Autism and Special Diets

A report released in an issue of Pediatrics states that there is no proof that special diets help or don’t help children with autism.  The study was conducted by a panel of 28 experts made up of professionals from 12 scientific disciplines, including child psychiatry, pediatric allergy, pediatric gastroenterology, and pediatric nutrition. The panel evaluated scientific evidence regarding gastrointestinal disorders in all forms of autism across the spectrum and concluded that there is no evidence that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared with other children, or that special diets help alleviate some of the behavioral problems associated with autism.

Like any research released about children with autism, the report sparked some intense debate.  One reason for the controversy is that many parents say that restrictive diets have helped their children by combating symptoms and behavior problems of autistic children. What’s important to note however, is that the panel did acknowledge in their report that many parents and medical professionals have reported improvements in autistic behaviors after dietary treatment, but that these observations aren't based on controlled, scientific studies. In other words, they are anecdotal. Many parents try the restrictive diets after hearing anecdotes from other parents but this is not proof enough for scientists and doctors. Additionally, usually these children are receiving other treatments (i.e. special education, speech therapy, behavior intervention, etc.) which only confounds the conclusion that the diets are the sole responsible, or responsible at all for the improvements.

Based on the research, the panel concluded that there is still no proof that special diets help or don't help autistic kids -- or that food allergies, food sensitivities, or gut problems cause autism. Harvard's Timothy Buie, MD and chair of the panel noted "Anecdotal reports that restricted diets may ameliorate symptoms of ASDs in some children have not been supported or refuted in the scientific literature, but these data do not address the possibility that there exists a subgroup of individuals who may respond to such diets."

Bottom line? Because of the anecdotal evidence, a parent with a child with autism may be inclined to try a special diet. But as with any alternative treatment, we strongly recommended that a child following a restricted diet be carefully monitored by a nutritionist and a medical professional.

 

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com  

What are some of the common signs of Autism?

Scientists aren’t certain what causes autism, but it’s likely that both genetics and environment play a role. Many parents ask how they will know if their child is autistic. More often than not, parents may suspect that something is “off” about their child but ignore the warning signs out of fear or denial.  Better safe than sorry is the best philosophy if you have any concerns. Early intervention is crucial when it comes to treating autism so don’t feel ashamed to ask your pediatrician for a second opinion sooner rather than later.

Sometimes a speech delay is just a speech delay but if your toddler is displaying one or more of these early warning signs it is important to seek help as soon as possible:

 

·       Impaired social interaction

·       Problems with verbal and non-verbal communication

·       Failure to respond to name

·       Avoidance of eye contact with other people

·       Repetitive movements such as rocking or twirling

·       Self-abusive behavior such as biting or head-banging

 Watching the baby’s behaviors is the best way to recognize whether something seems “off.” If you are a new parents, asking around and observing other babies in the family (look for videos if they already grew up), or in the community (the park, the grocery store, etc.) is the best way to go.

Do not jump to the conclusion that if your baby is displaying odd behaviors she necessarily has the disorder. Once again, when in doubt ask your pediatrician.

Here is a great video about how to recognize the early signs of Autism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VA6Q3vTC_o

Getting informed is the best advice I can give you. And keep in mind that having the disorder does not mean a sentence of unhappiness for life. There are effective ways to help your child to be a happy and productive member of society.

We are here to help you, you are not alone.

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com

 

 

 

 

 

What’s your talent?

The special education teacher is asking her students “What’s your talent?” Which made me think that children with special needs may not have a talent. With some exemptions they can’t really excel at anything. And I couldn’t help but wonder how one would feel in that situation. It’s not that everybody is especially talented, but regular developed people are able to experience and savor success, at least from time to time.

As parents we rejoice on our kids talents. They are good at sports, singing, mathematic or arts. How is it to be a parent of a special needs child who is good at nothing?

And this made me realize that our job as parents, teachers, therapists, is to teach our special needs kids to be good at something. Teaching skills where there is lack of, developing abilities where there is disability, fostering success where there is chronic failure.

These kids give up before trying. They stop playing. They might not even get in the game. It’s painful to watch. It requires a lot of patience and energy to motivate them to keep going, or even to make them try to play.

Learning, socializing, trying new experiences, meeting new contingencies of reinforcement (fancy terms we behaviorist use which simply means obtaining rewards from the environment) require motivation, understanding success and failure, visualizing how great it would feel to win or get an A. It requires the ability to connect past experiences with possibilities in the future. All processes very difficult or impossible for people with special needs.

Lack of motivation to learn and get better at something is arguably one of the main features of individuals in the autism spectrum.  Some of them do not to like anything. Others, perseverate in dysfunctional use of objects.  

Therefore, I think it is our job to expose them to success. Contrived rewards and praise have to be built into their daily schedule of activities, at home and at school. Instead of waiting for them to fail to reprimand them, let’s set the environment and provide them with the necessary support to succeed. In some cases the task requires a great deal of work and patience. How you keep your “cool” when they are throwing a tantrum in the grocery store, screaming to the top of their lungs, hitting and kicking you? Realizing that they are suffering and it’s our job to help them and not the other way around can be a very effective shift of perspective. 

Another important factor to consider is the need to teach them social skills, especially how to play with others. What regular developed kids learn by themselves has to be taught to these children. Spending some time playing with them, coaching them through the turn taking/sharing/following-the-rules/winning-losing processes can be a challenging but crucial task to support special needs children achieved success.   

Let’s help them win and we’ll be winners.

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA
cadatto@tesidea.com

     

Teaching self-advocacy to a child with special needs

Teaching a child with special needs self-advocacy skills can have a tremendous impact on a child’s future success in all aspects of his/her life. Self-advocacy involves knowing when and how to approach others in order to negotiate special accommodations that are needed to achieve maximum success. For a child with autism, this can involve learning how to articulate when a particular situation is overwhelming and asking for help. For example, imagine a student with autism being asked to take an important test in a room illuminated with fluorescent lights. This kind of lighting can be very distracting to a person on the spectrum and might hinder test performance. If an individual knows how to self-advocate, they will know how to appropriately request special accommodations.

Parents should begin teaching self-advocacy at a very early age by taking advantage of real life situations and modeling good advocacy skills. If you see that your child gets very easily over-stimulated by the sights, sounds and smells of large stores like Target, you can teach your child to recognize and articulate those feelings. Even before children learn to speak, parents can begin to teach them to express feelings in an appropriate manner in order to get their needs met. For example, if you see that your child is starting to get uncomfortable (most parents recognize the pre-meltdown signs - it is helpful to become aware of those signals), you can ask your child if he/she is having a difficult time.  Model the words for your child and request that they repeat it back if they can. You can model by saying “Mommy, it’s very loud in this store, I need to go somewhere quieter”. For a young child, this will go a long way in preventing tantrums and meltdowns. As the child gets older, being able to express these needs could mean the difference between success and failure at school, college, in relationships or in the workplace.

When a child with special needs reaches school age, teaching self-advocacy should be continued by the schools. Parents should request that it be part of the IEP as it is a necessary part of the child’s education if they are to become more effective citizens.

As the parent of a hearing impaired child, I witnessed first-hand the outcome when a child is taught to self-advocate at a very young age. At first it may be the role of the specialist to advocate on behalf of the child but as the child gets older, he/she learns to do this in a completely independent manner. Currently in 7thd grade, my daughter has had the benefit of working with deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) specialists who have taught her self-advocacy since a young age. Now at the age of 12, she always knows to request to sit at the front of the class and to request that the teacher repeat instructions if she misses something important. When there are spelling tests, she doesn’t hesitate to remind the teacher to face her when reciting the spelling words, or even ask that they be used in a sentence if there is a word she can’t decipher.

Once we were out to brunch with our extended family when my 6-year old niece asked my daughter if she would sit next to her at the table. My daughter said no. At first I thought she was just being difficult and told her to mind her manners. As parents we tend not to give our kids the benefit of the doubt. My daughter quickly put me in my place. She insisted on sitting across from her cousin. After we settled at the table and were all quietly reading the menu, my daughter looked up at her cousin, and without any prompting explained to her that the reason she wanted to sit across from her and not next to her was so that she would be able to see her mouth and therefore understand her better (she relies on lip-reading to an extent and especially in noisy environments). I was amazed by her maturity and ability to be so self-aware. She instinctively recognized that it was going to be difficult to hear her cousin in the noisy environment of a restaurant and that it will be easier to converse if she had the ability to see her face and read her lips from across the table. Even more impressive was the fact that she was completely unapologetic about it, simply stating very matter-of-factly that this was what she needed and why. 

As this example demonstrates, there are important benefits that come with learning about one’s strengths and challenges in order to successfully adjust the environment to accommodate one’s needs and it can be accomplished at a very young age.

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com

Another look at stress management

Stresses of everyday life are virtually unavoidable, whether they are job or business worries, family problems, or social stresses. People who feel themselves to be competent are generally able to cope with these stresses and make the proper adjustments, often bringing the problems to satisfactory resolutions. On the other hand, for other people normal stress situations can be overwhelming, not because the challenges are actually so enormous, but because they feel unable to cope with them.

For more information and tips about stress management please see our February 2012 blog

at http://totaleducationsolutions.blogspot.com/search?q=Stress

Today I want to give you another perspective on this important topic.

I recently learned that patience is not equivalent to delay of gratification. Delay of gratification involves a choice to wait. Patience does not always involve a choice to wait or not, patience is deciding how to wait. Instead of changing the situation, patient people change themselves to fit the situation.

As I discussed in previous blogs we, behavior analysts, work on changing the situation, not the person. Environmental variables are arranged to prevent the challenging behaviors and trigger the desired ones. So, how does this definition of patience fit here? How does it apply to parenting?

Modern life requires multitasking, which is proven to lead to high stress and frustration levels, involves a dispersion of minds: doing several things at the same time reduces your capacity to focus. Patience here could be focusing on the priority at any given time. Try to stay focused. When you are engaged in something important (taking care of your kids, for example) nothing else exists (i.e. turn your phone off). Anything not pertinent to the matter does not exist right now. If you’re playing with your kids, feeding them or dealing with a tantrum, your kids are the most important thing at the time; that should be your priority.     

Use your time successfully. You can’t add time, but you can make the most of it. 

Here are some tips:

-        Cut the things you can cut. Unclutter your life.

-        Speak about your worries with somebody else, somebody who will listen without judging.

-        Cast it away, forget about it. You worry if you think about it. If you forget, you don’t worry. Distract yourself with something else, it’s not enough to try “not to think about something”, you need to direct your mind to other matters. When you feel overwhelmed, try playing solitaire on your computer, listen to your favorite song, or read a book you like.

-        Learn to prioritize.

Take care of yourself. That’s the first step.

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com  

 

California to again cover autism therapy

“…This is something that is going to make a lot of difference for a lot of families in California,” says Norman Williams, the Department of Health Care Services spokesman in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. He is talking about Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Children in California enrolled in public healthcare are to regain access to this form of therapy for children with autism after September 15, 2014 when the state became the first in the country to comply with the new federal guidelines issued in July 2014.  

“It can be the difference from a child who can’t communicate at all to being able to say ‘I’m hungry.’ Or ‘I’m tired,’” said Kristin Jacobson, president of Autism Deserves Equal Coverage, an advocacy group.

An article like this should be on the front page of the newspaper. If you are not affected by autism in your family, you might not understand why I’m saying this. The syndrome involves several areas of deficit, including challenging and antisocial behaviors that not only segregates these children, but have a strong effect on their families and cost a great deal of money to the taxpayers. If these children do not receive the help they need they could end up being a heavy burden on society as adults. They might need assistance for life and some of them will never become productive members of society.

ABA therapy involves working closely and intensively with these children to improve their behaviors and develop functional skills. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, which makes it inaccessible for a majority of families. While private insurance companies must cover the therapy under California law as of a few years ago, it has been left out of Medi-Cal, the sate version of Medicaid.

“This important milestone will ensure that all children in California, regardless of their economic status, will have access to life-changing treatment for autism spectrum disorders,” Senate President Darrell Steinberg said.   

As a proud professional dedicated and committed to implementing ABA therapy with people with special needs, I couldn’t agree more. I see firsthand on a daily basis the burden this spectrum can cause to families. I share in their happiness when their child finally speaks, plays with other kids in the playground instead of standing aside flapping hands or asks for help to complete their work independently. One of the therapists I supervise showed me a few days ago how our student is now able to do one-digit additions by himself. It made my day.  Another student is finally asking for water and to go to the bathroom independently. These may seem like minor steps. Believe me, it is huge for these children.

This is why this article is definitely worthy of the front page news.

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com

What a school can do when it wants to

This was the title of the email that caught the attention of the author of the editorial of the September 30^th Los Angeles Times edition.

The story you will read of what this school district did for Eunice might seem routine. Sadly it’s not. But today we will focus on the positive. “What the school has done for my daughter, you won’t even believe it,” says Sari Weiner.

Eunice, a 14-year old girl, spent most of her life in foster care before moving in with Sari Weiner two years ago. “The district spotted the talent in this bright but neglected girl and nurtured her so she can reach her potential.”
You may wonder, is that so exceptional? Isn’t that what a finely tuned educational system should do?
Eunice had attended 15 different schools by the time she was 12. Her elementary school record was full of failures and emotional outbursts. She was then placed in a special education class for disabled students. Last year she made the transition to general education. This year she’s enrolled in honors English, history and science classes. “The staff at Hale, a charter school, tutored, challenged, listened and encouraged Eunice in class and out,” Ms. Weiner says. “They learned to tolerate her moods and taught her to trust them. They know when to ease up the pressure and when to give her a nudge.”

Eunice’s teachers had apparently focused on her strengths and devoted a great deal of time, energy and patience to understanding rather than blaming and scolding her. A failure turned into success. Can you imagine what would happen if all teachers were like that? How many kids trapped in the gridlock of mediocrity and disdain could be saved from a permanent state of punishment and turned into productive and happy members of society?

I once heard the phrase “every child has strengths.” Visiting special education classes on a daily basis I can see firsthand how many children go through the system without anybody ever discovering their strengths. Some classes look more like daycare centers than special education.

I feel it is our mission to help these students triumph like Eunice, to become success stories. Passion and compassion have to be part of the recipe. Knowledge and experience are crucial too. Education has to be encouraging and motivating. Instruction for special needs kids has to be individualized. Lunch and recess have to be opportunities for learning self-help and social skills, and not break time for teachers and aides. Music, arts, audiovisual technology have to be the rule because these kids need an extra dose of motivation. We don’t have the luxury of losing them because of boredom.

Like water in California these days, every moment is precious, there is no time to waste.

 

Daniel Adatto, BCBA

cadatto@tesidea.com