Good Blog for Autism Grandparents

There is a Texas-based company whose website has some good blog articles – with new ones posted weekly. The company is Behavioral Innovations and its website is behavioral-innovations.com. Behavioral Innovations is an ABA company, and many of its blog articles are about ABA therapy, but a lot of them aren’t. And many of them can be especially helpful to autism grandparents.

JC and I read to our 5-year-old granddaughter, Angelina, when she is in our care, and one article, posted on 2/18/2022, has been helpful: “Best Books by Age for Kids with Autism.” The article begins by asking and explaining a few questions such as: What is your goal for your child? What are your child’s special interests? And What skills do you want your child to develop? (You can find books about brushing teeth, getting along with siblings, etc.) The article tells about 14 different books. ALL MY STRIPES: A STORY FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM, by Shaina Rudolph and Danielle Royer, is about a Zebra with autism and his feelings about being different from other children. This is a book that, with parental approval, we autism grandparents might feel comfortable to reading to our grandchildren. Another recommended book is WHY DOES IZZY COVER HER EARS? by Jennifer Veenendall. Izzy experiences sensory overload and her behaviors are misunderstood. This is another book that we autism grandparents may want to read to our grandchildren.

Another article on the site, posted on 2/3/2022, is entitled “Aggression in Children With Autism? How to Manage Aggressive Behavior.” If we have challenges with aggressive behavior when our grandchildren are in our care, this article can be helpful.

An article that JC and I relate to, posted on 1/31/2022, is entitled “7 Ways to Teach Independent Living Skills to Kids with Autism.” Even though Angelina is only 5 years old, JC shows her how to help with various household chores and I show her how to help when I cook. When our grandchildren are in our care, there are lots of ways we can help them learn skills for independent living.

And the 1/26/21 article is actually a 1-minute video entitled “Potty Training Tips.” The major takeaway from this video for us grandparents is that successful potty training requires everyone to be on the same page. So even though we grandparents may want to approach potty training differently from their parents when our grandchildren are in our care, that wouldn’t be productive.

At this writing the website’s blog contains over 60 articles, and I suspect that every autism grandparent will find a few that are both helpful and relevant to their own situation.

Autism Grandparents and Autism Blogs

Google “autism blogs” and you’ll see lots of sites including sites that list the top 10 autism blogs, top 40 autism blogs, and even top 100 autism blogs.

Now Google “autism blogs for grandparents” or “blogs for autism grandparents” and you’ll be able to find only one blog for grandparents – the site on which this article is being published: www.autismgrandparentsclub.com. I haven’t been able to find even one other ongoing series of articles written specifically for autism grandparents. Ditto for “blogs for special needs grandparents.”

BUT, we autism grandparents can help our grandchildren by spending time reading various autism blogs. Why? Because we can learn things that can be valuable to our grandchildren’s parents – and of course valuable to us in our relationships with our autistic grandchildren. Our grandchildren’s parents are usually so consumed with daily challenges that they don’t have time to explore blogs – or to do much of any sort of autism research. I’ve found several productive things just by exploring autism blogs that I’ve passed on to my granddaughter’s (Angelina) parents that they wouldn’t have known about otherwise – things that have had a positive impact on Angelina’s life. For example, a blog is where I got the idea for one of Angelina’s favorite learning activities that involves containers of water and food coloring. I’ve found a couple of her favorite books on blogs, an autism book that has been helpful to her parents, and insider advice for IEP meetings that has been helpful for Angelina and her parents.

So where do we autism grandparents begin? Which blogs are best? Which blogs can we trust? Unfortunately there is no guidebook. It has to be intuitive. Following are a few things that I’ve learned from continually browsing autism blogs.

1. Titles can be misleading. I don’t refer anyone else to a specific blog until I first read it myself. For example, following are some seemingly obvious titles of blog articles that I discovered just today, but haven’t yet read: “Using Video Technology to Support Autistic Individuals,” “Successful Adulthood Starts in Childhood,” “The Do’s and Don’ts of Overcoming Sensory Issues at the Dentist,” and “8 Ways Yoga Therapy Can Benefit Children With Autism.” Hopefully each of these articles is helpful regarding the specific topic, but I’ve learned that some are not.
   

2. Be skeptical of miracle therapies. Just as the prevalence of autism is increasing, so is the number of miracle therapies that are being praised – and it seems that all of them find their way into autism blogs. Here’s what I do when I read about a therapy that sounds miraculous: I simply Google the name of the therapy followed by the word “controversy” – for example, “Son-Rise Program Controversy.” (That’s a real therapy program that’s apparently praised by lots of autism families.) If there are problems with the therapy, Google will find them.
   

3. Offering stuff for sale is not an indicator of a blog’s value. I’ve found that there a lot of autism blogs that provide opportunities for us to part with our money: to buy books and t-shirts, to donate to good causes, to participate in workshops, etc. I’ve also learned that commerce and philanthropy are not indicators of a blog’s value or quality. So I don’t let that turn me off. In fact, one of my very favorite blogs is the ongoing series of articles written by Dr. Mary Barbera, a Board-Certified Behavioral Analyst and Ph.D. holder whose website offers a full range of commerce. Another blog site that offers commerce and philanthropy is “Finding Cooper’s Voice” which is widely praised and beloved.

My bottom-line suggestion for autism grandparents is to simply spend time exploring autism blogs. For me, a half hour of exploration every two or three days for a couple of months was enough to make me feel comfortable in the autism blogosphere and to find some blogs that I like. We can find things on blogs that can be helpful to our grandchildren and their parents.

Grandparents and Ido in Autismland

The book, Ido in Autismland, by Ido Kedar, was published in 2012. Its fundamental message is something that everyone – especially autism families – should be aware of: a highly intelligent, deep-thinking mind is sometimes locked inside of a non-communicative, constantly-stimming, terrible-behaviored, unresponsive person who is diagnosed with severe autism. Ido Kedar, who had made little progress during years of ABA therapy and was evaluated by all of the experts as having only minimal cognitive ability, found a teacher who used unconventional strategies and ignored the diagnoses of the experts and taught Ido to communicate. He credits her for saving his life.

Communication enabled Ido to reveal his high intelligence, and he went almost immediately from rudimentary “touch your nose” ABA drills to high-level performance in mainstream schools. His writings are professional level. His speeches are moving and profound. And if not for the unconventional teacher, he would still be locked inside of a physical body that he is unable to control and from which he is unable to communicate.

Why is this book, this basic concept, especially important for autism grandparents? The answer is that we autism grandparents are usually not overwhelmed by the daily stresses and challenges that autism parents continually face. We grandparents usually have more time to simply think, to observe, to see things holistically and in perspective. If our autistic grandchild is unable to communicate and does poorly with ABA therapy and is deemed to have low intelligence by well-meaning, highly-qualified experts, perhaps we grandparents are in position to be the only ones who can see some sort of “spark” that indicates that there may be a vibrant, intelligent mind locked inside.

Ido has autistic friends who, like he was, are locked inside uncontrollable bodies with no way to communicate, and who are subjected to ABA therapies that don’t work. (Over and over again Ido was given directives such as “touch your nose” which he understood but couldn’t cause his body to do.) But Ido found an unconventional teacher who used the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM – which “experts” continue to say is inappropriate and ineffective for use in such cases) and spoke to him as she would to a neurotypical person – rather than with simplistic phrases used in early childhood ABA therapy.

Ido first learned to point to letters on a letterboard and immediately demonstrated that he could read and write and was highly intelligent. Today he uses an I-Pad that, as with Stephen Hawking, vocalizes whatever Ido types. He gives speeches, writes a blog, and has now published a novel.

Nevertheless, most “experts” continue to disregard Ido’s plea that that there are many other persons who, like him, can’t communicate and have the “severe autism” label, but have a keen mind and intelligence locked inside. At first most experts thought Ido’s “coming out” was a sham, a trick, some sort of manipulation by his unconventional teacher. Although most experts now believe Ido is the real deal, most still cling to traditional therapies for persons like Ido.

Ido has determined that his mission in life is to help autism experts embrace a new paradigm for dealing with persons with severe autism who can’t communicate. He has friends who are this way, and he says he can often see that “spark” in their eyes. Maybe some of us autism grandparents have observed that same spark.