Confronting the daily challenges of autism

(NAPS)—When a child is diagnosed with autism, early and intensive treatment can be crucial. Many children wait a long time for admission to specialized learning centers, but there are ways parents and professionals can spend that critical waiting period helping children with autism learn valuable skills.

Parents and professionals now have a comprehensive online resource that offers science-based techniques to help them confront the daily challenges of autism.

The site, rethinkautism.com, provides effective and affordable tools and methods that are based on applied behavior analysis (ABA), the only intervention for autism that is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New York State Department of Health and the United States Surgeon General.

According to Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, this Rethink Autism site will help bridge the gap between research and practice.

“The explosion of research in autism has not always resulted in translation into work with children at home and in schools,” Dr. Volkmar says.

The site features a video-based curriculum, including hundreds of exercises and training modules based on proven, scientifically validated teaching techniques.

Innovative assessment tools help design individualized programming to meet the child’s learning goals, while state-of-the-art data tracking systems let users track the learner’s progress.

The lessons target a comprehensive range of skills that present the biggest challenges of autism: language skills, social and emotional learning, daily living, prevocational training and problem behavior.

Parents, teachers and organizations can subscribe to the Web site, rethinkautism.com. By answering a series of questions, they can begin to customize a curriculum. Users can watch the video lessons, use the techniques in sessions with their own child and track the child’s progress online.

As the child progresses through the programs, the site recommends new lessons to maximize the learning process. A clinical support team answers questions by e-mail and offers suggestions for making the most of the site’s resources.

These services are already being used by school districts and families nation- and worldwide.