T. Grandin: Get Students/Volunteers for 20 hours a week.

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Temple Grandin gave a speech earlier this year and the following is some of what she said.

http://www.booktv.org/Program/14536/The ... ctrum.aspx

(see 39:03 into the speech)

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A mother asked about her 4-year-old son who, since being diagnosed at age 2, his main issues has been his lack of engagement and attention. And like Carly Fleischmann, his internal and external . . . (audio). The family is doing one hour of speech a week, two hours of OT, and is about to start DRI floor time.

Temple said, little kids need like 20 hours a week of one-on-ones. People are going out and going bankrupt and mortgaging their home. Don’t do that. And if you try and do it yourself, you’ll go crazy. But get some students, get some volunteers. And watch what your speech therapist does, watch what your OT does, and watch what your floor time person does. And then you need to do a whole lot more. [Emphasis added.]

People fight over which method we’re going to use and there’s the Denver Start method [ESDM] that’s a little different than ABA. But I think the thing that’s important is enough hours with an effective teacher who’s kind of gently persuasive to pull it out of the kid. Because one hour of speech a week is not enough.

. . . the thing that has the most evidence-based is doing just the one-on-one therapies . . .

. . . what my speech teacher did, and this may work similar to the Listening Program . . .

. . . Play turn-taking games. Board games are great . . .

. . . Some teachers have the knack and other teachers don’t . . .

I know that ABA and other autism therapies can help some children a lot, but I think of myself when I was a kid, and I think of myself having to spend 20+ hours a week with a therapist, and I think that I would have gone nuts with so much hoooman interaction, others interfering with my happy alone time.

I'm glad that I didn't have autism therapies when I was a kid and only had to go to school to learn things by myself.

The one "therapy" that I had was language learning for maybe 5 hours a week at school.

I don't think that I personally would have ended up higher functioning with therapies, maybe lower functioning and more socially anxious is my guess.

Temple herself needed someone to never give up on her and draw her out. I think that is why she finds it essential. And, well, that is protocol for the kids who are really not tuning in or communicating.

Interesting what she says about volunteers. The key is really the engagement and patience, and not necessarily formal training, that seems to underlie her point there. And, well, it doesn't help the child if the parents stress themselves out trying to pay for things they can't afford. We talk over and over on this forum about handling things calmly and consistently; parents need to be their best selves to do that, and not some run-ragged shadow of themselves.

For me, it wasn't about drawing out in the first person.

I don't think that would have worked for me.

I would have ignored the therapists trying to interact with me.

It was more like teaching me what communication was in the third person.

I communicated very little until I learned what communication was in the third person.

I think that autism therapies should focus more on approaches that work more naturally for autistic children instead of many many many hours per week.

For that, will have to learn more about autistic brain.

I'm so glad she recommends 20 hours instead of the usual recommendation of 40 hours a week. Research indicates that 40 hours a week is actually too much, and kids who receive 20 or 30 hours a week of intervention progress better than those receiving 40 hours a week.

I'm trying to do the same in Italy. I don't know if voluteering can work, it has to be tried as a solution. It's not an easy job, you can do this if you love autistic children. I'm glad that autism rights activists in USA are supporting this. Temple Grandin is an higly valued voice, I'm sure it will help.