I am now featured as an Autism Expert on Howtolearn.com

The Autism Expert page on www.HowtoLearn.com was just featured on About.com . HowtoLearn.com has quickly become the premier educational resource on the web. The easy-to-navigate site has a wide variety of experts in various fields of eductation. In addition to having me as the one of the  resident Autism experts, Howtolearn.com features some of the top specialists in many areas of education.

HowtoLearn.com is perhaps the BEST educational resource site on the web, and I am proud to be a part of their Autism Expert page, and there will soon be some great interactive additions to this area of the site. Take a look at the About.com story below:

http://finance.paidcontent.org/about/news/read?GUID=18497919

What do I provide as a HowtoLearn Autism Expert?

One of the great features of HowtoLearn is that each Expert can provide answers to your questions. As an Autism Expert with a focus on physical health, parents, educators, therapists, and fitness professionals have access to Autism Fitness methods and strategies for fitness programming.

More to Come from the Autism Expert section on HowtoLearn

In addition to the “Ask the experts” section of Howtolearn.com, there will soon be a series of webinars and other interactive information resources. Autism Fitness was also recently named one of the Top 101 Educational Websites featured on HowtoLean.com

Check out the Autism Expert page on www.HowtoLearn.com and be sure to look through their extensive resources.

www.AutismFitness.com

www.PACProfile.com

The new issue of Parenting Special Needs Magazine is available and features my recent article about Autism and Success.

http://parentingspecialneeds.org/currentissue

A few weeks ago I visited one of the schools here on the East Coast that has implemented the  PAC Profile as a physical education program for their students.

Many of the teachers embraced the program, as they finally had activities that worked for their students with autism. A few had questions about the programming; What to do if a student did not understand an activity, or what to do when they “mastered” or were now able to achieve the exercise independently.

For students with autism, it will most likely take many repetitions of the same movement or exercise for mastery to occur. Not only are there physical deficits to cover, but self-regulatory/behavioral, and cognitive obstacles as well.

It is important to include the 5 Big Movement Patterns in each physical fitness or PE session. They are (in no particular order):

- Bending/Squatting

- Pushing

- Pulling

- Rotation

- Locomotion

Here is where science meets art. Taking these movement patterns and having performed a PAC Assessment on a student enables you to come up with various activities and exercises that do the same thing…which is a good thing.

With squatting as an example, we have at least 3 activities in the PAC Assessment alone that represent variations of this movement pattern. Bodyweight squats, Bear walks, and Bend knees/arms up are all different activities that do essentially the same thing.

There is a gray area between getting in enough opportunities for an individual with autism to master a movement pattern and he/she becoming bored or over-exposed to a single exercise. By breaking activities into the 5 categories of movement and providing a few variations of each one with different equipment, you can develop a fitness program that is stimulating AND successful.

Live Inspired,

-EC

www.Autismfitness.com

My NEW Autism E-Book is Available Now!

I am excited to announce the release of my new E-book, Bike to the Future: A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Children with Autism to Ride with Success

Bike to the Future is the perfect starting point for any family that wants to teach an young person with ASD how to ride a bike. This new addition to the Autism Fitness E-book library covers topics including:

- How to assess the needs of each child

- Why learning styles may be different than you think

- What you can do TODAY for a lifetime of bike riding ability

- General fitness programs for physical fitness, strength, and endurance

This Autism E-Book was created with parents in mind

After speaking with many parents of young people with autism it was clear that Bike to the Future had to be written.   I wanted to take the frustration, trouble, and guesswork out of teaching bike riding to the autism population.  While many parents would love for their children to learn how to ride a bike, the challenges of autism often make teaching new skills difficult.  The Autism E-book Bike to the Future provides a blueprint for bike riding success.

No Other Autism E-book focuses on Learning to Ride a Bike

And certainly not using the strategies provided in Bike to the Future. The goal of the book was to make sure that parents would be able to teach bike riding successfully by limiting anxiety and stress, and focusing on building upon existing skills.

If you’ve tried teaching a child, adolescent, or teen with autism to ride a bike before, this E-book is for you. If you got started and then gave up in frustration, this E-book is for you. The strategies in the Bike to the Future Autism E-book are the same used to get some rather un-enthused Autism Fitness athletes to begin riding a bike with confidence and enjoying the experience! If you have a young person with autism and a bike (and want them to get together), this Autism E-book is for you.

Bike to the Future , the immediately downloadable Autism E-bookis available NOW at

www.autismfitness.com/autism-fitness-bike-to-the-future-e-book/

Here is a FULL CHAPTER from my forthcoming E-Book, Bike to the Future: A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Children with Autism to Ride with Success:

Chapter 1) Autism and Ability

Success in anything doesn’t just happen.

For children with autism, learning new skills is often made more difficult because of sensory processing issues. There may be too much noise in the next room for Jill to concentrate on the directions, or Marcos may not be able to look at numbers on a computer screen and relate them to those on a page of homework. It all has to do with contingencies.

Contingencies are “if-then” relationships. All individuals with autism have some level of difficulty with contingencies. The most obvious are social contingencies, but cognitive “if-then’s” are just as important to consider. Does Ricky make the connection between Mom saying “Press down on the pedal” and the action of his foot applying pressure downward? If not, his mom can say it over and over again, and both can grow frustrated in the process.

Some of my athletes are non-verbal, but understand just about everything that is said. Others are verbal to an extent, but have enormous difficulty attending to or following verbal instructions. It is absolutely critical to ask the following questions:

1)    Is the individual a more auditory or a more visual learner?

2)    Has he/she had prior experience with the words I am using right now?

3)    Is he/she motivated to perform this particular activity? (Does he/she like it?)

4)    If not, what would be motivating?

In my experience with children, adolescents, teens, and young adults on the autism spectrum, learning a new physical skill is not usually reinforcing or enjoyable.  Think about the last time you learned a new skill. Not too many people I’ve met enjoy doing something at which they have little experience or ability. Now magnify that feeling by about 50 and you have what the average child on the autism spectrum feels like when the bike is pulled out of the garage for the 30^th lesson that weekend.

As a parent it is understandable that you want your child to succeed as quickly as possible. The learning process is different for everyone, and there has to be a hierarchy of importance surrounding any new skill:

1)    What is the main goal?

2)    What are the secondary benefits?

3)    Is there a time frame for learning the new skill?

4)    Why is this timeframe important?

5)    Is this a skill that is more important for me or for my child?

Learning to ride a bike can be a fun, stress-free process. When too much emphasis is placed on mastering the skill NOW it becomes a chore, or worse, for everyone involved.

Alex has autism and while he does want to learn how to ride a bike, he has some physical deficits and has difficulty following verbal directions.

1)    Main Goal: Independently riding his bike around the neighborhood and at the park

2)    Secondary Benefit:s Socialization with peers, leisure activity with family. New source of self-esteem and independence. Better physical health.

3)    Within a year

4)    For consistency and opportunities within age group

5)    Both, but more important that he enjoys it

There are 3 areas of functioning that will provide all the information we need about individual skill development; Physical, Adaptive, and Cognitive. I call these the “PAC” abilities and they are the foundation of my assessment and programming method, the PAC Profile (www.PACProfile.com). If Rachel is having difficulty riding her bike, is it because she cannot do it, won’t do it, or some other reason?

How do we assess what is going on without drawing incorrect or unproductive conclusions? Saying she is “lazy” does not give us much help. How do you “un-lazy” somebody? Do you snap your fingers and all of a sudden they decide that they will do something? Not the kids I’ve worked with, and probably not yours either. That’s why it is so important to assess abilities first.

Alex was 11 and his mother contacted me specifically to work on bike riding skills.  Dad had attempted several times to teach him, but wound up screaming at Alex instead because Alex was not learning quickly enough. If you are reading this now, stand up quick and learn to ride a unicycle while juggling.  In the event that you do not master this in a week I will personally call up to berate you. Oh, and you need to be having FUN while you do it. Doesn’t sound to reinforcing, does it?  Alex wanted to ride his bike; he just didn’t want to be yelled at while learning. I thought that was reasonable enough.

After about ten minutes of physical assessment it was clear that Alex could move well. His bike riding issues were not because of  physical or gross motor issues. He was highly motivated, which took care of the Adaptive area of functioning, and was great with verbal directions. Alex needed two things: Time on the bike, and support from an instructor.  He was riding independently within two months.

Alex learned to ride because the teaching was appropriate. The program was run at his speed and style of learning.  He would frequently, and I mean frequently, ask if he was going fast enough. I told him that it was fine as long as that was the speed he wanted to go.

Eventually, he learned that the faster he pedaled the more it balanced the bike. I could have explained that to him but it

wouldn’t have made sense or mattered much. Learning is an experience that requires the individual to “invest” into the process. That’s why we learn best when we’re having fun. We are automatically engaged or focused on the activity without someone telling us to “pay attention ‘cause this is important.”

The assessment is pretty straightforward.  Does he/she have the physical ability to ride a bike? Is he/she motivated to ride the bike? What type of learning style does he/she have? In chapter 6, I will provide some great exercises that can strengthen the muscle groups and movement patterns needed to ride a bike correctly. Riding a bike is also a very specific activity that requires time spent…riding a bike.

Adaptive ability is the most important aspect of functioning. If Tracey has some motor planning issues, but is determined (motivated) to ride her bike, she is going to log in a good deal of time learning to ride. As long as she stays motivated and has a good fitness program that strengthens the areas of deficit, she will learn to ride with success. For the less-motivated crowd, aka the majority of kids on the autism spectrum, we will cover some practical strategies in chapter 4.

Cognitive ability is not smart vs. stupid. We all have different levels of learning ability depending on the subject. I got D’s and occasionally F’s throughout math in elementary, middle, and high school only to get an “A” in statistics in college. Did I suddenly get smarter, or was the subject taught in a way that I could understand it?

Most individuals on the autism spectrum are not auditory learners. They are usually better at visual learning (having the concept or skill shown to them), and many require physical prompting or cueing to perform different movements correctly.  Saying the same thing over and over is not going to be much help if the individual is not making the connection between words and action. This is where I have seen the highest amount of frustration build up on both sides (parent and child).

The best way to learn is to do. When we have the opportunity to experience learning and sort the steps out for ourselves, skill mastery comes faster and stays longer. Ironically, other skills are often compared to “learning how to ride a bike” because once you learn you “never forget.” That may be true, but we need to make sure that our children want to get back on the bike again once they’ve learned how to ride.

Bike to the Future will be available on www.AutismFitness.com SOON!

Live Inspired,

-EC