Anxiety

Hello again Longman

Re how is this intervention being explained to parents - its an intervention that is not really very well known in this country, unfortunately.  If a parent is interested in learning about it, they can get in touch with someone who is trained to support the family to use the intervention.  There is a list of trained Consultants here:

http://www.rdiconnect.com/pages/Find-a-Consultant.aspx

One of the reasons I am writing my blog is to try to explain it to parents and professionals who are interested in it - I include video footage and a written analysis of the clips in the hope that this helps to explain the intervention more fully, as well as discussing some of the theory in other blog posts.

Episodic memories (EM) can be generated in people with autism in the same way that they are generated in typical development in the early years.  Lets say I am supporting a parent to develop EM in their child who has autism.  First of all, I would work with the parent to re-establish whats called the 'guided participation relationship' with their child.  This is the crucible of child development and is common to every culture across the world.  Children with autism are unable to participate in this relationship because the autism takes them on a different developmental pathway.  I've also written about this on my blog.

Once the GPR is in place, I would support the parent to give the child experiences where s/he achieves some form of success (competently resolving a challenge or a breakdown in an activity) and increase the odds of an EM being captured by spotlighting the child's success with subtle non-verbal actions such as altering voice tone and volume of vocalisation (such as "Oooooohh").

You can actually check whether an EM has been encoded afterwards by revisiting the activity ie talking about it and waiting to see if there is a recognition of the crucial moment (the moment of competence/success).  Usually the child will smile once you get to the point where you talk about their competence and/or they will start taking over the description of the event themselves.

So - there is a means of realising the objective but it is part of a much wider developmental approach and it is not something that is a quick fix, or something that can be 'taught'.  Basically it entails going back, establishing the guided participation relationship (which can be done with adults with autism too, not just children with autism) and re-doing the developmental steps that were missed first time round.

I made the point at the NW launch of the 'You Need to Know' campaign last week that campaigning for better mental health services for people with autism is just one side of the coin - we also need to be promoting and lobbying for interventions that seek to develop resilience in people with autism because resilience has been shown in research to be key to good emotional health.

Zoe

Hello again Longman

Re how is this intervention being explained to parents - its an intervention that is not really very well known in this country, unfortunately.  If a parent is interested in learning about it, they can get in touch with someone who is trained to support the family to use the intervention.  There is a list of trained Consultants here:

http://www.rdiconnect.com/pages/Find-a-Consultant.aspx

One of the reasons I am writing my blog is to try to explain it to parents and professionals who are interested in it - I include video footage and a written analysis of the clips in the hope that this helps to explain the intervention more fully, as well as discussing some of the theory in other blog posts.

Episodic memories (EM) can be generated in people with autism in the same way that they are generated in typical development in the early years.  Lets say I am supporting a parent to develop EM in their child who has autism.  First of all, I would work with the parent to re-establish whats called the 'guided participation relationship' with their child.  This is the crucible of child development and is common to every culture across the world.  Children with autism are unable to participate in this relationship because the autism takes them on a different developmental pathway.  I've also written about this on my blog.

Once the GPR is in place, I would support the parent to give the child experiences where s/he achieves some form of success (competently resolving a challenge or a breakdown in an activity) and increase the odds of an EM being captured by spotlighting the child's success with subtle non-verbal actions such as altering voice tone and volume of vocalisation (such as "Oooooohh").

You can actually check whether an EM has been encoded afterwards by revisiting the activity ie talking about it and waiting to see if there is a recognition of the crucial moment (the moment of competence/success).  Usually the child will smile once you get to the point where you talk about their competence and/or they will start taking over the description of the event themselves.

So - there is a means of realising the objective but it is part of a much wider developmental approach and it is not something that is a quick fix, or something that can be 'taught'.  Basically it entails going back, establishing the guided participation relationship (which can be done with adults with autism too, not just children with autism) and re-doing the developmental steps that were missed first time round.

I made the point at the NW launch of the 'You Need to Know' campaign last week that campaigning for better mental health services for people with autism is just one side of the coin - we also need to be promoting and lobbying for interventions that seek to develop resilience in people with autism because resilience has been shown in research to be key to good emotional health.

Zoe