An Invitation to Parents of Autistic Children to Join Me
On an Extraordinary Journey

Overview

Faced with the chronic shortages of affordable educational and therapeutic services for autistic children in Singapore, what can a parent do? Instead of waiting for agencies and specialised professionals to come to our rescue, I, a parent of a nine-year-old autistic child, invite you to embark on a rewarding journey to learn how to do it yourself.
If you are interested, please join me in a parents’ share session where I will introduce my individualised parent-based learning programme for children with autism. The objective of this programme is to train parents to carry out their own individualised learning programmes that cater to the unique learning needs of their children. A pilot learning programme may also be available for children with autism, depending on the level of demand.

My Background

In this session, I will share with you my personal journey of educating my son in the U.S. Even though there were many therapists and educators who provided services for my son, I discovered early on that my involvement was critical in ensuring the effectiveness of the learning experience for my son. As a result of my extensive involvement, I learned from the good and the bad professionals -- what to do and also what not to do, respectively. My confidence in wanting to share my knowledge and experience with you stems from the success of my efforts in helping my son to learn and improve over the last seven and a half years, often without the effective assistance of outside professionals. In fact, over the last few years, I found that I was increasingly relying on my own resources and strategies to deal with my son’s learning difficulties and behavioural issues.

Parent-Based Training Programme

I will also describe in brief my individualised parent-based learning programme for children with autism, which targets the following five areas:

Academic: Individualised teaching approaches that are shaped to cater to the specific learning needs, preferences and styles of the students will be used.

Social: The social component will address the following concerns of autistic children: eye contact; basic courtesies and social scripts; behavioral modification for anti-social behavior; story time, circle time and play time for group interaction; along with embedded teaching to ensure that children are practicing social skills at all times.

Sensory: Various activities will be used to deal with autistic children’s sensory disintegration that affects their ability to process the environmental stimuli effectively. They include body work such as brushing, deep pressure, stretching of joints; and the use of household items to serve as therapeutic tools.

Living Skills: The purpose of the living skills component is to help the children to acquire skills for caring for their daily needs; participating in mainstream community by exhibiting appropriate behaviours; and dealing with the challenges in the mainstream world such as understanding traffic lights and the value of money. A field trip into the community will occur on a weekly basis.

Exercises: Apart from regular physical activity such as playing at the playground, students will also have the opportunity to engage in exercises such as yoga designed specifically for children with special needs; relaxation exercises; and stretches.

By the end of the ten-week training programme, parents would have learned how to design and implement an individualised learning programme for their children, as well as other autistic children. Parents will acquire the basic teaching approaches and strategies for working successfully with their children. Furthermore, parents will also be taught self-care skills to cater to their physical, mental and psychological well-being. We need to be functioning at our best in order to help our children. The demonstration of simple breathing and meditation exercises will be offered in one of the sessions.

Format of Teaching

Live demonstrations of teaching child
Handouts
Samples of work that can be created for child
Interactive participation with group work and strategising

Learning Programme for Autistic Children

For parents who do not have the time and the resources to create and implement such a programme, we will also be creating a pilot programme for children with autism, which will cover the five aforementioned areas, depending on the demand and availability of staff. The adult to student ratio will be 1:3. Apart from learning in the classroom setting, students will be led on weekly excursions to places of interest such as the zoo, the birdpark, the science centre and other places.

Venue: Learning to Learn Centre
Blk 221 Hougang St. 21, #01-90
Singapore 530221 (opp. NTUC)
(Kovan MRT station, exit Heartland Mall)

Time: October 15, Saturday, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

If you can make it, please let me know.