Autism: Where to begin

Knowing where to turn for help and advice when supporting a young person with autism can be very tough. I’ve put together this list of websites that may serve as a useful starting point for signposting you in the right direction. With so much information available on the internet often it’s difficult, especially at first, to know which information is reliable and trustworthy.

The National Autistic Society is a wondeful resource. The main UK charity for autism. You’ll find this to be one of the most reliable sites around. Also lists the NAS schools around the UK.

Another favourite of mine is Research Autism. The leading organisation in the UK for all of the latest research projects and findings connected to autism. Research Autism also has the backing of the NAS.

The Autism Education Trust is well worth a read for education professionals as well as for carers. A really useful section on good practice and well designed with good video clips too.

Some other sources of useful information are:

The Autism Society of America

The Autism Blog

Autism Road

Your Psychology

The Autism Directory

Looking Up Autism

I hope you find these links useful. Keep checking back here for practical tips and advice for supporting children with autism.

If you know of other sites that you think should be included here please feel free to contact me.

Gary

Thinking in pictures

I was recently watching Temple Grandin at the annual TED conference. In the talk, she uses the lens of her own autism to talk about how she ‘thinks in pictures’. Take a look at the clip here.

In it she talks about how her autism influences the way she thinks – allowing her to pick out the small details in situations often before she has been able to process the ‘whole’.

It’s really interesting to listen to Temple describing ‘visual thinkers’, ‘pattern thinkers’, and ‘verbal thinkers’ and how these principles might apply in my professional practice.

The idea of different types or styles of thinking in autism is closely connected to the idea of multiple intelligences in autism. I write more about this here.

Your Psychology: Autism Info Blog

Welcome to my new blog. As much of my blogging is related to autism, I wanted to set up a specialised blog to focus on just autism. My other sites YourPsychology.co.uk and the Your Psychology Blog cover a broader range of child psychology topics. You can find out more about me here.

Of special interest at the moment are the impending changes to the DSM criteria for diagnosing autism and related conditions. The implications of these changes are not clear, but some current diagnoses will no longer exist – including Asperger’s Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). I’ll be writing much more about these issues.

I will also use the blog to distribute tips and strategies for parents and teachers to use when supporting children with autism. These will be from research evidence, and also from my professional experience of supporting children with autism and challenging behaviour.

Check out my existing Autism links here:

• Autism on YourPsychology.co.uk
• On The Origin of Autism
• Using Robots to Educate Children With Autism
• Multiple-intelligence Theory & Autism
• Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness Day
• Autism Interventions Summary
• Autism Created in Mice
• Shocking Treatment for Children with Autism
• Weighted Therapy for Children with Autism – Free Ebook (Edited by Gary Lavan, Foreword by Gary Lavan)

Don’t forget to sign up for email updates (see the sign up box at the top right of this page). Also, you might like to receive my psychology email newsletter which I send out from time to time.

Gary