Today’s episode is on the topic of transitioning to adulthood for individuals that are diagnosed with autism. Those that follow autism research will have noticed that much of the research conducted focuses primarily on birth to childhood, but there’s a growing push for research to expand to adulthood and beyond for this specific population. Understanding life course trajectories can help us identify how different outcomes stem from different etiologies and different prevention strategies that would be most appropriate for different subgroups of individuals that are impacted by the autism diagnosis in various ways. Basically, what this means is that autism is a disorder that encompasses a wide spectrum, and in order for us to better understand the appropriate treatment and care for each individual, we need to conduct further research that focuses on more than just the infancy and childhood years. 

A resource I want to point our listeners to is the National Autism Indicators Report. It’s a helpful guide put together by Drexel University to present current research findings and their implications. The specific report I want to point you towards is the report from 2015 that focuses on transitioning individuals into young adulthood. Young adults with autism have a difficult time post high school for all possible outcomes, whether it is work, continuing education, independent living, socializing and participating in the community, and staying physically healthy and safe. To further complicate these difficulties, many of these individuals face adulthood by first stepping off a services cliff. This is a common analogy utilized within the autism community to refer to the transition that individuals diagnosed with ASD go through once they graduate high school. They no longer qualify for the services they’ve had access to since infancy, and these transitions are some of the hardest obstacles that an individual diagnosed with autism and their family have to experience. The National Longitudinal Transition Study conducted in 2012 found that over ⅓ of teens diagnosed with ASD could not navigate to various locations outside the home, or were not allowed to do so. The report also identified that most teens with ASD could perform adaptive tasks, such as feeding and dressing, very well, but some had trouble using the telephone or looking up phone numbers or counting basic change. It’s also important to highlight in terms of social opportunities, individuals with ASD were found to engage in fewer social and recreational activities in middle and high school compared to their peers without an ASD diagnosis. Students with ASD were also found to have decreased levels of participation in sports, clubs, and other lessons/activities, and community service.

Over half of young adults with autism received no vocational or life skills services during their early 20s. It’s also important to note that nearly half of the youth on the autism spectrum were victims of bullying during high school. Over one-quarter of adolescents engaged in some type of wandering behavior in which they impulsively left a supervised situation, increasing their risk of becoming lost and going missing.  Some of these statistics highlight the wide range of needs and accommodations that individuals with ASD will be needing; however, the health care system doesn’t have the resources...]]>Welcome back to season 2 of “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is intended for listeners who are interested in learning and better understanding the autism diagnosis. If you are a new listener to our podcast, welcome to our community! Whether you are a parent, a health care provider, a teacher, a fellow community member, or an aspiring behavior analyst, this podcast is meant to create an ongoing discussion with you the listeners, to better understand all the mysteries of this autism diagnosis and be a resource to one another as we each partake in this journey together. 

Today’s episode is on the topic of transitioning to adulthood for individuals that are diagnosed with autism. Those that follow autism research will have noticed that much of the research conducted focuses primarily on birth to childhood, but there’s a growing push for research to expand to adulthood and beyond for this specific population. Understanding life course trajectories can help us identify how different outcomes stem from different etiologies and different prevention strategies that would be most appropriate for different subgroups of individuals that are impacted by the autism diagnosis in various ways. Basically, what this means is that autism is a disorder that encompasses a wide spectrum, and in order for us to better understand the appropriate treatment and care for each individual, we need to conduct further research that focuses on more than just the infancy and childhood years. 

A resource I want to point our listeners to is the National Autism Indicators Report. It’s a helpful guide put together by Drexel University to present current research findings and their implications. The specific report I want to point you towards is the report from 2015 that focuses on transitioning individuals into young adulthood. Young adults with autism have a difficult time post high school for all possible outcomes, whether it is work, continuing education, independent living, socializing and participating in the community, and staying physically healthy and safe. To further complicate these difficulties, many of these individuals face adulthood by first stepping off a services cliff. This is a common analogy utilized within the autism community to refer to the transition that individuals diagnosed with ASD go through once they graduate high school. They no longer qualify for the services they’ve had access to since infancy, and these transitions are some of the hardest obstacles that an individual diagnosed with autism and their family have to experience. The National Longitudinal Transition Study conducted in 2012 found that over ⅓ of teens diagnosed with ASD could not navigate to various locations outside the home, or were not allowed to do so. The report also identified that most teens with ASD could perform adaptive tasks, such as feeding and dressing, very well, but some had trouble using the telephone or looking up phone numbers or counting basic change. It’s also important to highlight in terms of social opportunities, individuals with ASD were found to engage in fewer social and recreational activities in middle and high school compared to their peers without an ASD diagnosis. Students with ASD were also found to have decreased levels of participation in sports, clubs, and other lessons/activities, and community service.

Over half of young adults with autism received no vocational or life skills services during their early 20s. It’s also important to note that nearly half of the youth on the autism spectrum were victims of bullying during high school. Over one-quarter of adolescents engaged in some type of wandering behavior in which they impulsively left a supervised situation, increasing their risk of becoming lost and going missing.  Some of these statistics highlight the wide range of needs and accommodations that individuals with ASD will be needing; however, the health care system doesn’t have the resources nor the infrastructure to support these individuals that are aging into adulthood. So what do we do? 

As a clinician, one thing that I want to emphasize is that it is NEVER too early to begin planning your child’s future. If your child just got their diagnosis, it’s vital that you have this conversation with their treatment provider to ensure that the goals and skills that are being targeted are appropriate to the goals that you’re setting for your child. But I also want to highlight that if and when your child develops the cognitive skills to talk about their future, include them in this decision process. It’s so easy to get caught up in the chaos of IEP meetings and clinical meetings with your child’s providers, but it’s so important that we consider the voices and opinions of these individuals so that we can help them achieve their definition of a “good quality life.” I also want to note that for parents of children with ASD, begin thinking about conservatorship and what your child’s adulthood might potentially look like. This is an assessment and evaluation that should be conducted every year. I’ve had many previous clients visit this idea and legal process of conservatorship when the child is 16/17 years old. This is a discussion that should be revisited over and over again during the child’s adolescent years. It’s so easy for school districts and providers to pass your child on to the next step, but your role in this whole process is to be your child’s best advocate. Are these goals the most appropriate for your child? Can your child achieve higher standards and goals? Don’t assume that everything the schools and clinics pass on to you as answers is the end-all-be-all. Keep researching and keep asking. Be your child’s biggest advocate and think ahead. 

This concludes our episode for this week. If you have any questions/concerns you’d like to share with us, or if there are any other topics/questions, you’d like for us to cover, please reach out to us via email or on Instagram. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Sunday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

Since posting my very first episode, we’ve grown such a big community here, so I would like to start off this season with a quick recap of who I am, what is autism, and what our next steps are. My name is Amanda. I’m a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and I had been working with clients with Autism for about 8 years. 

Straight out of my undergrad, I started off as a behavior therapist at a large ABA agency. Fast forward a few years, I got a masters degree in ABA and my BCBA license in 2016 and practiced as a clinician and a clinical manager leading a team of about 50 staff members and over 40 families and patients. I’m currently a graduate student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researching and learning more about this autism diagnosis.

Let me clarify that although, I am a BCBA and an aspiring researcher, the intent of this podcast is to share my experiences and my knowledge to help my listeners better understand the Autism diagnosis and where the current research stands, but please note that this is not a means of medical or psychological diagnoses nor recommendations. 

To open up our first episode, let’s talk about the updated prevalence data that was published recently in December 2021. The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in the US is 1 in 44.

But where do these numbers and data exactly come from? If you’ve been following the reporting of new prevalence data, there’s an updated prevalence report for ASD every 2 years. This data is published by CDC’s ADDM Network, which stands for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. The ADDM Network conducts active surveillance of ASD. When the ADDM Network publishes new prevalence data, this is based on the data that is collected from previous years. The 1 in 44 prevalence data is based on the 2018 data, so we wouldn’t know about the current 2021/2022 data till a later date, but one thing we know for sure is that the prevalence of ASD is ongoingly increasing. We started with 1 in 150 back in the 2000 surveillance year. The ongoing question is, why is the prevalence of autism increasing so rapidly? Is it the environment? Is it the food? Is it the changes to the diagnostic criteria? Great question…we don’t know! There are still so many unknowns when it comes to autism but over the years researchers have uncovered so many variables and risk factors when it comes to autism. This season, we’ll be specifically diving into some key findings over the course of the last decade. Let’s break down what each of these findings implies for the future of autism research, treatment, and policy changes. 

If there are any other topics/questions, you’d like for us to cover, please reach out to us via email or on Instagram. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Sunday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in our next episode. 

Today, I wanted to talk about teaching our children about safety...safety on the streets and safety on the internet. We live in such chaotic times where practicing safe habits can never do you and your child any harm. There are danger zones all throughout our communities, and many of our parents have nothing but fear and anxiety for their children. I wanted to talk about some basic strategies to help our parents prepare their children.

First, let’s talk about community dangers. What will my child do when he/she gets lost while we’re out in the community? Will my child know what to do if a stranger with bad intentions approaches my child? How will my child respond when confronted by the police? If you’ve never taught your child any of these skills, I think the majority of our parents listening in are in a situation where they cannot entrust their child to make the right call in these situations, especially for a child that has an autism diagnosis. These are skills that need to be taught and reviewed with your child over and over again. If your child is in any type of treatments, I recommend you bring up these concerns with them immediately. A really good indication of a good treatment provider is that they would and should have already reviewed this topic with you. But if your child is not yet in treatment, I would start with visuals. Print out pictures of different safety signs and review them with your child. Then take them out on community walks/drives to have them identify them. For more complex situations when it comes to identifying dangerous strangers, I would start with the hypotheticals. Teach them strategies in the home by teaching them ways to avoid different strangers and how they could seek help immediately. When you feel like your child may have the basic knowledge, I would embark in what we call the “stranger danger.” Seek out close family/friends that your child would not be able to identify. Ask if this individual if they can pretend to be a stranger and have them probe different questions and information from your child. This will be a great way to see what your child would do in these types of dangerous situations. Also, a recommendation a lot of parents skimp out on, but I would highly insist on is taking a visit to your local police station. Get to know your local law enforcement. I truly hope that you and your child never have to face any dangerous situations that require the law enforcement to get involved, BUT you can never be too safe. Take a trip down to the station and make sure they have a face to your son/daughter. It may help you and your child in any difficult situation. 

Now, let’s talk about one of my favorite topics: the internet. Talking about internet safety is a MUCH newer topic of conversation, but it’s a much more complex skill to teach and navigate through. If your child is on the younger age range and just becoming exposed to games and online platforms such as Youtube, I highly recommend you start with extremely restricted usage. There are online predators on any possible platform you can think of, and I don’t mean to scare any of our parents, but it is EXTREMELY important that you are more aware of the possible dangers in handing your electronics over to your child while being left unsupervised. If your child is younger than 5-6 years old, I would monitor every video they watch and every game they play. Do not let them explore different apps...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

Today, I wanted to talk about teaching our children about safety...safety on the streets and safety on the internet. We live in such chaotic times where practicing safe habits can never do you and your child any harm. There are danger zones all throughout our communities, and many of our parents have nothing but fear and anxiety for their children. I wanted to talk about some basic strategies to help our parents prepare their children.

First, let’s talk about community dangers. What will my child do when he/she gets lost while we’re out in the community? Will my child know what to do if a stranger with bad intentions approaches my child? How will my child respond when confronted by the police? If you’ve never taught your child any of these skills, I think the majority of our parents listening in are in a situation where they cannot entrust their child to make the right call in these situations, especially for a child that has an autism diagnosis. These are skills that need to be taught and reviewed with your child over and over again. If your child is in any type of treatments, I recommend you bring up these concerns with them immediately. A really good indication of a good treatment provider is that they would and should have already reviewed this topic with you. But if your child is not yet in treatment, I would start with visuals. Print out pictures of different safety signs and review them with your child. Then take them out on community walks/drives to have them identify them. For more complex situations when it comes to identifying dangerous strangers, I would start with the hypotheticals. Teach them strategies in the home by teaching them ways to avoid different strangers and how they could seek help immediately. When you feel like your child may have the basic knowledge, I would embark in what we call the “stranger danger.” Seek out close family/friends that your child would not be able to identify. Ask if this individual if they can pretend to be a stranger and have them probe different questions and information from your child. This will be a great way to see what your child would do in these types of dangerous situations. Also, a recommendation a lot of parents skimp out on, but I would highly insist on is taking a visit to your local police station. Get to know your local law enforcement. I truly hope that you and your child never have to face any dangerous situations that require the law enforcement to get involved, BUT you can never be too safe. Take a trip down to the station and make sure they have a face to your son/daughter. It may help you and your child in any difficult situation. 

Now, let’s talk about one of my favorite topics: the internet. Talking about internet safety is a MUCH newer topic of conversation, but it’s a much more complex skill to teach and navigate through. If your child is on the younger age range and just becoming exposed to games and online platforms such as Youtube, I highly recommend you start with extremely restricted usage. There are online predators on any possible platform you can think of, and I don’t mean to scare any of our parents, but it is EXTREMELY important that you are more aware of the possible dangers in handing your electronics over to your child while being left unsupervised. If your child is younger than 5-6 years old, I would monitor every video they watch and every game they play. Do not let them explore different apps and games without your approval. As a child approaches 6 years and older, your restrictions are going to have to be much more complex. Trust me when I tell you that your child is 99.9% more likely to be smarter than you on these electronic devices. We live in a time where a baby younger than 12 months can swipe through apps better than some adults. And let me emphasize...all socials such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok are ALL platforms that need to be restricted. Your child should NOT be able to use the internet/electronics without you knowing. This means all laptops, tablets, phones, and other electronics all need to have passcodes that your child does not have access to. This makes it much harder on you, especially when you’re busy and you just need your kids to be kept busy, but I just want to remind all our parents out there of the risks that your child is exposed to when they’re left unsupervised on their electronics. As your child approaches their teenage years, if they have had a healthy relationship with their electronics and you’ve set very strict rules and boundaries when it comes to electronic usage, the dramatic teenage years will be MUCH easier. The earlier you begin to set these rules and boundaries, the easier it’ll be to protect your child from potential danger. I’ve worked with so many parents of teenagers that began setting these boundaries at a much later age, and let me tell you, the internet is NOT a very gracious nor forgiving place. Not only are we dealing with dangerous predators, but we’re also working through aggressive tantrums of teenagers that are addicted to their phones and tablets. Predators today are much more intelligent and manipulative in their methods. They’re often times much more approachable and friendly than they were in the past, and they don’t have a “predator” sign written all over their forehead. So for all our parents out there, whether your child is diagnosed with autism or not, please make sure that you’re teaching your child how to be a responsible user of the digital world. As someone who has worked with all different teenagers and children, I’ve had my fair share of some internet scares. I’ve also had to work with local law enforcement for some of my internet addicted teenagers. We live in a very tough digital age, where a simple click of a button can easily compromise the safety of your child and your family. I only scratched the surface when it comes to the topic of safety for our children, but if there are specific strategies or topics you’d like to be further review, please reach out to us via email and/or Instagram, and I would love to dive in deeper on these topics. 

Ending: But this concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” We’ve reached our 20th episode! It’s been such an exciting journey getting to this point, and I want to thank our listeners for tuning in across 47 different countries. I’m excited to see the ways that this community will continue to grow and for all the amazing content ahead! I know that digging through 20 different episodes can be pretty time consuming, so I actually uploaded a quick reference guide on Instagram to point you to the appropriate episode for whatever topic you’re wanting to listen to. If there are any other topics/questions, you’d like for us to cover, please reach out to us via email or on Instagram. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 21.

The years of 2020 and 2021 has been quite an eventual time. There have been so many global and cultural issues that will for sure be written in our history books in the years to come. As I was thinking about the next topic of discussion for our podcast, I wanted to talk about an area that many of our families may not realize is a large factor in our children’s lives. The topic of cultural differences. I don’t want to talk about the politics of all these different issues, but I do want to bring to light that your cultural identity as parents does greatly impact the way your child’s ASD diagnosis and treatment services come into play. 

It’s a no-brainer that there has been a vast amount of research conducted on ASD, covering the realm of biomedicine, treatment, healthcare policies; however, an area that needs more research coverage is studying ASD from the perspective of minorities, especially for the AAPI community. There’s been quite a bit of research observing and analyzing the Black and Hispanic community, but I believe that the AAPI community has received very minimal amount of investigation and analysis when it comes to autism. While working with quite a bit of Asian families, and coming from an Asian heritage myself, I’ve come to see that there are some cultural differences in perspectives that can affect the diagnosing and treating of ASD within our children. 

Coming from an Asian heritage I think there are still this level of stigma that comes with children being diagnosed with learning disorders, such as Autism. There is definitely a feeling of failure and shame on the mothers’ end. Fortunately, many Asian countries are starting to realize the growing prevalence of Autism and related disorders; however, I think there’s still quite a bit of shame and embarrassment that comes with this diagnosis for many Asian families today. I think a lot of these mixed emotions along with denial is often times what results in some children being diagnosed at a much later age, but for our Asian American listeners out there, if you suspect that your child may be showing any signs of delayed learning, please make sure you have your child evaluated by a psychologist. With now 1 in 54 children being diagnosed with Autism, this is not a individual issue that needs to be faced with shame and guilt, this is a global issue that needs to be continuously addressed through research and health care interventions. The sooner you can get your child diagnosed, the quicker your son/daughter can get the support they need!

Another area that I want to talk about is what services may look like for your family and your child. When you place your child through various therapy services whether it’s for speech, behaviors, or gross motor concerns, please don’t think this is a “the therapist knows best and will ‘fix’ my child.” GET INVOLVED! Ask questions! Get the training you need to better understand the treatment that’s being provided. Regardless of what treatment your child receives, the purpose of this treatment is for it to be ongoing 24/7 whether the therapist is present or not. This means that you need to be fully informed and trained on what you can do to best support your child when they’re not in therapy sessions. 

If your child is enrolled in school, your treatment providers NEED to be in collaboration with your child’s school teacher. We need to have an ongoing healthy collaboration...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

The years of 2020 and 2021 has been quite an eventual time. There have been so many global and cultural issues that will for sure be written in our history books in the years to come. As I was thinking about the next topic of discussion for our podcast, I wanted to talk about an area that many of our families may not realize is a large factor in our children’s lives. The topic of cultural differences. I don’t want to talk about the politics of all these different issues, but I do want to bring to light that your cultural identity as parents does greatly impact the way your child’s ASD diagnosis and treatment services come into play. 

It’s a no-brainer that there has been a vast amount of research conducted on ASD, covering the realm of biomedicine, treatment, healthcare policies; however, an area that needs more research coverage is studying ASD from the perspective of minorities, especially for the AAPI community. There’s been quite a bit of research observing and analyzing the Black and Hispanic community, but I believe that the AAPI community has received very minimal amount of investigation and analysis when it comes to autism. While working with quite a bit of Asian families, and coming from an Asian heritage myself, I’ve come to see that there are some cultural differences in perspectives that can affect the diagnosing and treating of ASD within our children. 

Coming from an Asian heritage I think there are still this level of stigma that comes with children being diagnosed with learning disorders, such as Autism. There is definitely a feeling of failure and shame on the mothers’ end. Fortunately, many Asian countries are starting to realize the growing prevalence of Autism and related disorders; however, I think there’s still quite a bit of shame and embarrassment that comes with this diagnosis for many Asian families today. I think a lot of these mixed emotions along with denial is often times what results in some children being diagnosed at a much later age, but for our Asian American listeners out there, if you suspect that your child may be showing any signs of delayed learning, please make sure you have your child evaluated by a psychologist. With now 1 in 54 children being diagnosed with Autism, this is not a individual issue that needs to be faced with shame and guilt, this is a global issue that needs to be continuously addressed through research and health care interventions. The sooner you can get your child diagnosed, the quicker your son/daughter can get the support they need!

Another area that I want to talk about is what services may look like for your family and your child. When you place your child through various therapy services whether it’s for speech, behaviors, or gross motor concerns, please don’t think this is a “the therapist knows best and will ‘fix’ my child.” GET INVOLVED! Ask questions! Get the training you need to better understand the treatment that’s being provided. Regardless of what treatment your child receives, the purpose of this treatment is for it to be ongoing 24/7 whether the therapist is present or not. This means that you need to be fully informed and trained on what you can do to best support your child when they’re not in therapy sessions. 

If your child is enrolled in school, your treatment providers NEED to be in collaboration with your child’s school teacher. We need to have an ongoing healthy collaboration of modified work and modified exams. Growing up in an Asian household, my academics has always been my number one priority. This meant that my homework assignments needed to be nothing short of perfect and my weekends were filled with nothing but studying and preparing for upcoming tests...and I think this is a pretty consistent routine across majority of Asian households, but one thing I want to emphasize is that there needs to be flexibility with children that are diagnosed with ASD. Your child’s ability to appropriately express their emotions, understanding social cues, and knowing how to communicate their wants and needs with their friends/families/teachers is going to have to take priority over a homework assignment. I’ve seen countless amount of Asian families come into my clinic with the attitude that their child’s multiplication and division skills were far more important than their child being able to engage in age-appropriate conversations with peers. And in order for us to see success in our children, we’re going to have to closely evaluate our top priorities in our children. 

Regardless of whether you’re from an Asian heritage or not, I think today’s topic could still be very relevant. Whether you’re an educator, a parent, or a fellow community member, it’s important to understand that there are cultural perspectives and tendencies that play a significant role in the diagnosing and treating of a child with autism. For our parents out there, the chaos and the mixed emotions of becoming a parent to a child with autism can be the loudest voice. For some, it may be the embarrassment or the frustration of raising a child that may be “different.” Regardless, I hope that your child finding ways to navigate and communicate with this world becomes your top priority. Seek for help if you haven’t already done so; there are plenty of professionals out there ready to help your family get started. 

Ending: Today’s episode is coming from just 1 perspective and experience. If you’d like to share a story or something that you learned as a teacher, as a parent, or even as an individual with autism, I’d love to hear them. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. But this concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 20. 

I want to use today’s episode as an opportunity for us to have an open dialogue with our listeners who have been impacted by the autism diagnosis. Today I’ll be sharing with you a short snippet of my experience working with children and adults diagnosed with autism and provide you with an opportunity to share yours!

Let me tell you, since 2013 when I first started working as a behavior therapist, it’s been a long journey of learning for me and the learning never ends. When you think you know everything there is to possibly learn, a new learning opportunity arises. And I think that is what’s most important in this whole conversation about autism awareness. No one expects you to know everything there is to this diagnosis. What would encourage and support this community of individuals is for the us, the community, to remain open-minded and curious to learn more about the diagnosis, so that we can help dissipate some of the discrimination towards individuals with learning disabilities.

During the last 8 years of working with children and adults with autism, the biggest feedback I’ve received from friends, relatives, random strangers is “wow! You must be really patient.” And they couldn’t be any further from the truth. I’m definitely not as patient as I would like to be. I don’t like to wait in any sort of line for more than 5 minutes. I don’t like drivers who take their time making a wide right turn instead of using their blinkers to cut closer to the curb. A new year’s resolution that I miserably fail at since birth is “being more patient.” So why and exactly how did I continue working with the autistic community? You see, working with individuals with a learning disability isn’t necessarily about patience...I’ve learned that it’s about urgency and envisioning a bigger future. Patience can only get you to a certain point before you race past your threshold and you completely burn out, and that was one of the first things I learned when I started off as a behavior therapist. Whenever I had a new bruise or a bite mark, or whenever I lost another t-shirt to an aggressive episode, patience without vision only made me exhausted and fearful heading into another day of work. So what do I mean by “urgency” and “vision?” As a BCBA, I learned that a treatment program needs to be approached with urgency. Opportunities to maximize learning are limited. When I see a 2-year old, I get a sense of urgency...urgency to teach this child everything I possibly can to get them at their developmental milestone. The window of learning opportunities only grow narrower every year, and without a sense of urgency, there is no progress. This leads me to the topic of vision. As someone who works closely with families and individuals greatly affected by the autism diagnosis, it’s extremely important that we stay focused on the goals and the bigger picture. I ask parents at the beginning of their child’s treatment to start thinking about what they would like to see their child accomplish. I’ve had parents cautiously tell me that they want to see their child go to college, but to them it feels like wishful thinking. I’ve had a dad come to me and tell me that he just want his son to be able to play a game of catch with him. There are some 16-year-old clients that have told me that they want to own their cafe or their own nail shop. I’ve also had a 17-year-old client tell me that he wanted to become a character...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

I want to use today’s episode as an opportunity for us to have an open dialogue with our listeners who have been impacted by the autism diagnosis. Today I’ll be sharing with you a short snippet of my experience working with children and adults diagnosed with autism and provide you with an opportunity to share yours!

Let me tell you, since 2013 when I first started working as a behavior therapist, it’s been a long journey of learning for me and the learning never ends. When you think you know everything there is to possibly learn, a new learning opportunity arises. And I think that is what’s most important in this whole conversation about autism awareness. No one expects you to know everything there is to this diagnosis. What would encourage and support this community of individuals is for the us, the community, to remain open-minded and curious to learn more about the diagnosis, so that we can help dissipate some of the discrimination towards individuals with learning disabilities.

During the last 8 years of working with children and adults with autism, the biggest feedback I’ve received from friends, relatives, random strangers is “wow! You must be really patient.” And they couldn’t be any further from the truth. I’m definitely not as patient as I would like to be. I don’t like to wait in any sort of line for more than 5 minutes. I don’t like drivers who take their time making a wide right turn instead of using their blinkers to cut closer to the curb. A new year’s resolution that I miserably fail at since birth is “being more patient.” So why and exactly how did I continue working with the autistic community? You see, working with individuals with a learning disability isn’t necessarily about patience...I’ve learned that it’s about urgency and envisioning a bigger future. Patience can only get you to a certain point before you race past your threshold and you completely burn out, and that was one of the first things I learned when I started off as a behavior therapist. Whenever I had a new bruise or a bite mark, or whenever I lost another t-shirt to an aggressive episode, patience without vision only made me exhausted and fearful heading into another day of work. So what do I mean by “urgency” and “vision?” As a BCBA, I learned that a treatment program needs to be approached with urgency. Opportunities to maximize learning are limited. When I see a 2-year old, I get a sense of urgency...urgency to teach this child everything I possibly can to get them at their developmental milestone. The window of learning opportunities only grow narrower every year, and without a sense of urgency, there is no progress. This leads me to the topic of vision. As someone who works closely with families and individuals greatly affected by the autism diagnosis, it’s extremely important that we stay focused on the goals and the bigger picture. I ask parents at the beginning of their child’s treatment to start thinking about what they would like to see their child accomplish. I’ve had parents cautiously tell me that they want to see their child go to college, but to them it feels like wishful thinking. I’ve had a dad come to me and tell me that he just want his son to be able to play a game of catch with him. There are some 16-year-old clients that have told me that they want to own their cafe or their own nail shop. I’ve also had a 17-year-old client tell me that he wanted to become a character designer at Disney. These are all amazing goals and ambitions that parents and clients come to me with. Not one goal was the same, and not one treatment program was the same either. But these dreams and ambitions that seemed so far out of reach for many of our families are what kept them going. Every tedious goal and program that the child had to learn became a stepping stone to their goal. Every meltdown and aggressive episode wasn’t just another obstacle to endure for the day and be “patient with”; it was an opportunity for the parent and the child to learn how to better communicate. From my experience, teaching children with learning disabilities isn’t about patience; it’s about urgency and envisioning something bigger for their future. 

Ending: This was just one short story of my learning experience. One of many, and I’m only one of many people out there that have a voice and a perspective on the topic of autism. If you’d like to share a story or something that you learned as a teacher, as a parent, or even as an individual with autism, I’d love to hear them. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. But this concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 19.

Throughout the last 16 episodes, I’ve covered quite a large range of topics and areas of concerns that many families typically have when their child is first diagnosed with autism. All this information can often times be a bit overwhelming, so in today’s episode, I wanted to quickly review through some recommendations for any parents and/or caretakers that are new to this topic of autism. 

As a clinician, there are a couple BIG recommendations that I can’t help but emphasize.

First, if you’re suspecting that your child may be autistic, have a psychologist see your child IMMEDIATELY. Delaying your child’s evaluation is only delaying the options you may have for your child in the future. Every month is a huge growth spurt opportunity for your infant, and as they grow older that window of opportunity grows narrower. So it’s extremely important that we don’t waste time. Getting an appointment in with a psychologist can be a very long wait, so make sure you do whatever you can to get an appointment in sooner than later. Just like with any medical doctors, there are private clinics and there are also county and/or state-funded clinics (in the state of CA, they’re referred to as regional centers). There is a wide range, and of course with each type there are pros and cons. For private psychologist clinics, you might have to pay out of pocket, dependent on your insurance benefits, but your child’s evaluation should be expected to be clinically very specific and customized to what your child may need. Dependent on their client-base, you may also be able to get an appointment in sooner than a county-funded clinic. The county-funded clinics should provide an evaluation free of charge; however, due to the higher level of need, the wait time might be longer and their evaluation will typically be a template assessment that’s completed. Every state has different resources available, so make sure to do your research on what resources are available for your state. I know we also have quite a bit of international listeners, as well. I’ve only worked with clients within the state of California, so I can’t provide specifics to any out-of-state nor international folks; however, I did leave a link to the ASHA website that provides state insurance mandates for the autism spectrum disorder. This is extremely helpful to review and understand before trying to set up any logistics with your insurance provider and your treatment providers (https://www.asha.org/advocacy/state/states-specific-autism-mandates/). 

Second, do your research. There are so many voices screaming at you in so many directions. What’s most important is that you make the best decision for your child. But ensure that before you make any key important decisions, you do your research to understand what the scientific research has shown. I’ve worked with quite a handful of parents that have paid out of pocket for various treatments that claimed could “cure” autism. I’ve also witnessed families bend over backwards to get their child into a program that claims to be ABA treatment, but after much time, we found out that their methodologies aren’t based on ABA principles. So I just want to reiterate the importance of doing your research and asking various questions and addressing your concerns before signing up for]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

Throughout the last 16 episodes, I’ve covered quite a large range of topics and areas of concerns that many families typically have when their child is first diagnosed with autism. All this information can often times be a bit overwhelming, so in today’s episode, I wanted to quickly review through some recommendations for any parents and/or caretakers that are new to this topic of autism. 

As a clinician, there are a couple BIG recommendations that I can’t help but emphasize.

First, if you’re suspecting that your child may be autistic, have a psychologist see your child IMMEDIATELY. Delaying your child’s evaluation is only delaying the options you may have for your child in the future. Every month is a huge growth spurt opportunity for your infant, and as they grow older that window of opportunity grows narrower. So it’s extremely important that we don’t waste time. Getting an appointment in with a psychologist can be a very long wait, so make sure you do whatever you can to get an appointment in sooner than later. Just like with any medical doctors, there are private clinics and there are also county and/or state-funded clinics (in the state of CA, they’re referred to as regional centers). There is a wide range, and of course with each type there are pros and cons. For private psychologist clinics, you might have to pay out of pocket, dependent on your insurance benefits, but your child’s evaluation should be expected to be clinically very specific and customized to what your child may need. Dependent on their client-base, you may also be able to get an appointment in sooner than a county-funded clinic. The county-funded clinics should provide an evaluation free of charge; however, due to the higher level of need, the wait time might be longer and their evaluation will typically be a template assessment that’s completed. Every state has different resources available, so make sure to do your research on what resources are available for your state. I know we also have quite a bit of international listeners, as well. I’ve only worked with clients within the state of California, so I can’t provide specifics to any out-of-state nor international folks; however, I did leave a link to the ASHA website that provides state insurance mandates for the autism spectrum disorder. This is extremely helpful to review and understand before trying to set up any logistics with your insurance provider and your treatment providers (https://www.asha.org/advocacy/state/states-specific-autism-mandates/). 

Second, do your research. There are so many voices screaming at you in so many directions. What’s most important is that you make the best decision for your child. But ensure that before you make any key important decisions, you do your research to understand what the scientific research has shown. I’ve worked with quite a handful of parents that have paid out of pocket for various treatments that claimed could “cure” autism. I’ve also witnessed families bend over backwards to get their child into a program that claims to be ABA treatment, but after much time, we found out that their methodologies aren’t based on ABA principles. So I just want to reiterate the importance of doing your research and asking various questions and addressing your concerns before signing up for any type of service. 

Third, know that every decision you make is extremely important for your child. I’m not going to add the fluff and tell you that it’s okay and that there’s room for error because, really...there isn’t. Every decision you make is so vital to the success of your child, and that is why I constantly recommend you do your research to really understand the choices you choose into for your child. I can’t imagine the amount of questions and concerns that all our parents are feeling or have felt when they were first presented the autism diagnosis, but if there’s anything to take away from today’s episode, I want you to know that there are so many people out there that want to help you and your child. You’re not in this alone, but you can’t waste time. Every day counts. So for all our parents and caregivers out there that are nervously hoping their child can “grow out” of their autism, I need you to understand that this is a choice that you’re choosing for your child, and the time lost can never be reversed. If any of our listeners are having a difficult time finding resources for their child and/or figuring out their next steps, know that you can always email us or connect with us on our socials.

In the next episode, we’ll be talking about language and some basic strategies you can implement to help your child develop comprehension and increase language, so make sure to come join us next Wednesday!

Ending: If you have concerns/questions about what we talked about in today’s episode, I would LOVE to have the opportunity to answer your questions and help clarify and explain any of the talking points. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. But this concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 18.

In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about mental health conditions in children that have been diagnosed with autism. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210119114358.htm) A new U.S. study published in January earlier this year by the University of British Columbia and AJ Drexel Autism Institute found that nearly 78% of children with autism have at least one mental health condition in comparison to 14.1% of children without autism. Dr. Connor Kerns is an assistant professor and the lead author of this study, and he stated that “for a long time, mental health in kids with autism was neglected because the focus was on autism. There’s much greater awareness now, but we don’t have enough people trained to provide mental health treatments to kids on the autism spectrum. We need to bridge these two systems and the different sets of providers that tend to treat these children.” 

Children with autism are at higher risk of other mental health conditions such as anxiety disorder, depression, behavior conduct problems, ADHD, and more. This study additionally compared the prevalence of mental health conditions in children with ASD to children with intellectual disabilities and children with other on-going chronic conditions that require healthcare attention. They found that mental health conditions were significantly more prevalent in children with autism than in any other groups. Dr. Kerns suggests that “the longer mental health conditions are allowed to exist and worse, the harder they are going to be to treat. It’s much better to catch them early. Right now, we don’t have a great system for doing that.” 

This research study revealed some pretty interesting data and factual information about our population of children with autism. Even during my experience as a clinical manager, over half of my clients came in with other mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders, ADHD, and severe behavior conduct problems. This comes to provide us with another reason as to why our children with autism needs treatment as soon as possible. I’ve encountered quite a large population of parents and advocates that push for neuro-diversity and not treating the autism diagnosis stating that we should seek to “change” our children. Neuro-diversity is definitely something that I strongly believe we need to continue advocating for within our healthcare policies and education systems to provide more learning opportunities for our children; however, leaving the autism diagnosis untreated leaves our children at risk for other mental health conditions that could result in dangerous health risks and safety concerns. The important thing to know is that effective research proven treatments such as ABA does not base their principles upon changing a child. The goal is for us to teach the child life skills that will help promote the children to become more independent in life rather than remaining dependent on their caretakers to provide their daily needs. When we’re looking at shaping the behaviors of our children, we’re not looking to “change their personality.” Rather, we are aiming to provide them functional communication and replacement behaviors for them to continue living life as independent and safely as possible. If you’re interested more about my opinions on ABA and what it can...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about mental health conditions in children that have been diagnosed with autism. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210119114358.htm) A new U.S. study published in January earlier this year by the University of British Columbia and AJ Drexel Autism Institute found that nearly 78% of children with autism have at least one mental health condition in comparison to 14.1% of children without autism. Dr. Connor Kerns is an assistant professor and the lead author of this study, and he stated that “for a long time, mental health in kids with autism was neglected because the focus was on autism. There’s much greater awareness now, but we don’t have enough people trained to provide mental health treatments to kids on the autism spectrum. We need to bridge these two systems and the different sets of providers that tend to treat these children.” 

Children with autism are at higher risk of other mental health conditions such as anxiety disorder, depression, behavior conduct problems, ADHD, and more. This study additionally compared the prevalence of mental health conditions in children with ASD to children with intellectual disabilities and children with other on-going chronic conditions that require healthcare attention. They found that mental health conditions were significantly more prevalent in children with autism than in any other groups. Dr. Kerns suggests that “the longer mental health conditions are allowed to exist and worse, the harder they are going to be to treat. It’s much better to catch them early. Right now, we don’t have a great system for doing that.” 

This research study revealed some pretty interesting data and factual information about our population of children with autism. Even during my experience as a clinical manager, over half of my clients came in with other mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders, ADHD, and severe behavior conduct problems. This comes to provide us with another reason as to why our children with autism needs treatment as soon as possible. I’ve encountered quite a large population of parents and advocates that push for neuro-diversity and not treating the autism diagnosis stating that we should seek to “change” our children. Neuro-diversity is definitely something that I strongly believe we need to continue advocating for within our healthcare policies and education systems to provide more learning opportunities for our children; however, leaving the autism diagnosis untreated leaves our children at risk for other mental health conditions that could result in dangerous health risks and safety concerns. The important thing to know is that effective research proven treatments such as ABA does not base their principles upon changing a child. The goal is for us to teach the child life skills that will help promote the children to become more independent in life rather than remaining dependent on their caretakers to provide their daily needs. When we’re looking at shaping the behaviors of our children, we’re not looking to “change their personality.” Rather, we are aiming to provide them functional communication and replacement behaviors for them to continue living life as independent and safely as possible. If you’re interested more about my opinions on ABA and what it can offer for children diagnosed with autism, I highly recommend you check out episodes 6-9, where I break down the basics of ABA to help you determine if ABA may be the best treatment for your child. 

Ending: If you have concerns/questions about what we talked about in today’s episode, I would LOVE to have the opportunity to answer your questions and help further explain. You can always connect with me via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. But this concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 17. 

In today’s episode, I want to talk about the research behind physical activity with autistic children. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202113843.htm)Now, it may seem like a no-brainer that all children should be engaging in some type of daily physical activity, but surprisingly, the Oregon State University helped find some really interesting data when it comes to our children with autism. This research study was published earlier this year in February 2021 and found that between the ages of 9 to 13 years of age, children showed the biggest drop in active time. In order to help children with autism maintain healthy rates of physical activity, the study suggested that interventions should be targeted especially between the age of 9 to 13 years. 

This study was one of the first to evaluate this issue on a longitudinal scale. The study relied on data collected from families in Ireland between 2007-2016. The children who participated in this study had their evaluations/interviews at the age of 9, 13, and then lastly between the age of 17-18. The study compared 88 children with autism to 88 children without autism over the course of these 9 years to determine how physical activity changed over time, along with patterns on screen time usage. 

The study found no significant difference in screen time between children with autism and children without a diagnosis, but there was a significant difference in the amount of physical activity reported. As someone who has worked with many different families leading various lifestyles, I can see how some of our autistic children drastically decrease in physical activities in their adolescent years. As academics become more demanding and services such as ABA, speech, and/or OT continues to take up all afternoon, there is very limited amount of time to intentionally designate to physical activity. There’s not enough time in a day to go around. Some autistic children even despise being outside. Being out in the sun during the summer is one of their worst nightmares, but with positive association to the outdoors and building a higher tolerance to physical exertion can help a child better tolerate the outdoors. There is always a way to make it work. But during free time, I recommend not just handing off the phone or tablet to your child to buy yourself some time. Yes, when times get tough you need to do what you need to do to make things work. But what I want to focus on is not allowing that to become a daily routine. Our children need to be constantly moving and coming into more frequent contact with their environment outside of the electronics. Be intentional about taking your child outside for a walk around the neighborhood. You prefer to keep things indoors during this pandemic? Totally okay...have them move throughout the house. Incorporate a mini workout routine before dinner. Anything to get your children moving. The physical health created for our children now will determine their health patterns for their future. Let’s not let a child’s autism diagnosis affect their physical health as well. 

The CDC recommends that between the ages 3-5 years, children should be constantly moving and engaging in physical activity all day. Children between the ages of 5-17 should engage in nothing less than an hour...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

In today’s episode, I want to talk about the research behind physical activity with autistic children. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202113843.htm)Now, it may seem like a no-brainer that all children should be engaging in some type of daily physical activity, but surprisingly, the Oregon State University helped find some really interesting data when it comes to our children with autism. This research study was published earlier this year in February 2021 and found that between the ages of 9 to 13 years of age, children showed the biggest drop in active time. In order to help children with autism maintain healthy rates of physical activity, the study suggested that interventions should be targeted especially between the age of 9 to 13 years. 

This study was one of the first to evaluate this issue on a longitudinal scale. The study relied on data collected from families in Ireland between 2007-2016. The children who participated in this study had their evaluations/interviews at the age of 9, 13, and then lastly between the age of 17-18. The study compared 88 children with autism to 88 children without autism over the course of these 9 years to determine how physical activity changed over time, along with patterns on screen time usage. 

The study found no significant difference in screen time between children with autism and children without a diagnosis, but there was a significant difference in the amount of physical activity reported. As someone who has worked with many different families leading various lifestyles, I can see how some of our autistic children drastically decrease in physical activities in their adolescent years. As academics become more demanding and services such as ABA, speech, and/or OT continues to take up all afternoon, there is very limited amount of time to intentionally designate to physical activity. There’s not enough time in a day to go around. Some autistic children even despise being outside. Being out in the sun during the summer is one of their worst nightmares, but with positive association to the outdoors and building a higher tolerance to physical exertion can help a child better tolerate the outdoors. There is always a way to make it work. But during free time, I recommend not just handing off the phone or tablet to your child to buy yourself some time. Yes, when times get tough you need to do what you need to do to make things work. But what I want to focus on is not allowing that to become a daily routine. Our children need to be constantly moving and coming into more frequent contact with their environment outside of the electronics. Be intentional about taking your child outside for a walk around the neighborhood. You prefer to keep things indoors during this pandemic? Totally okay...have them move throughout the house. Incorporate a mini workout routine before dinner. Anything to get your children moving. The physical health created for our children now will determine their health patterns for their future. Let’s not let a child’s autism diagnosis affect their physical health as well. 

The CDC recommends that between the ages 3-5 years, children should be constantly moving and engaging in physical activity all day. Children between the ages of 5-17 should engage in nothing less than an hour of moderate-vigorous physical activity. As a BCBA and clinical programmer, I enjoy making some of my programs/lessons more physically active than trying to teach at a desk. Any lesson can be turned into a game, and any child can learn so much more being outdoors than being stuck indoors all day, especially during COVID times. So if you’re a parent, a BCBA, a behavior technician, a teacher, I highly recommend that you take a look at your child and determine how much physical activity can be incorporated into his/her daily activities to encourage more physical movement and healthier living in their many years ahead. If you’d like to review the research study that we discussed on today’s episode, the article will be posted on our Facebook page. 

But I’d love to hear from you on how you’re keeping your child physically active during this pandemic. With many states still enforcing remote learning and social distancing, how are you balancing the amount of time your child is on screen versus physically moving? Are there any fun activities or ideas that you’d like to share with the group?

Ending: This concludes another episode here at “What the Autism?!” But if you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover in future episodes, or you’d like to connect with us on today’s topic, please reach out to us through our Facebook page and Instagram @whattheautism or via email at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 16.

During the last couple of episodes, I’ve been pushing hard on early intervention and getting your child assessed as soon as you notice any possible signs of an autism diagnosis. But today, I wanted to talk about the flip side and society’s role in all of this. What is our responsibility as fellow community members? In what ways can we fight for more autism awareness and promote inclusivity within our education system and within our community places?

There was a research study (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210208085441.htm) published in January 2021 that investigates whether reducing biases about the autism diagnosis would help facilitate and promote social inclusion. Individuals with autism experience different struggles. Movies/tv shows have boxed individuals with autism as one specific stereotype...typically they were white males that are socially awkward but intellectually gifted and brilliant. While this may be true for some, this is DEFINITELY not true across all. The autism diagnosis affects every individual in a different way. The variance across skill sets, communication styles, behaviors are all quite broad. There is a common quote that gets tossed around within this field and that is “if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.” 

In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, Dr. Desiree Jones led a study where 238 non-autistic adults were split into 3 groups: the first group completed an autism acceptance training that focused on factual information and engaging first-person narratives, the second group completed a general mental health training not mentioning autism, and the last group had no-training which served as the control group. The participants then responded to various surveys that assessed their knowledge on autism, the stigma, and their impressions of autistic adults, and completed a novel implicit association task about autism. 

The study found that the participants in the autism acceptance training condition reported more positive impressions of autistic adults, demonstrated fewer misconceptions and lower stigma about autism, endorsed higher expectations of autistic abilities, and expressed greater social interest. These findings suggest that the autism acceptance training program increased autism knowledge and familiarity among non-autistic people, which resulted in reduced explicit biases towards the autism diagnosis.

One of the co-authors of this research study, stated that "it's not easy to be autistic in a predominantly non-autistic world, and making the social world a bit more accommodating and welcoming to autistic differences could go a long way toward improving personal and professional outcomes for autistic people.” So this comes to the question of what are YOU doing to better understand the autism community and to stay informed. As the prevalence rate of autism continues to spike, more and more children in our education system are needing special education services. As a professional that’s worked with a wide spectrum of this autism diagnosis, the hardest part of my job is working through a treatment plan out in the community or in school settings and having strangers and other children stare at and judge the child and parent like spectators on reality tv. Even with the...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

During the last couple of episodes, I’ve been pushing hard on early intervention and getting your child assessed as soon as you notice any possible signs of an autism diagnosis. But today, I wanted to talk about the flip side and society’s role in all of this. What is our responsibility as fellow community members? In what ways can we fight for more autism awareness and promote inclusivity within our education system and within our community places?

There was a research study (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210208085441.htm) published in January 2021 that investigates whether reducing biases about the autism diagnosis would help facilitate and promote social inclusion. Individuals with autism experience different struggles. Movies/tv shows have boxed individuals with autism as one specific stereotype...typically they were white males that are socially awkward but intellectually gifted and brilliant. While this may be true for some, this is DEFINITELY not true across all. The autism diagnosis affects every individual in a different way. The variance across skill sets, communication styles, behaviors are all quite broad. There is a common quote that gets tossed around within this field and that is “if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.” 

In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, Dr. Desiree Jones led a study where 238 non-autistic adults were split into 3 groups: the first group completed an autism acceptance training that focused on factual information and engaging first-person narratives, the second group completed a general mental health training not mentioning autism, and the last group had no-training which served as the control group. The participants then responded to various surveys that assessed their knowledge on autism, the stigma, and their impressions of autistic adults, and completed a novel implicit association task about autism. 

The study found that the participants in the autism acceptance training condition reported more positive impressions of autistic adults, demonstrated fewer misconceptions and lower stigma about autism, endorsed higher expectations of autistic abilities, and expressed greater social interest. These findings suggest that the autism acceptance training program increased autism knowledge and familiarity among non-autistic people, which resulted in reduced explicit biases towards the autism diagnosis.

One of the co-authors of this research study, stated that "it's not easy to be autistic in a predominantly non-autistic world, and making the social world a bit more accommodating and welcoming to autistic differences could go a long way toward improving personal and professional outcomes for autistic people.” So this comes to the question of what are YOU doing to better understand the autism community and to stay informed. As the prevalence rate of autism continues to spike, more and more children in our education system are needing special education services. As a professional that’s worked with a wide spectrum of this autism diagnosis, the hardest part of my job is working through a treatment plan out in the community or in school settings and having strangers and other children stare at and judge the child and parent like spectators on reality tv. Even with the kindest of intentions, this type of behavior can often times make families feel like they’re being pushed into a corner that society has labeled with negative connotation as “different.” 

Your child may be the one in fifty-four children that are being diagnosed with autism, or your child may be the seat partner of a peer that is autistic. Regardless of where you and your child stand on this spectrum, I urge everyone to take some time to get to understand more about autism. On my podcast channel, I’ve reviewed the basics of the autism diagnosis so if you haven’t had the chance to hear my previous episodes, I recommend you take a few minutes to go through and listen to some key important things to know about autism, the proper treatment, and how you can contribute to being a part of an inclusive community. Let’s pave the way for our future generation of children to be a part of an inclusive community and education system. 

Ending: If you’d like to review the research study that we discussed on today’s episode, the article will be posted on our Facebook page. But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism. If you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover in future episodes, or you’d like to connect with me on today’s topic, please reach out to us through any platform. Our Facebook page and Instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 15.

Today, I wanted to talk about developmental milestones and screenings. I’ve received quite a bit of questions about the process of getting their child screened and monitored for developmental delays and the developmental milestones that is expected for their child. For many of our parents, coming home with a newborn child can be extremely overwhelming. The list of things that need to be taken care of is quite extensive and I hope that today’s episode can help breakdown all the information out there into simple steps in the area of developmental milestones. As always, all resources, articles, research studies will be posted on our facebook page @whattheautism, but if you’d like access to any of these resources via email, feel free to email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. 

But let’s talk about developmental milestones. How your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves provides us with important information about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age, and often times these milestones can direct us to the appropriate support your child might be needing. I’ll be including on our Facebook page the link to the CDC’s list of milestones that are expected as early as 2 months and as late as 5 years. For each age, the CDC posted a simple and easy checklist of skills that should be exhibited by your child. It covers social/emotional skills, language/communication skills, physical development and motor skills, and cognitive skills. If you prefer a much easier way to track your child’s skillset through a checklist, the CDC released an app for all smartphones. The app is called CDC’s Milestone Tracker and is available on your app store for any iOS and Android systems. But like I mentioned I will be posting the link to the CDC website for more information on these developmental milestones, if you have limited access to downloading this app to your smartphone. 

Link for list of basic developmental milestones: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html

Screening versus monitoring checklist/chart (in English and Spanish) https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/Dev-Mon-and-Screen-English-and-Spanish-P.pdf

CDC Child Milestone’s App: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones-app.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends developmental and behavioral screening for all children during their visit with their pediatrician or physician at these ages:

• 9 months
• 18 months
• 30 months

In addition, AAP recommends that all children be screened specifically for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their visits at:

•  18 months
•  24 months

If your child is at higher risk for developmental problems due to preterm birth, low birthweight,...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “What the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

Today, I wanted to talk about developmental milestones and screenings. I’ve received quite a bit of questions about the process of getting their child screened and monitored for developmental delays and the developmental milestones that is expected for their child. For many of our parents, coming home with a newborn child can be extremely overwhelming. The list of things that need to be taken care of is quite extensive and I hope that today’s episode can help breakdown all the information out there into simple steps in the area of developmental milestones. As always, all resources, articles, research studies will be posted on our facebook page @whattheautism, but if you’d like access to any of these resources via email, feel free to email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. 

But let’s talk about developmental milestones. How your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves provides us with important information about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age, and often times these milestones can direct us to the appropriate support your child might be needing. I’ll be including on our Facebook page the link to the CDC’s list of milestones that are expected as early as 2 months and as late as 5 years. For each age, the CDC posted a simple and easy checklist of skills that should be exhibited by your child. It covers social/emotional skills, language/communication skills, physical development and motor skills, and cognitive skills. If you prefer a much easier way to track your child’s skillset through a checklist, the CDC released an app for all smartphones. The app is called CDC’s Milestone Tracker and is available on your app store for any iOS and Android systems. But like I mentioned I will be posting the link to the CDC website for more information on these developmental milestones, if you have limited access to downloading this app to your smartphone. 

Link for list of basic developmental milestones: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html

Screening versus monitoring checklist/chart (in English and Spanish) https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/Dev-Mon-and-Screen-English-and-Spanish-P.pdf

CDC Child Milestone’s App: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones-app.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends developmental and behavioral screening for all children during their visit with their pediatrician or physician at these ages:

• 9 months
• 18 months
• 30 months

In addition, AAP recommends that all children be screened specifically for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their visits at:

•  18 months
•  24 months

If your child is at higher risk for developmental problems due to preterm birth, low birthweight, environmental risks like lead exposure, or other factors, your healthcare provider may also discuss additional screening. If a child has an existing long-lasting health problem or a diagnosed condition, the child should have developmental monitoring and screening in all areas of development.  If your child’s healthcare provider does not periodically check your child with a developmental screening test, I recommend that you ask that it be done so that you have a clear idea of how your child is developing. 

These regular screenings and assessments with your child’s physician are meant purely to ensure that your child is meeting his/her developmental milestone and if they aren’t, they’re doing everything they can to provide you with the resources and services that your child will be needing sooner than later. Remember, the key is early intervention.

Statewide-Tiered System for Screening and Diagnosis of ASD (Indiana):  https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e20193876

But a common hurdle that comes up with these screenings is the lack of consistency in practice across doctors across states and across countries, so I wanted to review with you a research article about a statewide tiered system that the state of Indiana implemented for screening and diagnosing ASD in children. Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be detected when a child is 18-24 months old, the current average age of diagnosis is about 4 to 5 years. Limitations in access to timely ASD diagnostic evaluations delay the start of interventions proven by research to improve developmental outcomes. This article emphasizes how developing and testing streamlined methods for ASD diagnosis is a public health and research priority. The Early Autism Evaluation (EAE) Hub system is a statewide initiative led by the state of Indiana for ASD screening and diagnosis in the primary care setting. The primary goal of this system was to provide developmental screening technical assistance to primary care, community outreach, and training primary care clinicians in ASD evaluation. From the years 2012 to 2018, over 2,000 children were evaluated, and 33% of children received a diagnosis of ASD. The findings from this study suggest that developing a tiered system of developmental screening and early ASD evaluation is feasible even in a geographic region facing health care access problems. Through targeted delivery of education, outreach, and intensive practice-based training, large numbers of young children at risk for ASD can be identified, referred, and evaluated in the local primary care setting. The study suggests that the EAE Hub model has strong potential to be disseminated to other states facing similar hurdles in the neuro-developmental health care system. 

 But I think studies like this bring up a healthy discussion of whether streamlining methods for ASD diagnosis would be beneficial across the United States and possibly on a global level. Would this assist in better understanding the prevalence rate of ASD on a global level? Would this help in educating parents and communities, across developed and developing countries, about the autism diagnosis? I would love to hear your opinions! As always, I’ll be linking you guys to the research article on our Facebook page, but you are more than welcome to email us for a copy of this article if you do not have access to a Facebook or Instagram account. 

Ending: But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism. If you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover in future episodes, or you’d like to connect with me on today’s topic, please reach out to us through any platform. Our Facebook page and Instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 14. 

Research Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5392775/ 

In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, we’ll be talking about self injurious behaviors and exactly how prevalent this behavior is within children with autism. In 2017, a handful of researchers conducted a population-based study that reviewed a large sample of children with autism to gauge exactly how prevalent Self-injurious behaviors are within the autism population. 

Self-injurious behaviors (SIB) are quite diverse in its appearance. Common types of SIB in ASD include-head banging, hair pulling, arm biting, eye poking, and skin scratching. Often times these types of behaviors are established because of a child’s inability to communicate their thoughts and emotions. They have learned that when they engage in self injurious behaviors, they get an immediate response from their caretakers, which eventually leads them to what they want, whether that may be attention, release of built up frustration, and/or access to a particular food/object/person. Regardless of the function of the behavior, self injurious behaviors create a huge health and safety concern for families, schools, and within community members. As always, I’ll be including the research article on our Facebook page for you to follow along. The research article shows a table that breaks down the findings from this study to help you better understand the results of what these researchers found.

Analyzing the findings of this research study, they found that the prevalence of SIB in a population-based study of ASD averaged 27.7 % over three surveillance years. Due to various limitations and sampling differences in this study, there are speculations that this 27.7% may be an under estimation of the prevalence rate of self injurious behaviors amongst children with ASD. However, regardless, these results suggest that self injurious behaviors within ASD are common and deserve more clinical and research attention in order to further advance the level of awareness and treatment strategies. 

This study revealed that SIB are a common phenotypic characteristic among children with ASD and that its prevalence is higher than has been reported in children with other developmental disabilities. SIB are dangerous behaviors but it’s also important to note the amount of impact that it carries within the immediate family and community circles. SIB deserve more clinical and research attention but of course, this requires time, effort, and financial means. In conclusion, SIB in ASD is an important public health concern that affects many children. Future research is warranted to better understand its potential risk factors and consequences, in order to develop effective and more targeted treatment strategies.

Does your child exhibit SIB or SIB-like behaviors? Does your child struggle in communicating their thoughts, feelings, wants and needs? This may some times result in them hitting their head or banging their head against the wall. Some parents I have worked with in the past have also reported that their child at 18 months used to cry and repeatedly bang their head against the pillow or against their parents’ stomachs. Now, although this doesn’t warrant huge safety/health risks as the pillows and stomachs have cushion, but how...]]>Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “What the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

Research Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5392775/ 

In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, we’ll be talking about self injurious behaviors and exactly how prevalent this behavior is within children with autism. In 2017, a handful of researchers conducted a population-based study that reviewed a large sample of children with autism to gauge exactly how prevalent Self-injurious behaviors are within the autism population. 

Self-injurious behaviors (SIB) are quite diverse in its appearance. Common types of SIB in ASD include-head banging, hair pulling, arm biting, eye poking, and skin scratching. Often times these types of behaviors are established because of a child’s inability to communicate their thoughts and emotions. They have learned that when they engage in self injurious behaviors, they get an immediate response from their caretakers, which eventually leads them to what they want, whether that may be attention, release of built up frustration, and/or access to a particular food/object/person. Regardless of the function of the behavior, self injurious behaviors create a huge health and safety concern for families, schools, and within community members. As always, I’ll be including the research article on our Facebook page for you to follow along. The research article shows a table that breaks down the findings from this study to help you better understand the results of what these researchers found.

Analyzing the findings of this research study, they found that the prevalence of SIB in a population-based study of ASD averaged 27.7 % over three surveillance years. Due to various limitations and sampling differences in this study, there are speculations that this 27.7% may be an under estimation of the prevalence rate of self injurious behaviors amongst children with ASD. However, regardless, these results suggest that self injurious behaviors within ASD are common and deserve more clinical and research attention in order to further advance the level of awareness and treatment strategies. 

This study revealed that SIB are a common phenotypic characteristic among children with ASD and that its prevalence is higher than has been reported in children with other developmental disabilities. SIB are dangerous behaviors but it’s also important to note the amount of impact that it carries within the immediate family and community circles. SIB deserve more clinical and research attention but of course, this requires time, effort, and financial means. In conclusion, SIB in ASD is an important public health concern that affects many children. Future research is warranted to better understand its potential risk factors and consequences, in order to develop effective and more targeted treatment strategies.

Does your child exhibit SIB or SIB-like behaviors? Does your child struggle in communicating their thoughts, feelings, wants and needs? This may some times result in them hitting their head or banging their head against the wall. Some parents I have worked with in the past have also reported that their child at 18 months used to cry and repeatedly bang their head against the pillow or against their parents’ stomachs. Now, although this doesn’t warrant huge safety/health risks as the pillows and stomachs have cushion, but how will these behaviors manifest as the child gets older and further behavioral patterns are established? Self injurious behaviors raise public health and safety concerns that impact not only the child that exhibits the behaviors, but also the family and community members around them. 

For children that are more impacted in their autism diagnosis and show signs of self injurious behaviors, treatment is extremely important. Self injurious behaviors are NOT typical. Any signs that your child is beginning to engage in these types of behaviors warrants you to seek out professional help immediately. In previous episodes, I talk about ABA and its effectiveness in helping those impacted by the autism diagnosis to better communicate and navigate the world around them. However, whether you decide to get your child ABA treatment or not, what’s most important is that your child receives a confirmed diagnosis by a psychologist or doctor, you seek out the appropriate specialists for recommendations, and you remain vigilant about your child coming into contact with research-backed treatment. But if you have any questions from today’s episode in regards to your child or about the research study reviewed, feel free to email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. 

Ending: But this concludes another episode here at "What the AUTISM?!" If you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover, please reach out to us through any platform. Our facebook page and instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel and I’ll see you in episode 13.

Today I wanted to talk about a research article that was published back in May 2020. It’s titled “Adherence to Screening and Referral Guidelines for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Toddlers in Pediatric Primary Care.” If you would like to follow along while listening to the podcast or if you’d like to review this study at another time, I have left a PDF file of this research study on our Facebook page. 

But the objective of this study was to identify and study the various factors that are associated with doctors/physicians completing a follow-up interview and referring families to the appropriate next step in services after the initial screening for autism. The American Academy of Pediatrics (also referred to as AAP) recommends that all young children are screened for the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their regular check ups with their pediatrician. But a common concern that has been discussed is the disparities in the ASD diagnosis and intervention across children of minority. This research study goes into depth on some potential contributors and some possible things to consider when we discuss the diagnosing of autism and the immediate next steps taken by physicians in their recommendations and referrals.

Prior studies that examined referrals after developmental screening suggest that patient characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender may influence physicians’ responses. One specific study which I’ll also include on our facebook page, found that a girl with language delays was 60% more likely than a boy with similar symptoms to audiology. Among a sample of very-low-birthweight infants who are eligible for early intervention services, referrals were much lower among children of black mothers, mothers without private insurance, or from towns with higher poverty rates. 

So in today’s research study, the researchers examined a group of children with positive results in their screening to estimate rates of completion of follow up interviews and the physicians’ adherence to AAP guidelines in referring patients to early intervention services, audiology, and/or for an ASD evaluation immediately. In this particular study, the screening that was provided was a M-CHAT-F which is a parent-report tool that involves 23 "yes/no" questions about a child’s behaviors to determine their risk of ASD. There is also a SWYC Milestones questionnaires that includes 10 age-specific questions to evaluate children’s attainment of motor, cognitive, and language skills. As part of routine care, caregivers completed both of these questionnaires and screening measures on an electronic tablet or through an electronic patient portal prior to their visitation with their physician. I won’t dig too far into the specific methods and measurements, but I did want to review the results of this study with you for us to have some type of dialogue of what this could mean for your child if you are questioning potential diagnosis of autism. 

The results of this study found that there are multiple factors associated with increased likelihood of follow-up interviews being completed. The research study includes very easy charts and tables that break down the various factors, such as ethnicities, genders, etc and the percentage of each population group that are provided with follow up interviews.

From this study, researchers found that despite a high rate of screening across pediatric primary care,]]>Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

Today I wanted to talk about a research article that was published back in May 2020. It’s titled “Adherence to Screening and Referral Guidelines for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Toddlers in Pediatric Primary Care.” If you would like to follow along while listening to the podcast or if you’d like to review this study at another time, I have left a PDF file of this research study on our Facebook page. 

But the objective of this study was to identify and study the various factors that are associated with doctors/physicians completing a follow-up interview and referring families to the appropriate next step in services after the initial screening for autism. The American Academy of Pediatrics (also referred to as AAP) recommends that all young children are screened for the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their regular check ups with their pediatrician. But a common concern that has been discussed is the disparities in the ASD diagnosis and intervention across children of minority. This research study goes into depth on some potential contributors and some possible things to consider when we discuss the diagnosing of autism and the immediate next steps taken by physicians in their recommendations and referrals.

Prior studies that examined referrals after developmental screening suggest that patient characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender may influence physicians’ responses. One specific study which I’ll also include on our facebook page, found that a girl with language delays was 60% more likely than a boy with similar symptoms to audiology. Among a sample of very-low-birthweight infants who are eligible for early intervention services, referrals were much lower among children of black mothers, mothers without private insurance, or from towns with higher poverty rates. 

So in today’s research study, the researchers examined a group of children with positive results in their screening to estimate rates of completion of follow up interviews and the physicians’ adherence to AAP guidelines in referring patients to early intervention services, audiology, and/or for an ASD evaluation immediately. In this particular study, the screening that was provided was a M-CHAT-F which is a parent-report tool that involves 23 "yes/no" questions about a child’s behaviors to determine their risk of ASD. There is also a SWYC Milestones questionnaires that includes 10 age-specific questions to evaluate children’s attainment of motor, cognitive, and language skills. As part of routine care, caregivers completed both of these questionnaires and screening measures on an electronic tablet or through an electronic patient portal prior to their visitation with their physician. I won’t dig too far into the specific methods and measurements, but I did want to review the results of this study with you for us to have some type of dialogue of what this could mean for your child if you are questioning potential diagnosis of autism. 

The results of this study found that there are multiple factors associated with increased likelihood of follow-up interviews being completed. The research study includes very easy charts and tables that break down the various factors, such as ethnicities, genders, etc and the percentage of each population group that are provided with follow up interviews.

From this study, researchers found that despite a high rate of screening across pediatric primary care, the level of adherence to guidelines for completing the follow-up interview and immediate referral once a child tests positive on the M-CHAT-F screening could be improved. Also, an important area to note is that when high-risk patients were provided follow-up interviews, various studies have found a substantial percentage of these patients to be formally diagnosed with ASD. So this comes to show how important these follow-up interviews are in getting a child diagnosed with ASD and referred to services immediately. 

The various results of this study show that clinical judgment plays a role in who received follow-up interviews post the initial screening. While only 10% of children who were administered the follow-up interview continued to screen positive for autism, we cannot assume the same proportion would hold true for children who were not administered the follow-up interview. 

With all these various results and comparisons across ethnicity, gender, insurance types, etc, it’s safe to say that the level of follow-up post any initial screenings for ASD completed by physicians reveal a level of bias and discrepancy. Now what does this mean for you the parents?

I would like to urge all of our parents as you are preparing yourself and your child for visitations with the pediatric doctor/physician, that you are understanding this level of bias. The initial screening method is a way for the doctor to determine the level of risk that your child may be facing for the autism diagnosis. Choose into follow-ups and ask questions about recommendations about early intervention services and audiology services. If you’re having even a small percentage of suspicion that your child may have autism, get a formal diagnostic evaluation completed. Pediatric physicians are all extremely knowledgable in what your child may need to be most successful in their development; however, this study that we reviewed today reveals that clinical judgment of these physicians play a key role in early discovery and screening of ASD. It’s always important to question and be informed as you meet with your child’s physician. 

Ending: But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism. If you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover, please reach out to us through any platform. Our facebook page and instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

But If you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel and I’ll see you in episode 12.

To celebrate our 10th episode here, today we’ll be running a Q&A session with questions that were submitted by our listeners. If you think of additional questions throughout today’s episode, feel free to email us or dm us on IG and we’ll answer those questions throughout the upcoming podcast episodes or in future Q & A episodes.

Question:

Why did you start this podcast?

I started What the Autism?! not only because I’m passionate about the work that I do, but also because throughout the 8 years I’ve been working as a clinician, I’ve witnessed so many family members who regretted some of the choices that they made throughout the years. And it’s not their fault. These parents feared the future of their autistic son/daughter. What would happen to their child if something happens to the parents? Is anyone out there to care for their child? And out of that fear, they wanted to provide anything and everything to their child in hopes that something sticks. But often times, that results in regrettable decisions that have left many families broken, financially, relationally, mentally, and emotionally. The purpose of this podcast is to help all our families understand the scientific research that is out there and to help parents make the most INFORMED decision when it comes to treatment and diagnosis. Time is of the essence and any wrong decision can waste money, and most importantly, time...time that your child cannot afford to waste. So before making any decisions on treatment, make sure you seek out the appropriate specialists, get multiple medical opinions and make sure you are well informed of type of services your child may need. 

Is it hard for high functioning Autism to be diagnosed?

When we say high functioning, this typically means that the individual doesn’t engage in high rates of maladaptive behaviors and can functionally communicate with others. Although high functioning autism may be less noticeable in the community, a credible psychologist should still be able to quickly identify if a child has autism no matter how severely impacted the diagnosis is. A high functioning autistic individual may struggle with emotional sensitivities, social difficulties, resistance to change, or certain fixations. But regardless of what type of symptoms are present, an individual that’s less severely impacted by the autism diagnosis should still be able to be diagnosed with autism if they meet the diagnostic criteria. In Episode 2 of my podcast, I review the diagnostic criteria for autism and what checkboxes psychologists are looking for when it comes to the autism diagnosis so make sure to give that episode a listen to see if your child may meet the qualifications for the autism diagnosis. 

I think my child has autism...what do I do?

The most important thing is to get your child diagnosed! Autism can be diagnosed as early as 18 months! Don’t let anyone tell you other wise. If your insurance provider and/or any agencies are telling you to wait till your child is 3 years old....don’t! Because when a child turns 3 years and then action is taken to schedule a diagnosis, by the...]]>Welcome back to another episode here at What the Autism?! We hit our 10th episode, and I want to thank YOU the listeners from all around the world for tuning in and showing your support for our podcast! We have over 200 listeners from  24 different countries that are tuning in and I’m very excited to see our family here on this podcast channel grow! For those of you that are new here, welcome to What the Autism?! You can follow us on our Instagram and Facebook page, @whattheautism, for daily updates and if you have any questions or stories you’d like to share with us, you can email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. 

To celebrate our 10th episode here, today we’ll be running a Q&A session with questions that were submitted by our listeners. If you think of additional questions throughout today’s episode, feel free to email us or dm us on IG and we’ll answer those questions throughout the upcoming podcast episodes or in future Q & A episodes.

Question:

Why did you start this podcast?

I started What the Autism?! not only because I’m passionate about the work that I do, but also because throughout the 8 years I’ve been working as a clinician, I’ve witnessed so many family members who regretted some of the choices that they made throughout the years. And it’s not their fault. These parents feared the future of their autistic son/daughter. What would happen to their child if something happens to the parents? Is anyone out there to care for their child? And out of that fear, they wanted to provide anything and everything to their child in hopes that something sticks. But often times, that results in regrettable decisions that have left many families broken, financially, relationally, mentally, and emotionally. The purpose of this podcast is to help all our families understand the scientific research that is out there and to help parents make the most INFORMED decision when it comes to treatment and diagnosis. Time is of the essence and any wrong decision can waste money, and most importantly, time...time that your child cannot afford to waste. So before making any decisions on treatment, make sure you seek out the appropriate specialists, get multiple medical opinions and make sure you are well informed of type of services your child may need. 

Is it hard for high functioning Autism to be diagnosed?

When we say high functioning, this typically means that the individual doesn’t engage in high rates of maladaptive behaviors and can functionally communicate with others. Although high functioning autism may be less noticeable in the community, a credible psychologist should still be able to quickly identify if a child has autism no matter how severely impacted the diagnosis is. A high functioning autistic individual may struggle with emotional sensitivities, social difficulties, resistance to change, or certain fixations. But regardless of what type of symptoms are present, an individual that’s less severely impacted by the autism diagnosis should still be able to be diagnosed with autism if they meet the diagnostic criteria. In Episode 2 of my podcast, I review the diagnostic criteria for autism and what checkboxes psychologists are looking for when it comes to the autism diagnosis so make sure to give that episode a listen to see if your child may meet the qualifications for the autism diagnosis. 

I think my child has autism...what do I do?

The most important thing is to get your child diagnosed! Autism can be diagnosed as early as 18 months! Don’t let anyone tell you other wise. If your insurance provider and/or any agencies are telling you to wait till your child is 3 years old....don’t! Because when a child turns 3 years and then action is taken to schedule a diagnosis, by the time your child starts treatment, your child is 4...and maybe even older is some cases. If this happens, your child’s window of learning opportunities gets smaller. But, if your child is over the age of 5, don’t think it’s too late. It’s always better late than never. The autism diagnosis affects children in many different ways, and I have definitely worked with some children who came to us at 5-7 years old who were able to make significant progress in their treatment program and do just fine in school. But the most important thing is that as soon as you suspect a possible diagnosis, get an appointment with a psychologist as soon as possible. And make sure you do your research and find credible psychologists that have significant experience with the autism diagnosis. This helps you get a diagnostic report that’s much more specific and recommendations that are much more targeted than a general report. While you’re waiting on the diagnostic report, make sure you’re already researching on the appropriate treatment for your child. If the recommendation is ABA, don’t assume that every agency that has ABA written all over it is going to be the best fit for your child. You want to call and ask questions. Any red flags? Pass them...ABA is a treatment that’s for the long run. Your ABA agency is going to have to become like new family members that’s going to see the ugliest of situations in your home...make sure you can communicate and work with them well. During therapy sessions, you’re going to be walking through the roughest behaviors with your child and your child’s therapist. These therapists and clinicians are going to walk into your home for sessions even during roughest of days when the laundry hasn’t been done, the kitchen is a mess, and toys are everywhere on the floor. Make sure there aren’t any reasons for your guard to be up. So to quickly recap, if you have suspicions that your child might have autism, get a credible psychologist to check for any possible diagnoses. If or when your child is diagnosed, it’s going to take some time for the formal diagnostic report to be completed, during that time, research up on the recommended treatment for your child. There’s a lot of pass time when it comes to starting up services...be proactive and move quickly. I go into further details throughout all of my previous episodes. So I highly recommend you carve out some time to listen in on the previous 9 episodes. Most of my episodes are about 15 minutes long, so give these episodes a listen to see what information may be the most helpful for you and your child. But one of the biggest takeaway that I can give to parents is...be proactive about what your child needs and don’t back down. You are your child’s biggest advocate. Don’t take “no” for an answer. Getting treatment as soon as possible is an urgent matter and this shouldn’t be taken lightly. If you need any support in this area or have further questions, please email us! If ABA focuses on changing behavior, doesn’t that mean we’re changing our children to fit a certain mold that society has determined to be “right?”

I’ve heard so much about how ABA can help autistic children, but I’ve also heard some terrible stories...how can I tell if ABA is the right fit for my child?

Research! I know that the internet is flooded with all sorts of personal experiences, which is important to read as well, but start with the scientific research. Once you have an understanding of the basics of ABA therapy and how it can treat your child, then start reading up on what has worked for some families and what hasn’t. I will tell you with full confidence, that majority of cases where families have had negative experiences with ABA is typically due to the family investing time into an agency that may not be the best fit for their child. There are so many different types of ABA agencies out there and it’s most important that you know what your child needs and that the agency can help support you and your child with those needs. If you want specific guidance on this, feel free to reach out to me at our email whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com and I would love to help provide some further information and details on my experiences that may help you in your decision. 

If ABA focuses on changing behavior, doesn’t that mean we’re changing our children to fit a certain mold that society has determined to be “right?”

I think that there’s a common misconception of the purpose of ABA. The purpose of ABA therapy is to provide individuals with basic skill sets that are needed to further achieve independence. However, majority of times, individuals with autism will come to us with behaviors that disable us from or make it extremely difficult to teach them these skill sets. They’ll engage in high rates of aggression, self injurious behaviors, excessive tantrums, property destructions, and many more that put the their safety and the safety of others and the environment at risk. So in order for us to teach these individuals any skill sets, we need to go in and work on decreasing these maladaptive behaviors by teaching them replacement behaviors that focuses on how to appropriately communicate with others. So instead of throwing the toys, the child communicates that they want to clean up later or that they want some space. Instead of running away from the classroom, the child learns to communicate to the teacher that they want to play handball. These are all important skillsets that any individual needs to learn in order to become more independent in their daily life. Some listeners may have heard or read online that ABA can turn children into robots. That is very true, but this is where the role of the BCBA is extremely important. As a BCBA, we should be looking for generalizations of skills and variability of language and behaviors. But this is definitely a great question to bring up with your future or current BCBA to ensure that your child is getting as many opportunities as possible to generalize what they are learning across people and circumstances. 

Ending/Call to Action:

But this covers some of most commonly asked questions during the last couple weeks! Before we wrap up this episode, I want to bring attention to the Barefoot Autism Challenge that’s taking place all of April. The founder, Tyler Leech, started this movement back in 2017. This challenge was started not only to bring autism awareness to communities, but to also bring more awareness about the sensory aspect of autism as well. For some individuals with autism, being barefoot helps give them a sense of awareness and being grounded. So join me and with hundreds of others around the world as we participate in this challenge of being barefoot. You can find more information and detail on Facebook and Instagram by typing Barefoot Autism Challenge. This challenge will be running for all of April 2021, so make sure to take pictures of your experience and include the hashtag, #barefootautismchallenge

But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism?! Next week on episode 11, we’ll be diving back in to research to scope out the most recent breakthrough in the field of autism. So if you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover, please reach out to us through any platform. Again, our Facebook page and Instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in episode 11.

Today’s episode will be covering the last part of our ABA 101 series. During the last 3 episodes, we talked about the ABCs of ABA, what behaviors are, the functions of behavior, reinforcement versus punishment, so today we’ll be talking about reinforcers and how we establish motivation in our children.

Let’s get started with a quick recap. Last week’s episode covered the difference between reinforcement and punishment in ABA terminology. Remember that reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment.  By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior and there are 2 types of reinforcements: positive and negative reinforcement. 

Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. 

Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word “negative” is present, it does not mean anything bad. 

What are some examples of reinforcers? Any items/access to activities such as electronics (tablets, video games, etc) or access to locations are all common examples of reinforcers.

What effects reinforcer effectiveness?

We must remember 4 different variables that effect reinforcer effectiveness. They are: deprivation/satiation, immediacy, size, and contingency.

1) Deprivation/Satiation: Often referred to as not enough or too much of a good thing!

Deprivation: Not having access to something that is highly desirable. Often this is used to increase the value of an item/activity to someone. 

Example:  

• I’ve been working all day and haven’t had a chance to eat. Because I haven’t eaten anything, I’m deprived of food, so my motivation to get food is higher. 
• If my child had access to their video games removed, their motivation to gain access to play their video games is higher. 

Satiation: This is the opposite of deprivation. Satiation refers to having too much. If the same reinforcer is used over and over again, it will lose it's reinforcing value.

Example:  

• Let's say you ate a cheeseburger for lunch today and for dinner, your friends want to go out to have burgers. Tomorrow, your co-worker suggests grabbing a burger for lunch again...no thank you! You are satiated with cheeseburgers.

2) Immediacy:  The item that is serving as the reinforcer needs to be delivered as quickly as possible as soon as the target behavior occurs. The longer the amount of time lapses between the behavior and the delivery of the reinforcer, the less effective the reinforcer will be. 

Example:

• Let’s say that Johnny was promised by his mom that he’ll get a lollipop if he’s behaves in the grocery store today. Johnny is on his best behavior, and on their way out of the store, mom promises that he gets his lollipop. However, on the way home, mom forgot that she has a...]]>Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…

  Today’s episode will be covering the last part of our ABA 101 series. During the last 3 episodes, we talked about the ABCs of ABA, what behaviors are, the functions of behavior, reinforcement versus punishment, so today we’ll be talking about reinforcers and how we establish motivation in our children.

  Let’s get started with a quick recap. Last week’s episode covered the difference between reinforcement and punishment in ABA terminology. Remember that reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment.  By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior and there are 2 types of reinforcements: positive and negative reinforcement. 

  Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. 

  Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word “negative” is present, it does not mean anything bad. 

  What are some examples of reinforcers? Any items/access to activities such as electronics (tablets, video games, etc) or access to locations are all common examples of reinforcers.

  What effects reinforcer effectiveness?

  We must remember 4 different variables that effect reinforcer effectiveness. They are: deprivation/satiation, immediacy, size, and contingency.

  1) Deprivation/Satiation: Often referred to as not enough or too much of a good thing!

  Deprivation: Not having access to something that is highly desirable. Often this is used to increase the value of an item/activity to someone. 

  Example:  

  • I’ve been working all day and haven’t had a chance to eat. Because I haven’t eaten anything, I’m deprived of food, so my motivation to get food is higher. 
  • If my child had access to their video games removed, their motivation to gain access to play their video games is higher. 
  
  

  Satiation: This is the opposite of deprivation. Satiation refers to having too much. If the same reinforcer is used over and over again, it will lose it's reinforcing value.

  Example:  

  • Let's say you ate a cheeseburger for lunch today and for dinner, your friends want to go out to have burgers. Tomorrow, your co-worker suggests grabbing a burger for lunch again...no thank you! You are satiated with cheeseburgers.
  
  

  2) Immediacy:  The item that is serving as the reinforcer needs to be delivered as quickly as possible as soon as the target behavior occurs. The longer the amount of time lapses between the behavior and the delivery of the reinforcer, the less effective the reinforcer will be. 

  Example:

  • Let’s say that Johnny was promised by his mom that he’ll get a lollipop if he’s behaves in the grocery store today. Johnny is on his best behavior, and on their way out of the store, mom promises that he gets his lollipop. However, on the way home, mom forgot that she has a couple more errands to run. 2 more hours have passed, and when they get home, Johnny now gets to have his lollipop. 
  • Now let’s say that during the 2 hours of extra errands,  Johnny is getting upset in the car because it’s getting hot and he’s getting hungry. He throws a tantrum in the car, and because of this, mom says that he no longer gets the lollipop. What’s the issue with this situation? Johnny earned his lollipop for his “good behavior” but was now be revoked for a different contingency. This is what leads to ineffective motivators and situations that results in a child to lose their trust in their parents’ promises. So in the future when mom makes similar types of promises, the child loses their trust that the reinforcer will be available. 
  
  

  It is also important to remember that over time we need to thin out our levels of reinforcement. Because the natural consequences of our everyday life doesn’t entail a reinforcement after every behavior. We don’t get paid after the end of each hour we work. So it’s extremely important that not only are we shaping and increasing desirable behaviors, we are also teaching individuals delayed gratification.  

  3) Size: This refers to how much of the reinforcer you get/are giving.

  Example: 

  • If Mike reads 1 page of a book, and he earns a handful of skittles, we will satiate him and have to look for new reinforcers. Maybe a better way to reinforce would be a handful of candy after reading the entire book/finishes reading the daily 1 hour/day. 
  
  

  4) Contingency: Reinforcement delivery must be contingent, meaning, access to a reinforcer only occurs after the target behavior has been demonstrated.

  When we want to reinforce behavior as part of behavior management, we do so by using what we call Differential Reinforcement Procedures. These can get extremely technical and I don’t want to throw all these technical terms at you guys all of today’s episode, so we’ll save this topic for a different episode at another time. 

  But to review, in order to have effective reinforcers, we need to focus on deprivation/satiation, immediacy, size/intensity of the reinforcer, and the contingency. 

  Let’s review one big scenario and break it down into each of these parts. 

  Let’s go back to the Johnny example with the lollipop. Let’s review the scenario again. 

  
  

  • Johnny was promised by his mom that he’ll get a lollipop if he’s behaves inside the grocery store today. Johnny is on his best behavior, and on their way out of the store, mom promises that he gets his lollipop. However, on the way home, mom forgot that she has a couple more errands to run. Now let’s say that during the 2 hours of extra errands,  Johnny is getting upset in the car because it’s getting hot and he’s getting hungry. He throws a tantrum and starts whining in the car, and because of this, the mom says that he no longer gets the lollipop when they get home. 
  
  

  Let’s review the 4 parts to the effectiveness of the lollipop as Johnny’s reinforcer:

  • 1. Deprivation/Satiation: It’s safe to assume that if Johnny was motivated by the lollipop, he may not have had frequent access to this, hence his motivation for it was much higher. If he was given a couple lollipops everyday at home, his motivation to behave in the store would have been much lower. 
  
  

  
  

  • 2. Immediacy: Was the lollipop given to Johnny as soon as they walked out of the grocery store? Nope. Because the mom was busy, there was a 2 hour delay, which resulted in extra time for Johnny to engage in undesirable behaviors, which resulted in the mom taking away the lollipop. 
  
  

  
  

  • 3. Size/intensity: The only part of the 4 aspects that was good. Now if the mom promised the child 1 piece of m&m or skittle for a whole 45 minute trip to the grocery store, would that have been effective? Unless the child has been deprived of candy/chocolate the entire year, no way!
  
  

  
  

  • 4. Contingency. What’s the issue with this situation? Johnny earned his lollipop for his “good behavior” but was now be revoked for a different contingency. This is what leads to ineffective motivators and situations that results in a child to lose their trust in their parents’ promises. So in the future when mom makes similar types of promises, the child loses their trust that the reinforcer will be available. Make sure that if you’re reinforcing your child for “good behaviors” the reinforcer is for A SPECIFIC behavior. It becomes MUCH easier to increase and shape these behaviors
  
  

  
  

  Today’s episode covered the last part of our ABA 101 series. In these 4 segments we covered the very basics of Applied Behavior Analysis and how we can utilize its very principles to address the autism diagnosis.  I hope this short series was helpful in helping solve some basic questions. If you would like more information on ABA or if you have specific questions, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram or Facebook @whattheautism or email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. 

  But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism. Next week on episode 10, we’ll be talking about celebrating our 10th episode here on this podcast by holding a Q&A session and our February giveaway. So if you have any specific questions or concerns you’d like me to cover, please reach out to us through any platform. Again, our Facebook page and Instagram handle is @whattheautism and our email address is whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

  But If you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel and I’ll see you in episode 10.

  ]]>3af12638-61f1-43bd-a07d-2c42c0a8cee5Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:00:00 -070024:40nofull9Amanda KimABA 101 Part 3Have you ever come across a situation where a child doesn’t listen to you, no matter what type of punishment or negative consequences you place on them? Or have you ever seen a child start losing interests in earning some of their most favorite activities, toys, or foods? Today we’re going to talk about reinforcements versus punishments and what type of strategy may be the most helpful for your child. Please note that I’m not a child psychologist nor a family therapist. I’m a board certified behavior analyst that is here to talk to you about behaviors and how we can shape and develop desirable behaviors in our children. If you enjoy our podcast, please make sure to follow our podcast channel and follow us on our Facebook page and Instagram @whattheautism. 

  In today’s episode, there will be some technical language and vocabulary that is specific to ABA, but be patient with me, as I’ll be breaking down what each of these terms mean and present to you some everyday examples that may be helpful in you understanding a little more about ABA. 

  Now let’s start with “what is reinforcement?”

  Reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment.  By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior. Remember that consequences is not a negative association like a punishment. We talked about consequences in episode 6 where we described consequences as anything that occurs after a behavior takes place. So for example, let’s say that Jenny is instructed by the teacher to go to her desk to complete her worksheet. Jenny starts crying, whining, and throwing her toys around the classroom. Because the teacher is busy working with the other kids, she puts Jenny on a time-out until the teacher is ready to work with her. Now, based on all the things we talked about in previous episodes, what do you think will happen in the future when the teacher tells Jenny to complete worksheets? Jenny will continue to engage in tantrums and inappropriate behaviors in order to get out of completing her worksheets. So during the next couple days, she continues to exhibit these inappropriate behaviors. This “time out” now functions as a reinforcer in this situation. Why? Because these inappropriate tantrums and whining behaviors have increased.  If you need a couple seconds to digest this concept, I suggest you take a pause here before moving on.

  Now digging a little further into reinforcements. There are 2 types of reinforcements: Positive and negative. Don’t let the word negative get you to think that it comes with a bad connotation. It’s simply referring to whether a stimulus has been presented or removed. 

  1) Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. 

  Examples: 

  • Bob finishes his math homework and afterwards he gets a piece of gum. A piece of gum is the stimulus that is presented. And because Bob is motivated by gum, the probability of him completing his math homework to get more gum increases.
  • George sits appropriately in circle time and exhibits listening skills by answering questions about the story. This earns him 10 minutes of his favorite activity: blowing bubbles. The activity of blowing bubbles is a stimulus that is presented and because George is motivated by this activity, the probability of him engaging in circle time in the future increases. 
  
  

  2) Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word...]]>Have you ever come across a situation where a child doesn’t listen to you, no matter what type of punishment or negative consequences you place on them? Or have you ever seen a child start losing interests in earning some of their most favorite activities, toys, or foods? Today we’re going to talk about reinforcements versus punishments and what type of strategy may be the most helpful for your child. Please note that I’m not a child psychologist nor a family therapist. I’m a board certified behavior analyst that is here to talk to you about behaviors and how we can shape and develop desirable behaviors in our children. If you enjoy our podcast, please make sure to follow our podcast channel and follow us on our Facebook page and Instagram @whattheautism. 

  In today’s episode, there will be some technical language and vocabulary that is specific to ABA, but be patient with me, as I’ll be breaking down what each of these terms mean and present to you some everyday examples that may be helpful in you understanding a little more about ABA. 

  Now let’s start with “what is reinforcement?”

  Reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment.  By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior. Remember that consequences is not a negative association like a punishment. We talked about consequences in episode 6 where we described consequences as anything that occurs after a behavior takes place. So for example, let’s say that Jenny is instructed by the teacher to go to her desk to complete her worksheet. Jenny starts crying, whining, and throwing her toys around the classroom. Because the teacher is busy working with the other kids, she puts Jenny on a time-out until the teacher is ready to work with her. Now, based on all the things we talked about in previous episodes, what do you think will happen in the future when the teacher tells Jenny to complete worksheets? Jenny will continue to engage in tantrums and inappropriate behaviors in order to get out of completing her worksheets. So during the next couple days, she continues to exhibit these inappropriate behaviors. This “time out” now functions as a reinforcer in this situation. Why? Because these inappropriate tantrums and whining behaviors have increased.  If you need a couple seconds to digest this concept, I suggest you take a pause here before moving on.

  Now digging a little further into reinforcements. There are 2 types of reinforcements: Positive and negative. Don’t let the word negative get you to think that it comes with a bad connotation. It’s simply referring to whether a stimulus has been presented or removed. 

  1) Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. 

  Examples: 

  • Bob finishes his math homework and afterwards he gets a piece of gum. A piece of gum is the stimulus that is presented. And because Bob is motivated by gum, the probability of him completing his math homework to get more gum increases.
  • George sits appropriately in circle time and exhibits listening skills by answering questions about the story. This earns him 10 minutes of his favorite activity: blowing bubbles. The activity of blowing bubbles is a stimulus that is presented and because George is motivated by this activity, the probability of him engaging in circle time in the future increases. 
  
  

  2) Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word “negative” is present, it does not mean anything bad. So just like our example with Jenny throwing a tantrum in the classroom, the removal of the worksheet is the stimulus that has been removed and the probability that these inappropriate behaviors will occur again in the future increases. 

  Examples:  

  • When Hannah first started working on her spelling word test, there were too many words to complete. After every 5 words she completed, the teacher erased 1 spelling word from her test. 
  • When Daisy’s teacher tells her it is time for circle time, she tantrums on the floor. Her teacher removes demands and Daisy does not participate in circle time.
  
  

  It is important to note that reinforcement only occurs when the behavior actually increases. Just because we intend or mean for a behavior to increase, doesn't mean that reinforcement has occurred. It only occurs when the rate of behavior actually goes up.

  We must also keep in mind that what we think is going to work for a student as a reinforcer, may not work. It is not what we think should work, it is what actually works. An object, activity, or any other stimulus that served as a reinforcer today may not serve the same function tomorrow. If you need a refresher on the topic of functions, please listen to episode 7 where we talk about the functions of behavior and how we identify why people engage in the behaviors they engage in. 

  Now, let’s talk about punishment. Everything you know about punishment, such as time outs and any reprimands...I want you to take a second to erase that from your dictionary because in ABA, punishment refers to a consequence that is applied to a behavior that has the effect of reducing the future occurrence of that behavior. So it’s just the opposite of reinforcement. Punishment decreases a behavior while reinforcement increases the behavior. 

  So like reinforcement, punishment also comes with 2 types: positive and negative.

  Positive punishment: when something is added after the behavior occurs, and the behavior decreases. For example, if you are driving over the speed limit (behavior), and a police officer issues you a speeding ticket (consequence: something added), you are less likely to speed in the future. The behavior of driving over the speed limit has decreased after the ticket was given to you, and therefore the ticket serves as positive punishment. 

  Negative Punishment: occurs when something is removed as a consequence, and the behavior decreases.  For example, the other day I was throwing a play ball to my dog and I accidentally knocked over my favorite mug that ended up getting shattered.  Throwing a ball is the behavior, the shattering of my mug led to a consequence where my access to my favorite mug was removed. After that, I was careful not play fetch inside the house, which ultimately decreased my behavior. 

  Now that we went over reinforcement and punishment. Which one do we use? 

  Yes, punishment is VERY effective, but what happens to children that are constantly exposed to continuous punishment is a child that becomes numb to punishment in the future. punishment on its own does not teach anything. Yes, you may reduce or eliminate challenging behavior but you need to also teach what to do instead of the inappropriate behavior. A common phrase that we use in ABA is “Catch them being good.”

  The idea behind this phrase is that for most children providing them with positive attention and feedback can function as a strong reinforcer.  So when you reinforce your child’s good behavior by providing them with praise and attention, you are teaching your child what you want them to do and increasing the likelihood that they will continue to engage in the good behavior again.  When you “catch your child being good” and respond by telling them exactly what they are doing that is good, you are teaching your child how you want them to behave.   Instead of just saying “good job!” tell your child exactly what you liked about what they did, “I loved the way you shared your toy cars!”  Be specific with your praises.

  With this being said, we want to definitely talk about punishments in how it can be effective. Although I DO NOT recommend an intervention that contains only punishment, I am a strong believer that INCLUDING punishment procedures with reinforcements can be the MOST effective form of intervention for any child. 

  For example:

  Let’s say that we want to focus on working on Bob being aggressive with his baby sister. Let’s say that Bob is constantly pulling his baby sister’s hair and pushing her around because he doesn’t like the extra attention that the baby gets from his parents. The parents are extremely worried for the baby’s safety and wants to focus on decreasing Bob’s aggression.

  Let’s break this down. Reinforcement wise, I want to start looking for things/activities/stimulus that are going to motivate Bob to engage in more appropriate behaviors with his sister. How do we do this? Every time, Bob engages in appropriate play and sibling interactions with the sister, we want to provide Bob with some positive attention, such as “Bob, I love the way you’re playing with your sister!” Or “You’re doing amazing being gentle with your hands.” This positive feedback and specific praise from the parents is focusing on “catching Bob being good.” Now, what happens when something slips and Bob ends up hitting the baby sister again? This is where we need a punishment procedure in effect. Remember, punishment is simply the act of a consequence decreasing the specific behavior. If Bob is motivated by the attention of the parents, we don’t want to provide any verbal reprimands. Rather, you would want to pick up the baby sister to ensure that she is safely removed from the situation, and you want to make sure you’re not providing Bob’s behavior with any attention. A common mistake that many parents make when they implement “planned ignoring” is that they begin to ignore the child. Don’t ignore the child, you’re simply just ignoring the behavior. If you’re ignoring Bob, it may result in situations where his inappropriate behaviors magnifies into behaviors such as property destruction, more intense levels of aggression and when that breaks the parents and they start to provide Bob with attention, you have now just reinforced a higher and more intense level of inappropriate behaviors. Rather, you want to act as if the behavior did not occur. I know this is A LOT to take in. It takes months and sometimes an entire year for some of our behavior therapists to get this down, so I don’t expect any one to understand this over a quick 20 minute episode. Rather, I simply want to expose you to the concepts and terminologies of reinforcement versus punishment so that you can make simple changes in your everyday decisions to ensure that your child is receiving the correct intervention for their behavior. 

  So in today’s episode, we covered the difference between reinforcement and punishment and reviewed some examples of what they each look like. We talked about the differences between positive and negative reinforcement versus positive and negative punishment. I will include a fun little visual guide that I made onto our facebook page so make sure to check out our Facebook page @whattheautism. 

  But this concludes another episode here at What the Autism. Next week on episode 9, we’ll be talking about reinforcers and what to do when you’re stuck with no ideas. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Wednesday. If you have any questions on today’s episode and/or you have any recommendations for future topics and discussion, please email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @whattheautism for any helpful resources and updates in regards to our discussion topics. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. 

  But If you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel and I’ll see you in episode 9.

  ]]>df5b889a-076a-4a03-8ff0-75019ca7922dWed, 27 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -070013:38nofull8Amanda KimABA 101 Part 2What are the 4 main functions of behavior:
  1. Escape
  2. Access to Tangible (activity, object, anything)
  3. Attention
  4. Automatic (behaviors that you engage in because the specific internal sensation/feeling that you get feels good)
  
  

  Remember, a behavior is only a behavior when 1. The action is measurable and observable 2. Passes the dead man’s test. These are things that we reviewed last week in episode 6, so make sure to take a listen if you missed last week’s episode! 

  So let’s start talking about autism. How does the identification of the functions of behavior help in treating those with autism? When children engage in socially inappropriate behaviors such as aggression and self-injurious behaviors...if we do not understand why the child is engaging in these behaviors, we can’t properly treat the behavior. This results in a treatment program that will never get to the root of the problem.

  We also review a research article that was published in 2018 titled "The Big Four." The purpose of this article is to suggest that by adding prevention practices to early intervention guidelines for problem behavior, this would increase the effectiveness of a treatment. The article talks about how understanding the core functions that produce problem behavior teaches us how to arrange environments and how to teach skills that would prevent problems from occurring from the start. I’ll go ahead and link this study on our facebook page, but it’s extremely important that we focus on the reason why a child is engaging in a specific behavior rather than how the child is engaging in the behavior. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  ]]>What are the 4 main functions of behavior:
  1. Escape
  2. Access to Tangible (activity, object, anything)
  3. Attention
  4. Automatic (behaviors that you engage in because the specific internal sensation/feeling that you get feels good)
  
  

  Remember, a behavior is only a behavior when 1. The action is measurable and observable 2. Passes the dead man’s test. These are things that we reviewed last week in episode 6, so make sure to take a listen if you missed last week’s episode! 

  So let’s start talking about autism. How does the identification of the functions of behavior help in treating those with autism? When children engage in socially inappropriate behaviors such as aggression and self-injurious behaviors...if we do not understand why the child is engaging in these behaviors, we can’t properly treat the behavior. This results in a treatment program that will never get to the root of the problem.

  We also review a research article that was published in 2018 titled "The Big Four." The purpose of this article is to suggest that by adding prevention practices to early intervention guidelines for problem behavior, this would increase the effectiveness of a treatment. The article talks about how understanding the core functions that produce problem behavior teaches us how to arrange environments and how to teach skills that would prevent problems from occurring from the start. I’ll go ahead and link this study on our facebook page, but it’s extremely important that we focus on the reason why a child is engaging in a specific behavior rather than how the child is engaging in the behavior. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  ]]>320d15b8-00ae-47ff-9cad-4940ea62a3f6Wed, 20 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -070013:09nofull7Amanda KimABA 101 Part 1I’m really excited for today’s episode because this is an episode that will benefit listeners of all backgrounds. So whether you are a parent (you don’t have to have an autistic child for ABA strategies to be beneficial to your parenting), a treatment provider, or even someone who’s just curious about ABA. I’ll tell you from the start, ABA does NOT always equate to autism therapy. ABA can be used for anything and anyone that engages in behavior...which is basically all living and breathing organisms. ABA has been proven to be an effective method of treatment for children with autism, but ABA has been an effective method for those that struggle with substance abuse, fitness coaches, nutritionists, life coaches, organizational behavior management (which focuses of the behavior of a company’s employees and the company itself). 

  What is ABA? ABA is a therapy based on the science of an individual’s behaviors and how they learn. So in other words, behavior analysis helps us to understand how behavior works, how a person’s behavior is affected by the environment, and how their learning takes place.

  The main goal of ABA is to increase behaviors that are helpful to an individual and decrease behaviors that are harmful or that can negatively impact learning. Ways that ABA therapy programs can help...is 1. Increase language and communication skills. 2. Improve attention, focus, social skills, memory, and academics 3. Decrease problem behaviors, such as intense tantrums, aggression, non-compliance, property destruction, and many more. ABA has been existing as a therapy treatment since the 1960s and since then the research behind ABA and its effectiveness has been thoroughly investigated and proven time and time again. During the last 3 episodes, I’ve touched on various research that proves the effectiveness of ABA and some common myths that have been debunked by research. Tune into episode 5 if you’re curious to hear more about other common myths on the topic of the autism diagnosis. 

  But to dive into the topic of ABA treatment, I’m going to simply breakdown some very basic foundational principles of ABA. This is going to be extremely helpful to know for future episodes when we dive further into research that has more complex concepts and scientific terminology. 

  In ABA, the surrounding environment is extremely important. When we first start services for our patients, what’s most important is that we control this environment to ensure that we create as successful of a learning opportunity as possible. In order to do this, we first need to understand how these environments are studied and how to effectively utilize these variables to control the environment.

  First, we need to define what the word BEHAVIOR means.  We define behavior as anything a person says or does that involves movement and has an impact on the environment. A behavior needs to be able to be observed, described and recorded. It needs to be able to pass what we call the dead man’s test. Basically, the concept is that If a dead man can do it, then it is NOT a behavior! So for example, a child not paying attention, not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child being non-responsive is not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child working on their homework, running, playing with their friends are all examples of a behavior. 

  Another common mistake that many people make is what we call circular reasoning. For example, some parents will come to me and say "Johnny doesn’t do his homework because he’s lazy?" So if I ask, "Why is Johnny lazy?" The parents will say "Because he doesn’t do his homework." There is no end to this circular reasoning. And this results in a behavior that can’t be observed. I can’t observe Johnny being lazy. What does lazy look like? How it looks for me might be different for someone else. If we can’t observe it, we can’t measure the behavior. And a behavior has]]>I’m really excited for today’s episode because this is an episode that will benefit listeners of all backgrounds. So whether you are a parent (you don’t have to have an autistic child for ABA strategies to be beneficial to your parenting), a treatment provider, or even someone who’s just curious about ABA. I’ll tell you from the start, ABA does NOT always equate to autism therapy. ABA can be used for anything and anyone that engages in behavior...which is basically all living and breathing organisms. ABA has been proven to be an effective method of treatment for children with autism, but ABA has been an effective method for those that struggle with substance abuse, fitness coaches, nutritionists, life coaches, organizational behavior management (which focuses of the behavior of a company’s employees and the company itself). 

  What is ABA? ABA is a therapy based on the science of an individual’s behaviors and how they learn. So in other words, behavior analysis helps us to understand how behavior works, how a person’s behavior is affected by the environment, and how their learning takes place.

  The main goal of ABA is to increase behaviors that are helpful to an individual and decrease behaviors that are harmful or that can negatively impact learning. Ways that ABA therapy programs can help...is 1. Increase language and communication skills. 2. Improve attention, focus, social skills, memory, and academics 3. Decrease problem behaviors, such as intense tantrums, aggression, non-compliance, property destruction, and many more. ABA has been existing as a therapy treatment since the 1960s and since then the research behind ABA and its effectiveness has been thoroughly investigated and proven time and time again. During the last 3 episodes, I’ve touched on various research that proves the effectiveness of ABA and some common myths that have been debunked by research. Tune into episode 5 if you’re curious to hear more about other common myths on the topic of the autism diagnosis. 

  But to dive into the topic of ABA treatment, I’m going to simply breakdown some very basic foundational principles of ABA. This is going to be extremely helpful to know for future episodes when we dive further into research that has more complex concepts and scientific terminology. 

  In ABA, the surrounding environment is extremely important. When we first start services for our patients, what’s most important is that we control this environment to ensure that we create as successful of a learning opportunity as possible. In order to do this, we first need to understand how these environments are studied and how to effectively utilize these variables to control the environment.

  First, we need to define what the word BEHAVIOR means.  We define behavior as anything a person says or does that involves movement and has an impact on the environment. A behavior needs to be able to be observed, described and recorded. It needs to be able to pass what we call the dead man’s test. Basically, the concept is that If a dead man can do it, then it is NOT a behavior! So for example, a child not paying attention, not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child being non-responsive is not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child working on their homework, running, playing with their friends are all examples of a behavior. 

  Another common mistake that many people make is what we call circular reasoning. For example, some parents will come to me and say "Johnny doesn’t do his homework because he’s lazy?" So if I ask, "Why is Johnny lazy?" The parents will say "Because he doesn’t do his homework." There is no end to this circular reasoning. And this results in a behavior that can’t be observed. I can’t observe Johnny being lazy. What does lazy look like? How it looks for me might be different for someone else. If we can’t observe it, we can’t measure the behavior. And a behavior has to be observable and measurable in order to be identified as a behavior. So, why is this important? Why are we nit-picking at the definition of behavior. Because when people make general observations, there are a lot of opinions and biases that are included. Classic examples I get is, my child is hitting other people because he’s being a troublemaker. My child doesn’t like playing with other kids because he’s just being shy. How do we observe and measure when a person is being a trouble maker or being shy? We need to break these labels into observable behaviors in order to weed these opinions out of the observation and measurement. So instead of labeling a child as being a trouble maker, we want to come up with concrete observable and measurable behaviors such as, when other children don’t play with my child, he runs up to the children and hits them or when his friends don’t want to play by his rules of the game, he hits them. These scenarios are all examples of observable and measurable behaviors. We covered the definition of behavior as something a person says or does that involves movement, has an impact on the environment, and is observable and measurable. If you need a couple seconds to process that, I recommend you pause the podcast here before we move onto the next concept. 

  Another very basic terminology that we use is called the “ABC’s” of ABA. 

  • A is for Antecedent. This refers to anything and whatever occurs right before the target behavior. It can be verbal, such as an instruction or a request. It can also be physical such as the presentation of a toy/object or a sound that comes from the laundry or a doorbell. An antecedent can come from the environment, from another person, or can also be an internal thought or feeling.
  • B is for behavior. This is the person’s response or lack of response to the antecedent. It can be an action or a verbal response. When we look at the behavior, we want to be very specific about what this behavior looks like. We call this the topography of the behavior. So when we say that a child is aggressive...what does that mean? Because Johnny being aggressive might look different from how Sally is being aggressive. So we want to be specific about the appearances of the behavior, along with the duration, and the intensity of the behavior. 
  • C is for consequence. This is what comes directly after the behavior. In the typical English language, we refer to consequences as a negative punishment, such as time outs and reprimands, but in ABA, we refer to consequence as anything that comes directly after the behavior occurs. And dependent on what type of consequences are presented, this can increase or decrease the specified behavior. 
  
  

  Studying the ABCs of a situation can help us better understand why a behavior may be happening and how different consequences could affect whether the behavior will happen again. 

  Examples:

  Child is waiting at the register with her mom at a grocery store. She asks mom for candy, mom says no, child starts to cry because she wants a candy

  A: Mom and the child are at the register and mom says “no” to the child’s request for a candy

  B: The child throws a 15 minute tantrum by screaming and dropping to the floor while kicking her legs

  C: A parent can make 2 decisions…

  1. Put up a fight but end up giving in and buying the candy because they don’t want to deal with the tantrum and the embarrassment of everyone starting at them. 
  2. Despite the long tantrum episode, the parent doesn’t buy the candy and they walk out of the store empty-handed. 
  
  

  
  

  When a child cries for the candy after being told “no,” and the parent purchases the item for the child...what does that teach the child? When they want something, regardless of the approval/disapproval, the child will cry. 

  Example 2:

  Student that doesn’t want to do homework

  A: Parent instructs their child to do their homework 

  B: Student throws their pencil and book across the living room

  C: Parent is busy taking care of dinner and doesn’t want to put up a fight with the child. Puts the child on time out for not listening. What has that taught the child? Every time they don’t want to do something, throw things and get upset and they’ll be placed into a time out to get out of doing the non-preferred activity. So in this situation, what we think is a punishment like a time out, is actually serving as a motivation to the child to continue engaging in these inappropriate behaviors to get out doing non-preferred tasks. 

  These are just a few examples of what the ABC of a behavior may look like. The types of information that the ABCs collect for us is what we need to identify the function of behavior, which we’ll be going over in next week’s episode! Understanding the function of a behavior or why someone engages in a specific behavior will help you to better understand how to react to those behaviors to increase or decrease those behaviors. Let me remind you, this works on anyone!!...this includes any child (autism diagnosis or not) this also includes any adult (autism diagnosis or not). And between us, let me tell you, I’ve definitely used this on my family and friends before and it works spot on EVERY TIME! So I hope you can join us next week to talk about the functions of behavior. 

  ]]>6179e374-712c-42b3-ba73-cf830090d02eWed, 13 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -070015:33nofull6Amanda KimDebunking Common MythsIn today's episode, we talk about some common myths that people have about the autism diagnosis and how research has debunked them!
  1. Autism only affects children. False!
  2. Autism is just an issue with the brain. False! Co-morbidities (GI issues, sleeping problems, epilepsy, etc) are very common in children with ASD.
  3. Autism is caused by bad parenting. FALSE!! Research has proven that there was no difference in parenting styles between parents of typically developing children and parents of children with autism/anxiety disorder.
  4. Vaccinations causes autism. FALSE! We reviewed Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. This study was retracted in 2010, but in this episode we dive deeper into this study to examine issues with this research study.
  5. All autistic people are extremely gifted/talented with memory skills, numbers, music, art. False! Although this may be true for SOME of our children, this doesn't accurately reflect across all children with autism.
  6. ABA treatment turns children into robots! FALSE! A good ABA treatment provider ensures that their programming has variability and generalization. ABA treatment has been research proven to be the most effective in treating autism.
  
  

  Go to our facebook page @whattheautism to find each perspective research articles and supporting studies to debunk every single one of these myths!

  ]]>In today's episode, we talk about some common myths that people have about the autism diagnosis and how research has debunked them!
  1. Autism only affects children. False!
  2. Autism is just an issue with the brain. False! Co-morbidities (GI issues, sleeping problems, epilepsy, etc) are very common in children with ASD.
  3. Autism is caused by bad parenting. FALSE!! Research has proven that there was no difference in parenting styles between parents of typically developing children and parents of children with autism/anxiety disorder.
  4. Vaccinations causes autism. FALSE! We reviewed Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. This study was retracted in 2010, but in this episode we dive deeper into this study to examine issues with this research study.
  5. All autistic people are extremely gifted/talented with memory skills, numbers, music, art. False! Although this may be true for SOME of our children, this doesn't accurately reflect across all children with autism.
  6. ABA treatment turns children into robots! FALSE! A good ABA treatment provider ensures that their programming has variability and generalization. ABA treatment has been research proven to be the most effective in treating autism.
  
  

  Go to our facebook page @whattheautism to find each perspective research articles and supporting studies to debunk every single one of these myths!

  ]]>9227e5d3-5d5f-496c-96e1-8c8ab2261609Wed, 06 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -070013:22nofull5Amanda KimCauses of AutismUnfortunately, we do not know all of the causes of ASD. However, through much research and time, we have learned that there are likely many causes for multiple types of ASD. As we’ve discussed in episode 2, there is quite a wide spectrum of children when we talk about ASD. There are children that are extremely gifted with numbers and academics but has a really difficult time socializing with others. You also have children that have extreme high levels of maladaptive behaviors such as aggression, property destructions, self injurious behaviors and have minimal or 0 level of vocal communication. Because there are so many different severity levels within the autism spectrum, it’s difficult to say that one factor impacts the severity of the diagnosis. The autism spectrum disorder affects children of all races and nationalities, but certain factors increase a child's risk.
  • Most scientists agree that genes are one of the risk factors that can make a person more likely to develop ASD.
  • A child's biological sex can also be a factor. Boys are about four times more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder than girls are.
  • Family history. Families who have one child with ASD have an increased risk of having another child with the disorder. It's also not uncommon for parents or relatives of a child with ASD to have minor problems with social or communication skills themselves or to engage in certain behaviors typical of the disorder.
  • Other disorders. Children with certain medical conditions have a higher than normal risk of ASD or autism-like symptoms. Some examples include fragile X syndrome and Rett syndrome
  • Extremely preterm babies. Babies born before 26 weeks of gestation may have a greater risk of autism spectrum disorder.
  • Parents' ages. There may be a connection between children born to older parents and autism spectrum disorder, but more research is necessary to establish this link.
  
  

  Let me remind you that these are just some POTENTIAL factors that might increase the risk that a child may have autism, there are other speculations that are being researched and studied, so the autism research community will definitely be needing more time and data. 

  ASD continues to be an important public health concern. Like the many families that have been impacted by autism, the CDC wants to find out exactly what causes the disorder. Understanding these different factors that make a person more likely to develop ASD will help identify more information about the causes. One of the largest U.S. studies to date is SEED (S-E-E-D): Study to Explore Early Development (SEED). SEED is currently looking at many possible risk factors for ASD, including genetic, environmental, pregnancy, and behavioral factors. SEED is a valuable resource for testing hypotheses regarding ASD characteristics and causes. I’ll link you guys to this research study and some helpful pdf documents on our facebook page, @whattheautism. 

  Although there is much more research that needs to be conducted, it’s important that as a community of autism advocates, treatment providers, educators, and parents, we find ways to contribute to the future of autism research. One easy way is to stay informed on the current research that is happening. Even though there’s a long list of possible factors and variables that might contribute to a child being diagnosed with autism, it’s an extensive list of possibilities that research needs more time to continue to digging through in order to find more answers. There aren’t any research studies that solely identifies that THIS specific variable causes autism, as many of these possible factors are just possible risks factors for the diagnosis. But as a treatment...]]>Unfortunately, we do not know all of the causes of ASD. However, through much research and time, we have learned that there are likely many causes for multiple types of ASD. As we’ve discussed in episode 2, there is quite a wide spectrum of children when we talk about ASD. There are children that are extremely gifted with numbers and academics but has a really difficult time socializing with others. You also have children that have extreme high levels of maladaptive behaviors such as aggression, property destructions, self injurious behaviors and have minimal or 0 level of vocal communication. Because there are so many different severity levels within the autism spectrum, it’s difficult to say that one factor impacts the severity of the diagnosis. The autism spectrum disorder affects children of all races and nationalities, but certain factors increase a child's risk.

  • Most scientists agree that genes are one of the risk factors that can make a person more likely to develop ASD.
  • A child's biological sex can also be a factor. Boys are about four times more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder than girls are.
  • Family history. Families who have one child with ASD have an increased risk of having another child with the disorder. It's also not uncommon for parents or relatives of a child with ASD to have minor problems with social or communication skills themselves or to engage in certain behaviors typical of the disorder.
  • Other disorders. Children with certain medical conditions have a higher than normal risk of ASD or autism-like symptoms. Some examples include fragile X syndrome and Rett syndrome
  • Extremely preterm babies. Babies born before 26 weeks of gestation may have a greater risk of autism spectrum disorder.
  • Parents' ages. There may be a connection between children born to older parents and autism spectrum disorder, but more research is necessary to establish this link.
  
  

  Let me remind you that these are just some POTENTIAL factors that might increase the risk that a child may have autism, there are other speculations that are being researched and studied, so the autism research community will definitely be needing more time and data. 

  ASD continues to be an important public health concern. Like the many families that have been impacted by autism, the CDC wants to find out exactly what causes the disorder. Understanding these different factors that make a person more likely to develop ASD will help identify more information about the causes. One of the largest U.S. studies to date is SEED (S-E-E-D): Study to Explore Early Development (SEED). SEED is currently looking at many possible risk factors for ASD, including genetic, environmental, pregnancy, and behavioral factors. SEED is a valuable resource for testing hypotheses regarding ASD characteristics and causes. I’ll link you guys to this research study and some helpful pdf documents on our facebook page, @whattheautism. 

  Although there is much more research that needs to be conducted, it’s important that as a community of autism advocates, treatment providers, educators, and parents, we find ways to contribute to the future of autism research. One easy way is to stay informed on the current research that is happening. Even though there’s a long list of possible factors and variables that might contribute to a child being diagnosed with autism, it’s an extensive list of possibilities that research needs more time to continue to digging through in order to find more answers. There aren’t any research studies that solely identifies that THIS specific variable causes autism, as many of these possible factors are just possible risks factors for the diagnosis. But as a treatment provider, an educator, an advocate, or a parent, please don’t be discouraged. I want to empower our community with hope for the future and the answers that research will continue to provide for us. There are tons of top tier universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, UCLA, and many more that are dedicating research from their medical schools and public health departments to better understand the causes of autism, which would in turn help us better identify ways to prevent the future generations of children from having to experience the obstacles that come with the autism diagnosis. 

  Individuals with the autism diagnosis experience many problems with social interactions, communication and behavior which can often times lead to:

  • Problems in school and with successful learning
  • Employment problems
  • Inability to live independently
  • Social isolation
  • Stress within the family
  • Victimization and being bullied
  
  

  So it’s extremely important that we continue to show our support to our researchers and fulfill our due diligence in staying up to date on the current research and make informed decisions when it comes to our children.

  If you’re interested in hearing more about the current and future research studies being conducted to better identify the different causes of autism, I recommend you follow our podcast and connect with us on our facebook and instagram page @whattheautism.

  ]]>3db93684-4507-4322-aaec-46765815ef28Wed, 30 Dec 2020 10:15:00 -070008:46nofull4Amanda KimAutism TreatmentA great way to make a quick observation of how your child is developing is...

  1. Do a quick research of a timeline and understand the developmental milestones that your child should be meeting. At what age should my child be babbling sounds and trying to mimic words? Engaging in joint attention and be interested in playing with other children?  Crawling? Playing with toys? Etc.

  2. Immediately set up those peer dates with anyone and everyone that you can possibly expose your child to. Seeing your child in the same environment as their peers will help you to see what is typical and what is not.

  If you are in a place of thinking your child may need help but maybe you're afraid, confused, and unsure. I hear you. I may not have directly experienced what it’s felt like to receive the news that my child has an autism diagnosis and that they won’t develop like their neuro-typical peers, but what I do know is what can lie on the flip side of the timeline once your child begins receiving treatment. Every parent that I have worked with has experienced the same type of fear and uncertainty, but I have yet to have met a family that has EVER regretted their decision to get their child’s autism diagnosis treated. 

  ABA treatment: Why is it the most effective? We cover research proving the effectiveness of ABA treatment. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a therapy treatment based on the science of learning and behavior. What we do as behavior analysts is take a look at an individual’s specific behavior and determine if this is this a behavior that we need to increase or decrease? If a child is aggressive or engages in excessive tantrums, that’s a behavior we want to decrease. Eye contact, functional language, social skills are all behaviors we want to increase in our children. This is where we begin to evaluate the environments that the child is in and determine what the child’s main motivators are in order for us to create a controlled environment that will also us to most successfully teach a child various skill sets and decrease undesired behaviors.

  ABA has been proven in over 20 different research studies that intensive and long-term therapy using ABA principles improves outcomes for many children diagnosed with autism. The Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore Maryland is an internationally recognized institution dedicated to improving the lives of children and young adults with pediatric developmental disabilities through patient care, special education, research, and professional training. I’ll be linking you to their website that discusses their stance on ABA treatment on our facebook page. But over the past 40 years, an extensive amount of research has documented the success of ABA-based treatment to reduce problem behavior and increase appropriate skills for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), autism, and related disorders.

  Another study to note was published in September 2017. E Linstead, D R Dixon, E Hong, C O Burns, R French, M N Novack, and D Granpeesheh conducted a study to investigate how treatment intensity and duration impact learning across different treatment domains, including academic, adaptive, cognitive, executive function, language, motor, play, and social. The results indicated that treatment intensity and duration were both significant predictors of mastered learning objectives across all treatment domains .

  So why ABA? Why and how is it effective in treating autism. In ABA, we study the child’s environments and determine how we can best increase and decrease behaviors. And this means everything and anything, and this can also include skills sets that involve speech and occupational therapy. It’s not to say that one treatment trumps over the others, but it’s to say that ABA can many times be the most effective in showing significant progress across areas that are more than just treating maladaptive behaviors. We focus on providing our...]]>A great way to make a quick observation of how your child is developing is...

  1. Do a quick research of a timeline and understand the developmental milestones that your child should be meeting. At what age should my child be babbling sounds and trying to mimic words? Engaging in joint attention and be interested in playing with other children?  Crawling? Playing with toys? Etc.

  2. Immediately set up those peer dates with anyone and everyone that you can possibly expose your child to. Seeing your child in the same environment as their peers will help you to see what is typical and what is not.

  If you are in a place of thinking your child may need help but maybe you're afraid, confused, and unsure. I hear you. I may not have directly experienced what it’s felt like to receive the news that my child has an autism diagnosis and that they won’t develop like their neuro-typical peers, but what I do know is what can lie on the flip side of the timeline once your child begins receiving treatment. Every parent that I have worked with has experienced the same type of fear and uncertainty, but I have yet to have met a family that has EVER regretted their decision to get their child’s autism diagnosis treated. 

  ABA treatment: Why is it the most effective? We cover research proving the effectiveness of ABA treatment. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a therapy treatment based on the science of learning and behavior. What we do as behavior analysts is take a look at an individual’s specific behavior and determine if this is this a behavior that we need to increase or decrease? If a child is aggressive or engages in excessive tantrums, that’s a behavior we want to decrease. Eye contact, functional language, social skills are all behaviors we want to increase in our children. This is where we begin to evaluate the environments that the child is in and determine what the child’s main motivators are in order for us to create a controlled environment that will also us to most successfully teach a child various skill sets and decrease undesired behaviors.

  ABA has been proven in over 20 different research studies that intensive and long-term therapy using ABA principles improves outcomes for many children diagnosed with autism. The Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore Maryland is an internationally recognized institution dedicated to improving the lives of children and young adults with pediatric developmental disabilities through patient care, special education, research, and professional training. I’ll be linking you to their website that discusses their stance on ABA treatment on our facebook page. But over the past 40 years, an extensive amount of research has documented the success of ABA-based treatment to reduce problem behavior and increase appropriate skills for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), autism, and related disorders.

  Another study to note was published in September 2017. E Linstead, D R Dixon, E Hong, C O Burns, R French, M N Novack, and D Granpeesheh conducted a study to investigate how treatment intensity and duration impact learning across different treatment domains, including academic, adaptive, cognitive, executive function, language, motor, play, and social. The results indicated that treatment intensity and duration were both significant predictors of mastered learning objectives across all treatment domains .

  So why ABA? Why and how is it effective in treating autism. In ABA, we study the child’s environments and determine how we can best increase and decrease behaviors. And this means everything and anything, and this can also include skills sets that involve speech and occupational therapy. It’s not to say that one treatment trumps over the others, but it’s to say that ABA can many times be the most effective in showing significant progress across areas that are more than just treating maladaptive behaviors. We focus on providing our children with foundational life skills, in adaptive, social, language, and cognitive skills, so that we can naturally see a decrease in their need to communicate with us through inappropriate behaviors such as aggression, self injurious behaviors, tantrums, and so much more.  

  Please note that there are tons of ABA service providers that are out there providing services and treatment to children that are not providing good effective ABA. This means that you NEED to do your research on the different ABA providers around you. If you go to our facebook page @whattheautism, I’ll be posting a list of questions you be asking potential providers prior to deciding on your ABA provider. Ask your ABA provider questions and see if your child can benefit under their care. If you disagree with their perspectives or treatment, ask them specific questions on the whys and hows of their treatment, and if you come across a great ABA provider, you’ll be amazed by what you can learn about the field of ABA. 

  Another advice I want to provide to those that will be or are working with a specific ABA provider is to understand the clinical reasoning behind the BCBA clinician’s recommendation. If your child is noticeably behind in social, language, play skills, and cognitive skills and your ABA provider is recommending anything less than 15-20 hours/week of ABA therapy, please speak to the clinician about their rationale of their recommendation. I’ll be covering the topic of clinical recommendations within the next couple episodes where I’ll be discussing what goes on in the mind’s of a BCBA clinician when we provide you with the clinical recommendation of the number of hours your child should be receiving ABA therapy; however, in the mean time, I’ll be posting some resources that may help you better understand the intensity of services your child should be receiving. 

  Regardless of what treatment your child is receiving, whether that is ABA, Occupational therapy, speech therapy, various treatments through medication, or even a combination of any of these, it’s important that you always question the information and fall back onto the research that’s been conducted for each of these treatments.

  ]]>fbef5dc1-2b50-4579-a83a-cdeb1b4aa74dSun, 27 Dec 2020 09:00:00 -070015:42nofull3Amanda KimWhat does Autism look like?In today’s episode we will be first talking about the diagnostic criteria of autism and what qualifies a child to be diagnosed with ASD. Then we’ll be covering 2 research reviews/articles about the diagnostic criteria and then lastly, we’ll be covering some helpful resources, such as the MCHAT screening questionnaire, and what you could do to be more autism aware. 

  
  

  ]]>In today’s episode we will be first talking about the diagnostic criteria of autism and what qualifies a child to be diagnosed with ASD. Then we’ll be covering 2 research reviews/articles about the diagnostic criteria and then lastly, we’ll be covering some helpful resources, such as the MCHAT screening questionnaire, and what you could do to be more autism aware. 

  
  

  ]]>9ce303e8-91a4-43a6-88e5-c76e88461bcbWed, 23 Dec 2020 09:00:00 -070016:05nofull2Amanda KimWhat is Autism?So what is Autism?

  In episode 1, we cover the definition of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability and how it can impact an individual's daily life. Did you know that the prevalence rate of ASD in the United States is 1 in 54 children?!! That’s almost 2% of the US population of children! This episodes covers how as a community, we can promote for change in our education system, insurance and health care policies, and any other support systems in order to ensure that the autistic population has a fair chance in becoming successful independent members of our society. 

  Follow us on our Facebook and Instagram page @whattheautism, where I’ll be posting some helpful resources and links on where you can find some of the most recent research studies conducted on autism.

  We post new episodes every Wednesday morning at 8am (PST). Feel free to email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com for any questions or recommendations for future episodes.

  
  

  ]]>So what is Autism?

  In episode 1, we cover the definition of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability and how it can impact an individual's daily life. Did you know that the prevalence rate of ASD in the United States is 1 in 54 children?!! That’s almost 2% of the US population of children! This episodes covers how as a community, we can promote for change in our education system, insurance and health care policies, and any other support systems in order to ensure that the autistic population has a fair chance in becoming successful independent members of our society. 

  Follow us on our Facebook and Instagram page @whattheautism, where I’ll be posting some helpful resources and links on where you can find some of the most recent research studies conducted on autism.

  We post new episodes every Wednesday morning at 8am (PST). Feel free to email us at whattheautismpodcast@gmail.com for any questions or recommendations for future episodes.

  
  

  ]]>0db9bf4c-17fb-4949-a721-88d91694b2dfSun, 20 Dec 2020 08:00:00 -070008:29nofull1Amanda Kim