COVID-19 has certainly altered every aspect of our lives, and diagnosing autism was no different. Even though lack of contact and masks made making a diagnosis harder to do, continuing to diagnose autism during COVID was of paramount importance. I talked with Dr. Catherine Lord, a very well-known researcher in the autism world, as well…
Celia Heyman is a Board-Certified Behavioral Analyst, pursuing her doctorate, and fellow autism mom who advocated for her son to get the best compassionate ABA services to help him reach his fullest potential. Celia’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2004 after she noticed he wasn’t talking as much as his older sibling. He was…
Being a parent can be a challenge on any day, but it can be especially challenging if your child starts exhibiting extreme behavior changes and tics that seemingly come out of nowhere. Beth Maloney and her son experienced exactly that in 2002 and didn’t have many resources to turn to. Beth Maloney is sharing her…
Elizabeth’s autism story started with an eating concern. Her young son was stuck on baby food jars, and when he saw solid food, he’d have a visual choking reaction to it. He literally gagged at the sight of food. Because Elizabeth only knew children with autism who were non-verbal or were on the severe side…
I met Amy M. over 20 years ago in pre-Facebook days on an old listserv that doesn’t exist anymore. We connected almost immediately when we realized that we both had sons named Lucas who had been diagnosed within months of each other, and they had similar diagnoses of PDD-NOS. Amy was still trying to figure…
Today’s episode is like a mini-coaching call with Emily R, who joined my book launch team and is at the beginning of her journey of using the Turn Autism Around approach to help turn autism around for her son. Emily’s son Kash was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2 after showing some of…
BCBA Chelsea Gamache joins me to talk about selective mutism and the similarities and differences between selective mutism and autism. She describes herself as having been born into the world of selective mutism. She was an anxious baby, and she grew up afraid to interact with people. When she started formal schooling, her teacher mentioned…
Most of us have experience with autism and medical issues but what do you do if you have a child who doesn't communicate and you think they might be in pain? Some children might bite when they’re in distress, and other children might become aggressive. But without the language to tell us how they feel,…
Collecting data for the sake of collecting data is a waste of your time. That’s why in the fourth step of the Turn Autism Around approach, I share a variety of ways to collect data, and then I show you how to use that data to analyze and understand how to help a child. In…
In rapid succession, Jennifer N.’s four children, ages 13, 8, and 3-year-old twins, were all diagnosed with autism. To compound her situation, she was living in Holland, where at the time there was only one BCBA in the entire country. Hear how she navigated this rough beginning to become a BCBA herself, and how she successfully launched all four of her children into adulthood.