The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Raising and growing up with a child with autism has had its ups and downs: from watching a prized porcelain doll collection being destroyed on the concrete driveway to seeing him walk across a stage and receive an honorary high school diploma. With 21 years and counting, our family has identified six (6) milestones from the use of certain successful approaches, skills, and techniques we have utilized while raising/growing up with a child with autism. Introduction We will diagram the dynamics of our family in order to familiarize the audience with our perspectives of autism and its place in our family structure.

Milestone I. After the Diagnosis: Reality Begins - Our focus will be independence, behavior modification and family adaptation. The basic elements of independence such as dressing and personal hygiene where we were successful will be discussed. We will present the modified behavior plans and techniques we had to put in place and were successful. Also included in this section will be the impacts to the family structure and the adaptation needed by all family members to keep the family functional. -OUTCOME: The audience may gain information on the professional outreach that was necessary, the process time required and a short overview of the information on autism that was available to us in 1989.

Milestone II. Entering the Education System -Our focus will be verbal development, environmental triggers and skill development within the IEP process. With IDEA, our child with autism was able to enter the school system at the age of three. We will map out the basic steps we took in the IEP process. These will include figuring out who the team players would be in the IEP process and the transition of the IEP from the school perceived structure and pattern to an Outcome based IEP. Along with this we will explain and diagram our concept of a parent driven outcome based IEP, ideas to incorporate peer mentoring programs, and establishing a communication system between school and home. We will also include challenges we encountered such as incorporating more visual and functional skills into his educational program in both the classroom and home environment, how we were able to not only overcome these challenges, and how we were able to change them into successes with long term effects. -OUTCOME: The audience may gain insight in to flexibility with goals, IEP's and modifying objectives as needed for positive and successful outcomes.

Milestone III. Childhood to Adolescence - Our focus will be gender awareness, social interactions and work ethics. We will present some of the situations that we were confronted with when the hormonal changes occurred in our child. These will include necessary changes to the IEP and an education version of his home behavior plan to his IEP, Public vs. Private, consistency from home to school/public and back again, and adding the pager and then the cellular telephone number to contact a parent. We will also present some of the oppositions that necessitated peer education and support for sibling interaction and coping techniques, and how utilizing our child's strengths as tools and techniques led to some of our greatest rewards and successes. -OUTCOME: The audience may gain understanding on how to develop a plan for all of the brain-stormed situations that may occur to put safety nets in place to maximize as many positive outcomes as possible.

Milestone IV. Transition from Education to Practical Life Skills and Uses - Our focus will be life skills, community involvement and work skills. We will present the major changes we made with our child's education at home and in school to facilitate a practical outcome. These changes included job skills, youth organizations (I.e. Boy Scouts of America), and the expansion of his entertainment resources. In addition will be accounts of alternative approaches we used in our home to adapt to our child's acquired skills and ideas. -OUTCOME: The audience may learn how to re-define the education and home teams, research community resources and utilize “thinking outside the box”.

Milestone V. Legal Issues at Age 18 - Our focus will be government agency transitions, long term care issues, community supports and legal protection. We will briefly cover the list of legal issues that we were faced with when our child turn the age of 18. These include issues with guardianship, trusts, government assistance, transition from youth to adult programs, and family estate/sibling involvement. Also included will be a list of types of professionals that we went to for assistance with these specific issues. In addition we will relate how we were successful and where we are till working for outcomes in this area. -OUTCOME: The audience will gain information on the processes and time we found were involved to establish these issues.

Milestone VI. Transition from School to Work - Our focus will be job placement, professional job knowledge and independent living. As we are currently in this transition process of changing from the school arena to the work place, we will present some of the obstacles and challenges we have been confronted with up to this time. These include the college education process, having no IEP for legal supports, no children education laws for support, and no requirement for acceptance to a college for someone with just an honorary degree program. Other areas we want to draw attention to include funding for college education and a life beyond poverty for a person with autism, home placement system, long term care options, job development with state programs, entertainment options, and the state funding processes and their changes. -OUTCOME: We would like everyone to learn that “there is no such thing as done.”

Conclusion It takes all the help you can get to bring up a child on the spectrum. At the end of these six milestone, we are now at the beginning of the next ones incorporated in the word ‘adulthood'.

If time allows: Q&A

Learning Objectives: