Author Archives: admin

This is some text.

Finally…

I’m post­ing again! As I men­tioned in my last post of 2009 I start­ed a col­lege course in Jan­u­ary. It has absorbed much of my writ­ing and read­ing time since, but how excit­ing it’s been! Of course learn­ing new com­put­er pro­grammes has been chal­leng­ing but now that my son has set me up with some […]

I’m not surprised.

Just found my notes on an inter­est­ing LA Times blog from Feb­ru­ary 23rd 2010, relat­ing that par­ents don’t see the ear­ly (in the first year) signs of autism. (No mat­ter how hard I try I can’t seem to get the web link to work right now! You’ll have to copy and paste): http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/02/autism-signs-appear-in-babies-first-year-but-parents-dont-notice.html In my experience […]

Can’t Believe It!

I’ve just passed the 300 mark of columns in my blog file — of course you haven’t been privy to every­thing I’ve writ­ten, some are bet­ter than oth­ers. Some days I’m just rant­i­ng and let­ting off steam (which is why those arti­cles stay pri­vate!). On oth­er days I try hard to rein in my thoughts […]

A Specialist With A Child With…

I have dis­cov­ered yet anoth­er spe­cial­ist in autism who became an expert in the sub­ject fol­low­ing her daugh­ter’s diag­no­sis. She was a qual­i­fied physi­cian who went on to spe­cial­ize in…autism. My the­o­ry (rein­forced on at least a month­ly basis) has become: those with careers, or their own lives as their pri­or­i­ty, often are the parents […]

Gesturing Increases Toddler Vocabulary

I have long thought that sim­ple ges­tures explain more clear­ly to very young chil­dren what response you are expect­ing from them. I got excel­lent feed­back for my dai­ly efforts at the day­care where I work when a 20 month-old, who I con­sid­er one of my ‘res­cue’ babies, sat at a table read­ing a truck book […]

Joint Attention

Because the work I do with very young chil­dren is so well inte­grat­ed with­in the child and its dai­ly life when in a one-to-one care basis, I’ve rarely had to sep­a­rate the ter­mi­nol­o­gy of each lit­tle facet of how it all comes togeth­er. I sim­ply expect a child of 18 months to 2 years to […]

Usability — Infants and Children

With Dan Rubin as our fam­i­ly’s usabil­i­ty guru, we are hard pressed not to dis­cuss his work as it relates to every aspect of our own dai­ly lives! I think about usabil­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty every day at work. The chil­dren I care for range in age from infants to 3 years old. I usu­al­ly work with […]

If I Told You:

A 2.5 year old boy rarely has eye con­tact with his car­ers, min­i­mal recep­tive lan­guage, min­i­mal joint atten­tion, sen­so­ry issues (did­n’t like hav­ing a bath), lan­guage is inter­mit­tent — mixed with some bab­ble and not usu­al­ly rel­e­vant except for when demand­ing (scream­ing for) a spe­cif­ic toy or junk food, or his paci­fi­er from his mother. […]

Worst Suspicions Confirmed!

I have long been con­cerned about sev­er­al aspects of the ear­ly devel­op­ment of young chil­dren. I feel, as you know, that TV should be banned for babies, as should any form of con­trap­tion such as activ­i­ty cen­tres and bounc­ing or jig­gling baby seats. The oth­er day I was dis­cussing the devel­op­ment of a 9‑month-old baby with […]

The Stars Were Aligned!

Last Wednes­day the glo­ri­ous sun­set as I looked west from a friend’s house, cou­pled with the full moon loom­ing won­der­ful­ly large and low over the trees to the east when I returned home, got me think­ing about this time of year, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to the last 10 years of my life. Have you ever […]