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9718
Language and Awareness: Redefining Support
Thursday, July 13, 2017: 2:15 PM-3:30 PM
Room: 103C (Wisconsin Center )
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Parents and professionals will learn how the words they choose and the way they think about autism affects their children’s outcomes and the parent's quality of life. Participants will explore research in disability studies, developmental interventions and mental health to understand how to reshape their approach with autistic children.
When first approaching early intervention with children, parents and professionals turn to evidence-based therapeutic models in an effort to provide the best outcomes. These interventions are meant to provide skills and set goals to ensure children grow to be independent adults. We will look at areas where these practices fall short in ensuring quality of life for the whole family.We will use a disability studies framework to examine the relationship between impairment and deficit as related to autism. We will expand on how our conception of autism impairments and abilities can inform our outlook towards skills acquisition. Specifically, we will look at how our views of autism and the language we use to describe it can affect our expectations and contribute to parental stress.
Then, we will explore how developmental interventions work within a disability studies model of autism. We will look at preliminary research on enhanced quality of life of both parent and child when interventions consider the whole child. We will look at how language can better inform the direction of treatment in adaptive skills as well as supports that can be provided.
Finally, we will talk about using the psychological concepts of mindfulness, positivity, and acceptance to improve the quality of life of parents. We will meld the previous service delivery and disability models with these concepts to increase parental satisfaction.
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will apply lessons from a Disability Studies framework to the way autism care and supports are approached.
- Attendees will learn how developmental interventions ensure the whole child is considered in therapy.
- Attendees will evaluate mental health techniques when applied with developmental and disability awareness to improve quality of life for parents.
Track: Life Stage 1 - Birth to 5
Content Area: Respect and Dignity
Presenter:
Melody Latimer
None
Mrs. Latimer is an autistic self-advocate and mom to two autistic boys. She is a previous employee of a national Autistic advocacy organization. When not parenting her children, she writes extensively about critical life skills adults and children on the spectrum struggle with that are generally overlooked by professionals.