General Reference - MyHope

Resource List for Parents and Teachers of Children with Developmental Disabilities: Life Skills

General Interventions for Home and at School The Syracuse Community-Referenced Curriculum Guide For Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities. By Alison Ford, Ph.D., Roberta Schnorr, M.S., Luanna Meyer, Ph.D., Linda Davern, M.S., (Syracuse University), Jim Black, M.S., and Patrick Dempsey (Syracuse City School District. Paul H. Brooks. (1989). A collaborative effort between clinicians and educators. […]

Adapting the Environment

Our model of behavior change stresses using two approaches simultaneously: prevention and intervention. Adapting the environment to meet the needs of the child is one way of preventing negative behaviors from occurring. These ideas have been presented to us by other parents of young children. We offer them for your consideration. To ensure safety: Fence-in […]

Supporting Persistence in Children with Developmental Disabilities

“Persistence,” “mastery motivation,” “goal-directedness,” “causality,” “agency” are all terms that can be applied to understanding how an individual perceives his or her competence in impacting the environment or responding to task demands. Although the terminology differs depending upon one’s theoretical orientation, there is consensus across conceptual fields on the following concepts: (1) The processes of […]

Behavior Change Worksheet

Child’s Name: ____________________ Observer: _____________ Target Behavior: __________________ Definition: ______________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Estimated frequency of behavior per hour: Initial goal for behavior reduction: (e.g., reduce by 50%, reduce to 5 per hour, etc.) Situations where behavior tends to occur: Situations where behavior does not tend to occur: Primary function/motivation: Adaptive […]

Steps for Summarizing ED ID Data

Now that you have all of the information collected about the child’s current and past functioning, take yourself through these steps: Make a list or complete a summary table (like the one below) that provides a structure for your observations of behaviors that you saw, heard about, or read about in other reports or […]

Helping Less Verbal Youth with ASD Manage Strong Emotions

Learning Objectives: Participants will recognize how the biological features of ASD make coping (or self-regulation) very challenging, especially when a person doesn’t have easy access to language. Participants will increase awareness of the behavioral signs of escalating anxiety in youth with ASD. Participants will learn about a variety of strategies and resources that can be […]

Go Ahead and Ask: Food Obsessions

Question: My daughter with autism is 14 and non-verbal. Over the past few years, her obsessive-compulsive behaviors have become more of a problem— particularly around issues of food, hoarding, over-eating, etc. We have tried locking the food in cabinets and in the refrigerator. Unfortunately, it has been hard for us to be consistent in locking up […]

How to Help Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Deal with Social Fears and Worries

Children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may experience anxiety symptoms more often than other children. Many children with ASD struggle with social anxiety – or fears and worries associated with social situations, such as school, parties, and outings of all kinds. The critical part about anxiety is: it usually leads to avoidance. […]

Ideas for Toilet Training Using an Alarm System

Steps: Before we introduce the alarm: Determine a schedule for trips to the bathroom for both school and home. If possible, schedule trips to the bathroom between activities (in other words, every day after lunch, or each morning on the way to breakfast). This will help Jonathon to learn to use the bathroom during these […]

Resources for Families of Twice-Exceptional Children

Autism Program at Yale (Yale School of Medicine Child Study Center) Faculty at Yale are actively involved in research, teaching, and technical assistance regarding persons with ASD who are intellectually competent/advanced. Videotaped lectures are archived and available for free on a variety of topics. See their materials for parents and professionals at http://childstudycenter.yale.edu/autism/index.aspx. Boulder (CO) […]

Resources for Families to Support Learning and Independence in School-Aged Children and Teens

Interactive Websites/Computer Resources Brainology. This is a software program designed for late elementary/middle school in particular, with the goal of improving metacognition (i.e., helping students to reflect on their own thoughts and attitudes) and developing motivation and resilience in the face of learning challenges. Brainology.comwww.brainology.us/educator/programDescription.aspxbrainology.com The interactive website may be particularly engaging for science-minded kids. […]

What is behavior?

Behavior is defined as the observable actions performed by an individual; it is what a child does and is usually expressed in verbs (e.g., runs, jumps, waits, requests). For our purposes, there are two kinds of behavior, positive and negative: By negative behavior, we mean those things that your child does that are potentially dangerous, […]