What COVID-19 Has Done to Me

Start your day with something that focuses your energy on you, and not on the things that have to get done. Whether you do a few easy exercises to wake up or jump right into a tough workout is up to you. The important thing is to give yourself something to focus on and something you can control and look forward to.

Part 5: Using Daily Tasks to Build Your Child’s Language comprehension During COVID-19

Sequencing is one of many skills that helps a child learn and understand events in his or her environment. For some children, sequencing can be a hard concept to grasp, especially when they have language challenges. When a child learns to sequence basic things around them, it makes events easier to understand and accept. Sequencing

Part 4: Use Virtual Scavenger Hunt to Expand on Your Child’s Social Skill and Language While Social Distancing

During my sessions with some of the clients this week, we played virtual scavenger hunt. It gave the children the opportunity to use language to describe the items by functions or by attributes.

Part 4: Flash and See Language Game to Keep Your Child Learning-COVID-19

This is a fun and a simple way to build language and also entertain active energetic toddlers and preschoolers

Telepractice Challenges for Children with Significant Special Needs

Recently, I have heard many clinicians complain about having to work with a child with severe disability via telepractice. I have to confess, I once thought it impossible to conduct therapy this way, but it is working out better than I expected. Parents have been so kind to allow me into their homes. The idea

How to Schedule Playdates Via Video Chat for a Special Needs Child

In a perfect world, we want to give our children with special needs the most natural social inclusive environment as possible, but our new world is anything but natural nor normal. Most likely, we are going to be on lockdown for a few months.  Unlike their neurotypical peers, who are already hanging out with friends

Using Social Media to Continue Social Skills with Your Child

Conversation is sharing or exchanging of ideas. Despite COVID-19, your child can still practice social skills with your support using social media. You can use FACETIME, WhatsApp or other video platforms to practice conversations with your child, family members and friends. First establish safety rules and boundaries  on when your child can be on social

Ready to Learn Part 2: Teaching Your Child During COVID-19

This week we will work on setting realistic goals and expectations for your child’s learning and daily needs during this lock down. The first step is to create a realistic  Weekly Event Calendar for your child. The calendar will now become your child’s daily routine.  Below you will see a replica calendar that was created for a client.

How to Implement Visual Schedule for Learning At Home Due to COVID-19

If we can create some normal daily routines for those kids that rely heavily on sameness or are have a tough time with transitioning it will make teaching easier. Let’s start with the basics of a visual schedule. A visual schedule is a set of pictures or words that shows what is happening daily. Parents with children diagnosed with Autism are familiar with visual schedules, but most of them have not had to take on the teacher roll. We are going to work first on creating visual schedule so to assist in establishing routines for school work at home. The visual schedule will help your child know what activities he is going to engage in daily. This will help you and your child feel less anxious and feel more in control.

A Successful Play Date for A Child with Social Challenges

In our Lions group we have been teaching the kids how to engage in dramatic play (pretend play) related to meal planning.  We began our group using unstructured dramatic play themes and quickly realized that our clients needed more of a systematic frame work. We moved from unstructured dramatic play to a more structured dramatic