Compare and Contrast

     There are many different forms of disabilites. The one that is most common, and I work with the most at Chileda is Autism. What some do not know is that there are different forms of Autism. The most common are called Aspergers, and just plain Autism. Aspergers is usually higher functioning kids that have social issues due to the illness. This form is hard to detect unless one is educated, and back when most of our parents were growing these people were just considered strange.
     
     People with Apergers are mostly concrete thinkers, meaning they see things in black and white. If you use humor or scarcasim, this population usually wont understand. Also you have to tell these people how you are feeling, because they are not good at reading body language, or faces. So they may take your hand gestures as being agressive, and become scared or agressive. Alot of these people also have a hard time being around others or crowds so they may choose to sit amongst themselves, or stay in a confined space alone. Many people that have Aspergers also have other mental illnesses. It is very common to work with a child that have Aspergers as well as attachment disorders, intermitten explosive rage disorder, O.C.D., A.D.H.D, and the list goes on and on.

       The thing is each person with this disease is an individual case, and need to be approached differently. Most kids with Aspergers can read and write on different levels. Also many of them are very intellgent. Some people can be the book defintion of a genius, but cannot hold a normal conversation with others about humor or understanding the emotion behind a dramatic movie. A lot of these people are good with technology, numbers, and patterns.

     Autism is more of an obvious Disease, as most of these people can not communicate using words, or can only use few words. Some of these people can read and write, but cannot tell you what they are thinking. It is very important for these people to have some form of communication weather it be PECs, an I-Pad, a Go- Talk, which is a small machine that tells you a perosns basics needs by pushing buttons, or icons that they hand you from a book. This is the form that the very definition is a failure to communicate. This also usually comes with other diseases. I have seen may kids with O.C.D. One child I work with has it so bad it takes him ten minutes just to walk down a hallway with five doors, because he has a pattern that he has to check every door spin around and check again about seven times.

     There are so many different kids with different needs, it is hard to compare and contrast individual cases. So the best way to do it is to categorize these two different forms, because with Aspergers, there are a lot of simularties in these kids. Also with Autism there are a lot of simularties with those kids. Although they have many differences in their own disease, that is the easiest way to seperate one from the other. I hope when reading about these different illnesses it gives you perspective on the "wierd" kid in class that didnt talk to anyone, or the kid in special education that cleaned the tables after lunch that people made fun of. These kids like anyone else need friends, and affection from other people. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean you have to be afraid.

Process Analysis on how to make a proper PECs schedule.

     An important part of what I do for a living is following schedules. Alot of the kids I work with Live by their schedules that we call PECS schedules. They are made with either real pictures or drawings of an area, or a function. It is important to know how to make these schedules, although a boring process. You have to consider what time a child wakes up in the morning, what their morning routine is, and possibly what they eat. Now these schedules start from the time they wake up, until the time they go to sleep at night. I had to learn how to put these schedules together for kids, and their different needs. Obviously not every child needs a picture reminder, " oh yeah, I need to go to the bathroom".

     The first thing you do when making an individual schedule is consider if the child showers at night, lets say for the sake of this essay, Johnnie showers in the morning. So I would put on his schedule for the morning,  first shower with a picture of a shower. The next picture would be use shampoo to wash your hair, and a picture of soap with hands on a head. The next step would be a diagram of how to wash the body starting with the face then body, legs feet, then private areas. Some kids also need hand over hand direction until they learn how to bathe properly. I know to you or I alot of the hygiene stuff seems normal, and we should know how to do it ourselves. To a child whom has had this done for them their whole lives, they do not know how to properly bathe themselves. After this, there would be a diagram on how to properly dry off, and how to dress, which some still may need help with this also.

     Onto breakfast. Monday thru Saturday, the kids are given an option of two bowls of cereal two juices, and a piece of fruit. They are also given the option of toast, juice and fruit.
One would also have picture of these options in a childs PECs book. From there, there would be a diagram of how to properly brush ones teeth, and how much time it would take, also along with that some may need a timer telling them how long tweo minutes is. In essence, when setting up a PECs book for their schedules, it is important to have all the pictures one would possibly need. The books are set up with velcore so you can take out the pictures, and show them to the child. With the none verbal children, they will usually respond with moving towards the area, or start doing the activity within their processing time, which I have mentioned before in another post.

     This schedule, and or book would include all of their individual class times, and a picture to go along with it. These schedules are also offered on the weekend if they would like to join in weekend activites we have on campus, such as tech lab, various arts and crafts, and community outings. They are also individualized to include childrens sensory needs, such as deep pressure- squeezing a child from and appropraite angle, which is basically a hug, but not called that for professional and personal reasons. So you would need to think about a child and individual needs from the time they wake up, until the time they go to sleep. It is very difficult unless you really understand, and respect the needs of these kids, and indiviuality. Like everything else, I was not perfect at this, but after time, I have become a pro in knowing, and thinking for a child, and being his or her advocate.

Illustartive essay

The very meaning of Austism is a faliure of communication. To be honest when I first started working at Chileda, I had no idea what Autism was all about, and that every child was different. I had no idea that some kids needed different processing time. By this what I mean is I could say the same thing over and over again, but if I spoke to fast the child would still have no idea what I was trying to say. Autism is like a piece of a puzzle, no two pieces are the same, but eventually, they all fight together to form a big picture.

Shelly, a child with the proceesing time of 30 seconds would get agressive with me everytime I would ask her to do something. What I didnt realize was I wasn't giving her enough time to understand me. This is what she would hear " Can you blah blah blah?" and I would start speaking louder and faster. So now she would assume that I was becoming angry and about to become agressive. So she would become agressive first. She would try to pull my hair and bite me at the same time. Then I learned from one of the teachers, and a veteran staff that she had a slow proceesing time. This means it takes longer for her to interpret what I was saying.

Now when working with Shelly, I talk slow, wait 30 secoonds, then see if she responds accordingly. She has more patiences for me, and I for her. Now that I understand what processing time is, I can better work with children with Autism. They did teach us this in our training, but sometimes training is different than actual field expirence. I had to learn how to communicate with, through the years, at least 50 kids. As I said before about the pieces to  a puzzle, but after you learn how to communicate with a child that was never suppose beable to understand you, or you understand them, it is a very rewarding feeling. It has helped me in my own personal life with family, and friends to become a listener, and communicate with better understanding.

Descritptive blog post

    It was Leisure Ed. time for my students. As we walked in the room, the smell of stale paper, and glue sticks take over the room. All the art projects hanging on the walls make it bright with the reds, pinks, blues, greens, and yellows. Also as I walked in the room I could smell the Leisure Ed. teachers perfume.
   
    The project we would do for the day is sand art. What you do is put glue on a piece a paper in a pattern and pour sand on it. You had to put one glue pattern on at a time, as to not mix colors. the theme was to make a starry night. As I put the glue on the smell reminded me of when I was a kid. The feel of the sand was hard and even. The color of the black paper made colors even more rich.

    As we finished, I looked at the projects all the kids had done. Some choose navy blue paper, some choose black. The colors on the black were more vibrant. The bright, and dark purples, bright green, and blue, white and yellow formed in different shapes were beautiful. Everyone was very pleased with the outcome of their art projects. As we got ready to leave the teacher asked to leave the projects to dry. As we walked passed her to leave, I again could smell her perfume.