The Bottom Line
By Jill Hudson and Amy Bixler Coffin; 78 pages. Subtitle: Preparing Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders to Participate in Their Communities
Structure and preparation are essential to successful outings for children with autism and other special needs, but it's sometimes hard for parents to know how to do that. Out and About introduces a blueprint method that lets you fill in the blanks with cool tools that will help your child before, during, and after stressful out-of-home situations. The authors know that we could use a little structure to help us, too.
Pros
- Has one goal -- to introduce and explain the blueprint method -- and fulfills it well
- Offers a nice variety of tools for different areas of need
- Method is easy for parents to implement, and tools are well described and documented
- Empowers parents to take control in an area where they often feel overwhelmed and disheartened
- Since many examples are school-related, it's a good resource for sharing with teachers
Cons
- Since many examples are school-related, they may seem less useful for those needing home help
- Although there are many sample uses, the book's short enough that there could have been more
- Blank blueprint in the back of book does not fit on one page, as the examples throughout do
- Tidy and cheerful results in sample cases may not be so easily reproducible at home
Description
- Introduction
- About This Book
- The Blueprint
- The Tools
- The Blueprint in Action: Recreational Activities, Restaurants, Stores, Appointments, Public Places, Trips, Special Events
- Summary
- Appendix
- References
Guide Review - Book Review: Out and About
Bringing children with special needs out into the community is good for building their social skills and keeping their families in touch with the real world -- but it's also an important act of advocacy. We don't want our kids to be invisible and excluded. We also don't want those community members to be seeing them at their worst, yet going out and about often brings out the worst and brings about meltdowns.
Structure helps kids with autism and other special needs handle stressful situations, and it also helps parents plan more effectively for success. Authors Hudson and Coffin provide plenty for both with a "blueprint" that adults can fill out with helpful methods for managing waiting time, communication, social skills, visual reinforcement, hidden curriculum, sensory needs, motivation, behavior, transitions, and siblings or other students. For each category, there's a space for a strategy and a desired outcome. The blueprint form also includes a place to list additional activities for school and home to help prepare for the outing, and a "REWIND" to think about what worked and what might need to be tweaked for next time.
Personally, I love having charts to fill out. It makes me feel like I know what I'm doing, and these blueprints seem to anticipate all the trouble spots I've hit with my own son in the wider world. The book shares a variety of tools that are also practical, easy to implement, and right on the mark for dealing with the behaviors kids with autism and other special needs may display. The bulk of the book then puts those tools into action in case studies of kids in specific situations. They should give you a pretty good idea of how to implement the strategies shared, even if they don't exactly correspond to your own situation.
It's always nice to find something new with which to fill up our parenting bag of tricks. This book helps organize it, too.
