Parent Training

1

What is it?

Our parent training sessions are designed to give you a better understanding of Autism, communication, sensory needs, and behaviour management strategies, both in general terms and in the context of your child specifically.

They are helpful not only for parents/carers of children who have received an autism diagnosis, but also for parents/carers of children who are still waiting for an autism assessment.

Ordinarily (i.e. pre-Covid) our sessions are offered to a small group of parents/carers (in the ‘Early Bird’-style) so that you can share the benefit of each other’s experiences. However, during this time of social distancing we are only able to offer individual online training sessions for families and carers.

We typically recommend doing an initial block of 4-6 sessions to gain an overall awareness and understanding of Autism and your child. From there, follow-on sessions are available in order to provide a more in-depth focus on specific areas of your choice.

The cost is £85 per hour-long session.

2

What’s included?

Our first session focuses on the history and the background of Autism: What is autism? Who discovered it? and How has our knowledge and understanding of autism evolved since then? We also discuss the three main areas of difficulty in autism (social communication, social interaction, and rigid repetitive behaviour) in general, and in the context of your child specifically.

The second session is all about social communication. We discuss the spectrum of how we communicate and how autism affects the way that a child communicates (from non-verbal to high-level fluent speaker). Once you have a clinical description of how autism affects communication, we discuss how your child fits in to this, where they are, and why. Then we are able to discuss the best ways of communicating with your child. Remember, every individual child is totally different and needs an individually tailored approach in order to enable them to best express their needs and communicate with you.

The third session covers sensory processing. This includes issues with sleep, food, hyper- and hypo-sensitivity, and how all of those things affects child’s behaviour. A connection will be made to your child’s behaviours in particular to help your better understand why they do certain things (e.g. why they jump, flap, drop objects in front of their eyes, why they cover their ears, why they suddenly walk out of a room, spit food out, refuse to wear certain kinds of clothing, etc.).

The fourth session is about behaviour management & strategies. We discuss ‘The Incredible 5 Point Scale’ of behaviour management, best ways to implement it, and strategies to use for your child’s specific behaviours.

The topic covered in the fifth session (and any sessions thereafter) is up to you; you choose what you would prefer to focus on. At this point, we will likely have touched on a subject that you would like to have a more in-depth understanding of, particularly as it relates to your child. For example: resources and anxiety management; visual timetables and Makaton signing; how to manage meltdowns and what to do if your child is in a meltdown; the SPELL Framework (prevention and management of maladaptive behaviour); how to re-integrate your child back into social contact (especially relevant post-Covid), etc..