As mentioned in my Brief through the course I will discuss my progress with Specialists in the feild. On thursday I met with Dr. Shekhar Seshadri and Dr. Tejas Golhar ( both are members of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NIMHANS).
They suggested...
I read 'The Me Book', Autism: Explaining the Enigma and theory of mind. Also look up Behavior Therapy - Shaping and Successive approximation.
Considering using PECS in the toy. But in a more grounded contextual way, relating to daily activities and their environment. Made me wonder if its possible to combine PECS and Snoezelen. Hmmm..
I had a question," If the core of Snoezelen is that it is Non-directive and about choice and the power that comes with it then does adding interaction take away or lose the concept; cause now there is a sort of goal or aim?"
The Ans: that a purist approach would say that it should be left completely non-directive. But this would a marriage of two approaches. With Snoezelen children enjoy sensory stimulation (unprocessed stimulation). While interacting they absorbed stimulation is integrated and given direction as there is a goal (processed stimulation). And it is important for autistic children to acquire life skills through adaptive responses.
It might be a good idea to consider creating two products. As there is a great deal of variation between Mild and Severe Autism. Maybe the one would be more sensory and aimed at acquiring life skills (for severe autism) and the other could have levels of interaction and maybe use PECS (mild autism).
Another question,"What are the emotional and social needs of children with Autism? Do like interacting(participation) with people or prefer just having them around(presence)?
Ans: It varies according to the child. There are some children who enjoy the warmth of human touch but cannot relate to the another person and still others who would want to interact but cannot bare to much contact. There is a difference between the willingness to interact and the inability to do so. The willingness to interact is not affected by the severity of autism.
I have more or less decided to work with 3 sensory channels- Sight, Sound, Touch. They said that stimulation should contribute towards acquiring Adaptive Skills. That I should plot sight, sound, touch on the x-axis and adaptive skills on the y-axis and plot targets accordingly. I need to look up the Catherine Morris Checklist.
A hierarchy of Adaptive skills goes as follows:
1. 7 Activities of Daily Living
2. Basic Concept Development
3. Communication of Needs and Experiences
4. Pre Academic
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