreigners" in any society. You're going to have to give up your assumptions about shared meanings. You're going to have to learn to back up to levels more basic than you've probably thought about before, to translate, and to check to make sure your translations are understood. You're going to have to give up the certainty that comes of being on your own familiar territory, of knowing you're in charge, and let your child teach you a little of her language, guide you a little way into his world.

And the outcome, if you succeed, still will not be a normal parent-child relationship. Your autistic child may learn to talk, may attend regular classes in school, may go to college, drive a car, live independently, have a career--but will never relate to you as other children relate to their parents. Or your autistic child may never speak, may graduate from a self-contained special education classroom to a sheltered activity program or a residential facility, may need lifelong full-time care and supervision--but is not completely beyond your reach. The ways we relate are different. Push for the things your expectations tell you are normal, and you'll find frustration, disappointment, resentment, maybe even rage and hatred. Approach respectfully, without preconceptions, and with openness to learning new things, and you'll find a world you could never have imagined.

Yes, that takes more work than relating to a non-autistic person. But it can be done--unless non-autistic people are far more limited than we are in their capacity to relate. We spend our entire lives doing it. Each of us who does learn to talk to you, each of us who manages to function at all in your society, each of us who manages to reach out and make a connection with you, is operating in alien territory, making contact with alien beings. We spend our entire lives doing this. And then you tell us that we can't relate.

Autism is not death

Granted, autism isn't what most parents expect or look forward to when they anticipate the arrival of a child. What they expect is a child who will be like them, who will share their world and relate to them without requiring intensive on-the-job training in alien contact. Even if their child has some disability other than autism, parents expect to be able to relate to that child on the terms that seem normal to them; and in most cases, even allowing for the limitations of various disabilities, it is possible to form the kind of bond the parents had been looking forward to.

But not when the child is autistic. Much of the grieving parents do is over the non-occurrence of the expected relationship with an expected normal child. This grief is very real, and it needs to be expected and worked through so people can get on with their lives--

but it has nothing to do with autism.

What it comes down to is that you expected something that was tremendously important to you, and you looked forward to it with great joy and excitement, and maybe for a while you thought you actually had it--and then, perhaps gradually, perhaps abruptly, you had to recognize that the thing you looked forward to hasn't happened. It isn't going to happen. No matter how many other, normal children you have, nothing will change the fact that this time, the child you waited and hoped and planned and dreamed for didn't arrive.

This is the same thing that parents experience when a child is stillborn, or when they have their baby to hold for a short time, only to have it die in infancy. It isn't about autism, it's about shattered expectations. I suggest that the best place to address these issues is not in organizations devoted to autism, but in parental bereavement counseling and support groups. In those settings parents learn to come to terms with their loss--not to forget about it, but to let it be in the past, where the grief doesn't hit them in the face every waking moment of their lives. They learn to accept that their child is gone, forever, and won't be coming back. Most importantly, they learn not to take out their grief for the lost child on their surviving children. This is of critical importance when one of those surviving children arrived at t time the child being mourned for died.

You didn't lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn't the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn't be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don't mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we're here waiting for you.

This is what I think autism societies should be about: not mourning for what never was, but exploration of what is. We need you. We need your help and your understanding. Your world is not very open to us, and we won't make it without your strong support. Yes, there is tragedy that comes with autism: not because of what we are, but because of the things that happen to us. Be sad about that, if you want to be sad about something. Better than being sad about it, though, get mad about it--and then do something about it. The tragedy is not that we're here, but that your world has no place for us to be. How can it be otherwise, as long as our own parents are still grieving over having brought us into the world?

Take a look at your autistic child sometime, and take a moment to tell yourself who that child is not. Think to yourself: "This is not my child that I expected and planned for. This is not the child I waited for through all those months of pregnancy and all those hours of labor. This is not the child I made all those plans to share all those experiences with. That child never came. This is not that child." Then go do whatever grieving you have to do--away from the autistic child--and start learning to let go.

After you've started that letting go, come back and look at your autistic child again, and say to yourself: "This is not my child that I expected and planned for. This is an alien child who landed in my life by accident. I don't know who this child is or what it will become. But I know it's a child, stranded in an alien world, without parents of its own kind to care for it. It needs someone to care for it, to teach it, to interpret and to advocate for it. And because this alien child happened to drop into my life, that job is mine if I want it."

If that prospect excites you, then come join us, in strength and determination, in hope and in joy. The adventure of a lifetime is ahead of you.

Jim Sinclair.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Thank you to our Volunteers & Sponsors!

Thank you to all of the sponsors who have donated to our Family Fun Bowling Night and to the Fun Fair & Stick Rodeo. Without your generosity, we never would have been this successful!














-Rite Way Rentals
-Janet Haslam Photography
-Computer Remedies
-Delmar Commodites & Jordan Mills
-Variety Advertising
-Pembina Valley Containers
-Shear Bliss Salon & Day Spa
-Funk's Bakeshop
-GVE
-Brenda Seward
-Terry Keen
-Mazer Group
-Fehrway Feeds & Livestock Equipment
-Margie Hildebrand
-Wink City Signs, Chris Block
-The Charriere Family
-Valley Bowling Lanes
-Gaslight Harley Davidson Sales
-Banman Meats: Cornie & Helen Banman and Jake Wieler
-Janet Hildebrand
-JNF Lowline Cattle
-The Munroe Family
-Red Dog Tack
-Elaine Carter for Stampin' UP!
-Pembina Valley Saddle Company
-Cindy Terwin
-Nancy Pauls
-S. Barron, Simplot

Thank you to the many volunteers who have donated their time from the planning, to the setting up, to helping at the event. To the La Riviere 4-H Beef Club & Manitou Sunset Riders 4-H Club and their parents, thank you! Without YOU, we never would have succeeded.

From all of us at Keen Ridge Equine Center & South Central ASD, thank you!!