P.S. 373R Autism Spectrum Disorder Information Site

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 6:30pm.  Villa Portofino, 2481 Richmond Road., Staten Island. Complimentary dinner will be served.  Please call Anthony Calabrese at 718-966-3281 to register.

From time to time, we all need moral support, advice and technical help in the parenting of a child or children with autism.  The parent support group is in a group setting for parents to share and help each other solve the problems that we encounter in raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This service is offered free to parents. The next step is yours to take.

All groups are held at 264 Watchogue Road

(Above Jimmy Max-entrance in the rear)

Groups meet the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 10:00am.

 Meeting dates are as follows:

 

 

Tuesday, January 9^th

Tuesday, January 23^rd

Tuesday, Februray 13^th

Tuesday, February 27^th

Tuesday, March 13^th

Tuesday, March 27^th

Tuesday, April 10^th

Tuesday, April 24^th

Tuesday, May 8^th

Tuesday, May 22^nd

Tuesday, June 12^th

Tuesday, June 26^th

Tuesday, September 11^th

Tuesday, September 25^th

Tuesday, October 9^th

Tuesday, October 23^rd

Tuesday, November 13^th

Tuesday, November 27^th

 

For additional information, please contact the

Grace Foundation at (718) 983-3800.

Science Daily — Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as “low functioning” or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do.

Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities–uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example–their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit. They often earn a dubious promotion to “idiot savant.”

But is this true? Are autistics really incapable of abstraction and integration and other high-level thinking? Surprisingly, given how pervasive this view of autism is, it has never been rigorously tested. But a team of scientists in Canada suspected that the tests themselves might be biased and decided to explore the idea in the lab.

Led by psychologist Laurent Mottron of the University of Montreal, the team gave both autistic kids and normal kids two of the most popular IQ tests used in schools. The two tests are both highly regarded, but they are very different. The so-called WISC relies heavily on language, which is why the psychologists were suspicious of it. The other, known as the Raven’s Progressive Matrices, is considered the preeminent test of what’s called “fluid intelligence,” that is, the ability to infer rules, to set and manage goals, to do high-level abstractions. Basically the test presents arrays of complicated patterns with one missing, and test takers are required to choose the one that would logically complete the series. The test demands a good memory, focused attention and other “executive skills,” but–unlike the WISC–it doesn’t require much language.

The idea was that the autistic kids’ true intelligence might shine through if they could bypass the language deficit. And that’s exactly what happened.

The theoretical justification for this view is that prototypical autistic skills are not true intelligence at all, but really just low-level perceptual abilities. Indeed, in this view autistics are missing the big picture because they are obsessed with the detail.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070803151245.htm

Science Daily — Ineffective or even dangerous fad treatments for autism, always a problem, seem to be growing more pervasive, according to researchers who studied the problem.

“Developmental disabilities like autism are a magnet for all kinds of unsupported or disproved therapies, and it has gotten worse as more children have been diagnosed with autism,” said James Mulick, professor of pediatrics and psychology at Ohio State University .”

“There’s no cure for autism, and many parents are willing to believe anything if they come to think it could help their child.”

Mulick chaired a symposium on “Outrageous Developmental Disabilities Treatments” Aug. 20 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. The symposium included presentations by several of Mulick’s students at Ohio State who participated in a graduate seminar on fad treatments in autism.

Tracy Kettering, a doctoral student in special education at Ohio State , said a Google search for the phrase “autism treatment” yields more than 2.2 million matches.

“You get hundreds of different types of therapies that come up, and many have quotes from parents that claim a particular therapy ‘cured’ their child,” Kettering said.

“It’s no wonder that parents want to believe. But very few of these treatments have any evidence to support them.”

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820141059.htm

GRACE ANNUAL PICNIC – Sunday, September 16, 2007. 12:00pm – 5:00pm. The Grounds of Mount Loretto, 6581 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island.
Adults – $30.00, Children ages 5-14 – $15.00, Children 4 & under – $5.00.
Please make check payable to the Grace Foundation and mail to 264 Watchogue Road, Staten Island, NY 10314.
2007-picnic-flyer.doc

 

By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: August 5, 2007 from the New York Times

JEWISH mothers fret about that spotlight moment when their child is called to the Torah for the first time, but few have the sorts of worries that Jackie Saril had before her daughter, Jami, was bat mitzvahed.

Jami is autistic, which means she lacks a whole quiver of intellectual and social skills and might create some awkward moments by whining or jumping up and down on the bimah, the stage where the Torah is read.

“I was worried about her having a meltdown, refusing to get on stage, to stay on the stage, to get off the stage,” Ms. Saril said. “Jami wore leggings because she doesn’t understand how to cross your legs when you sit with a dress. She wore flat shoes so she could climb the bimah without tripping.”

Ms. Saril wanted her daughter to follow the blessings with a hand-shaped pointer, like other children do, but the pointer had a chain and Ms. Saril anticipated that Jami would fiddle with it instead of reciting her blessings. So she and Erik Contzius, the cantor at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, taped the chain to the pointer. She made sure to have Jami listen to a CD during parts of the service when she was not on stage. Music would calm her.

While the synagogue normally schedules bar and bat mitzvahs outside the sluggish summer, Ms. Saril intentionally scheduled Jami’s on July 21, two days after her 13th birthday, because she knew the audience would not be teeming with unfamiliar faces that might rattle her.

“It was all about Jami having this wonderful milestone in life with the people who helped get her there,” Ms. Saril said.

Such milestones probably would not have been observed in any religion just a few generations ago. Children with autism and Down syndrome were often institutionalized, hidden from the daily ebb and flow. “It was a shanda and nobody spoke about it,” said Ms. Saril, using the Yiddish word for shame. Now such children are raised at home and communities are bringing them into the fold. At this reporter’s synagogue, a teenager with Down syndrome is one of the Hebrew Torah readers.

“These families wanted to be part of Jewish life, but they were either uncomfortable or Jewish life had shut them out,” said Deena Spindler, director of community programs for Matan, the special-needs agency housed at the Jewish Community Center of Mid-Westchester. “Many families say, ‘We come to synagogue and everyone looks at our child,’ but Judaism teaches every person is important, and that demands embracing everybody.”

Ms. Saril, a product of an Orthodox yeshiva in Brooklyn, though Temple Israel is Reform, wanted her daughter to connect with Jewish traditions, even if she didn’t quite understand what God meant — a hard concept for anybody. Matan taught Jami biblical stories and Jewish values and had her make Passover plates like other Hebrew school children.

“I never wanted her to be the kid looking out the window while everyone else is playing,” Ms. Saril said.

Mr. Contzius, who has a son with a form of autism known as Asperger’s syndrome, first proposed having a bat mitzvah for Jami. He taught her the blessings, and he and Ms. Saril worked out a minute-by-minute schedule (autistic children thrive on schedules). It read in part: “1. Cantor C calls me to the Beema. 2. I go up to the Beema. 3. I sit quietly and keep my feet still while the curtain opens. 4. I carry the Torah carefully to the podium.”

On a radiant day, Temple Israel’s stained-glass sanctuary was lined with the people who had helped Jami reach this moment: her mother and stepfather; her 4-year-old sister, Dani; her stepbrother, Matt, 24; two sets of grandparents; four nannies, and therapists and educators from New Rochelle and from her current school, Devereux Millwood Learning Center in Millwood. Somewhat sadly, there were no friends Jami’s age.

“Jami doesn’t have friends,” Ms. Saril said.

Jami spent the first half-hour listening to music from “Hannah Montana.” When the ark was opened, she scampered up the stage without tripping and, with the cantor standing protectively alongside, carried the Torah to the podium. Announced by her Hebrew name as Chana Bracha bat Yocheved Devora, she read the same blessing every Jew reads, if perhaps not as clearly as some. Her mother chanted the Torah passage. Jami pronounced the second blessing and then recited her speech, reading headline-size words with a scanning device that allows her to focus one line at a time. The speech was just 10 sentences long, but every one was resonant.

“Today is my bat mitzvah,” it began. “Becoming a bat mitzvah means that I have to be a good person every day.” It closed with a pledge that stirred more than a few tears: “I promise to be the best Jami I can be.”

After she finished, she skipped once around the stage and let out a soft whoop of pleasure. No one minded.