Autism Therapy Vaughan |ADHD Therapy|child Life Coaching

Who we are and what we do

Who Are We and What Do We Do?

At Toronto And Vaughan Autism therapy is being provided by the house of Development .

we employ the use of Miller Method and Floor Time.

strategies to provide a comprehensive approach to the physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development of children .

children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) get much benefit from this program.

Utilizing the teaching methodology of developmental psychology and self regulation. 

supervised by a Our team of therapists and clinical staff.

our therapists have extensive experience working with children diagnosed with a multitude of disabilities

What is the best therapy for autism?

With all the behavioural or development therapies for autism, parents may feel at a loss. Start here to understand the pros and cons of each type.

There is no cure for autism, but various interventions diminish the symptoms, sometimes profoundly.
both social and communication challenges are part of the autism diagnosis, they typically comprise the basis of a treatment plan.
The challenge for clinicians, and a frustration for parents, is that no single educational plan works for all children.

The most generally successful approach for children with autism is behavioral therapy Or developmental therapy. Many people think that behavioral intervention is meant only for overly rambunctious children who act out.

the belief that Miller Method is for non verbal kids and FloorTime is only on the floor,That’s not the case. 
Therapies for autism are the main tools for developing social skills,developing communication and helping with motor skills .

What therapies are used for autism?

The Benefits of Long-Term Behavioral or development TherapyL

Parents are often confused over which behavioral therapy or development therapy approach to take. For starters, schools frequently move autistic children into the mainstream early in their schooling. While that’s always the larger goal, shifting a child away from intensive behavioral programs that support social growth too soon can hamper his progress. Children who receive ongoing therapy are more likely to outgrow the diagnosis entirely, even if they spend less time in the mainstream initially. More intervention now can lead to more age-appropriate skills later, allowing an easier transition into the mainstream.

Another challenge is determining which type of behavioral therapy matches your child. There’s no way to know exactly what will work for any individual, apart from making a logical plan, being flexible in monitoring progress, and making adjustments when needed. Current research doesn’t say how much or what type of intervention is best, only that continuing behavioral therapy benefits a child.

The good thing about behavioral And developmental therapy intervention is that they are effective and safe. The not-so-good thing is that it’s labor-intensive and costly. Since therapy comes in a variety of styles, picking one may feel like a guessing game. But when deciding where to put time and energy, inside or outside of school, behavioral therapy remains the most reliable way to develop skills in children with autism.

Behavioral Therapies for Autism

1. APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS (ABA). This therapy is the most-researched intervention for autism, and has been used for more than 50 years. It is a highly structured, scientific approach that teaches play, communication, self-care, academic and social living skills, and reduces problematic behaviors. A lot of research shows that it improves outcomes for children with autism.

ABA involves a therapist breaking down skills into component parts and, through repetition, reinforcement, and encouragement, helping a child learn them. With ABA, a therapist observes a child’s abilities and defines what would benefit him, even when a child is not interested in learning particular skills. For example, if a child is not interested in greeting others or in learning toilet training, an ABA therapist might focus on those skills anyway, because she recognizes their long-term value long before a child can.

ABA is the usual starting point for children with more severe symptoms. Therapists recommend as many as 40 hours a week of therapy, often in a full-time, classroom-based program. Even as skills improve and children begin to make friends and improve socially, ABA often continues to play a useful role.

2. VERBAL BEHAVIOR THERAPY (VBT). This type of applied behavior therapy teaches non-vocal children how to communicate purposefully. Children learn how we use words functionally – to get a desired response. It’s not enough for a child to know that a cookie is called a cookie or to point to a cookie that he wants. VBT seeks to move children beyond labeling, a first step of learning language, and gesturing to vocalizing their requests – “I want a cookie.”

In a typical session, the therapist will present stimuli, such as food, activities, or toys, based upon a child’s preferences. The therapist uses stimuli that will attract a child’s interest — a cookie in the kitchen or a swing on the playground. Children are encouraged through repetition to understand that communication produces positive results; they get what they want because they use language to ask for it.

3. COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT), which has been around since the 1960s, is usually recommended for children with milder symptoms of autism. Cognitive behavioral therapy aims to define the triggers of particular behaviors, so that a child starts to recognize those moments himself. Through practice, a therapist introduces practical responses. In other words, kids learn to see when they are about to head down a habitual behavioral or mental path (“I always freak out on tests”) and to practice something different instead (“I’m going to do that relaxation exercise I was taught”). CBT helps with concerns common to autism, such as being overly fearful or anxious.

Other behavioral models for autism focus more on developing skills a child already has and working on their deficiencies in subtler ways.

4. DEVELOPMENTAL AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES RELATIONSHIP (DIR) therapy (also called Floortime). With this therapy, a therapist — and parents – engages children through activities each child enjoys. It relies on a child having the motivation to engage and interact with others. The therapist follows a child’s lead in working on new skills.

5. RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTION (RDI) is a family-centered approach to treat autism focusing on defined emotional and social objectives meant to establish more meaningful relationships. This includes the ability to form an emotional bond and share experiences. It is commonly used with parents trained by RDI consultants. Goals are set to develop skills related to interpersonal engagement, such as empathy and overall motivation to engage with others.

6. TREATMENT AND EDUCATION OF AUTISTIC AND RELATED COMMUNICATION HANDICAPPED CHILDREN is a classroom-based program that customizes academic instruction and social development to a child’s strengths.

7. SOCIAL SKILLS GROUPS help children engage in pragmatic language and manage real-world difficulties with peers. While observational studies show them to be effective, less research supports their success so far.
children with autism are usually more comfortable talking and interacting with adults than with peers, social skills groups bring out difficulties that come up when being with peers.

8.Miller Method-

The Miller Method^®: A Cognitive-Developmental Systems Approach for Children on the Autism Spectrum

Arnold Miller, Ph.D. with Eileen Eller-Miller, M.A., CCC-SLP Language and Cognitive Development Center, Boston

The Miller Method addresses children’s body organization, social interaction, communication and representation issues in both clinical and classroom settings. Cognitive-developmental (c-d) systems theory assumes that typical development depends on the ability of the children to form systems — organized “chunks” of behavior –

that are initially repetitive and circular but which become expanded and complicated as the children develop. Becoming aware of the distinction between themselves and their immediate surroundings, children’s systems, previously triggered only by salient properties of the environment, gradually come under their control. Children then combine their systems in new ways that permit problem solving, social exchanges and communication with themselves and others about the world. 

In contrast, developmentally challenged children become stalled at early stages of development and progress to more advanced stages in an incomplete or distorted fashion. Many on the autism spectrum present an impairment in the ability to react to and influence the world. Lacking a sense of the body in relation to the world, salient stimuli drive them into scattered or stereotypic behavior from which, unassisted, they cannot extricate themselves. This results in aberrant systems involving people and/or objects as well as a “hardening” of transitory formations found in normal development, e.g., hand inspection and twiddling or intense object preoccupation. 

The Miller Method uses two major strategies to restore typical developmental progressions: One involves the transformation of children’s aberrant systems (lining up blocks, driven reactions to stimuli, etc.) into functional behaviors.

the other is the systematic and repetitive introduction of developmentally relevant activities involving objects and people. Activities are chosen to fill developmental gaps.
This process is facilitated by narrating the children’s actions while they are elevated 2.5 feet above the ground on an Elevated Square and similar challenging structures. Elevating the children enhances sign-word guidance of behavior and body-other awareness as well as motor-planning and social-emotional contact. It also helps children transition from one engaging object or event to another or from object involvement to representational play.

Parents play an integral role in the program – generalizing the children’s achievements at the Center to the home and elsewhere.

What is the philosophy behind The Miller Method®?

We maintain that each child – no matter how withdrawn or disorganized – is trying to find a way to cope with the world. Our task is to help that child use every capacity or fragment of capacity to achieve this.Because the ability to assess and respond to the outside world is essential for survival, we have developed specialized training systems and instructional equipment to help make this possible. Because the ability to understand others and to express oneself is fundamental, we have developed methods for teaching communication through signed and spoken language. And because a disordered child affects all around him, we work closely with parents and families to create a supportive but sufficiently demanding home life so that new capacities to cope that have begun to flourish at the Center may generalize to home and elsewhere.

How do you assess the children?

Our Umwelt Assessment examines the unique way in which each disordered child experiences reality. We observe the manner in which the child reacts or fails to react to different parts of a situation. Figure 1 below indicates what we mean. 1a represents a child enjoying a repetitive pushing-ball game in which adult and child push a swinging ball back and forth. The dotted lines to both ball and adult indicate that the child’s reality system includes awareness of both the ball and the adult.1b, as the dotted line indicates, reflects a more limited reality system which includes the ball – as shown by his or her pushing it whenever it arrives – but not the adult.1c shows an even more circumscribed reality system since here the child fails to react even when the ball bumps into him or her.

What do you do about more limited reality systems once you discover them?

We expand and transform limited reality systems and we enrich the child’s repertoire by introducing new ones through spheric activity. When, through their work at the Center, the children learn to tolerate “stretching” their reality systems, or to accept new ones via repetitive spheres of activity, and can make transitions from one event to another without distress, their ability to cope with different life situations improves dramatically.For example, for the child in Figure 1b that includes the ball but not the adult, we find ways to include the adult within the child’s object system or change it from a child-object system to a child-adult-object system. For the child in 1c we try to find out what gets in the way of the child’s failure to react to the ball even when it hits the child. We determine if there are circumstances where the child can become aware of the ball: Some disordered children, for example, become more aware of an object when it approaches very slowly, others when they have repeated opportunity to push the ball.For children whose reality does not include simple systems such as climbing up stairs to go down a slide, we introduce a repetitive sphere of activity that guides the child up the steps, to sit and to slide down and repeat the sequence. To help the child succeed we may pace the activity quite rapidly so that the child can connect one part of it with another and, eventually, own the system.

How do you help the children generalize what they learn at the Center to the home?

We build in the ability to generalize learning by the way we teach particular functions. For example, suppose a child is being taught to put cups on cup hooks. First, the worker helps the child put the cup on the hook by working hand-over-hand until the child can do this without support. Then, the worker moves about a foot or two away from the child so that the child must turn toward the adult to get the cup and then turn toward the cup hooks.Ultimately, the child learns to perform the cup-on-hook task while accepting cups of varied shapes and colors from different locations, presented in different positions, and presented by different people. This learning – occurring with the help of at least one parent – makes it possible for the child to perform such tasks at school, at home and elsewhere.

How do you deal with tantrums and other asocial behavior?

We view tantrums as a failure in the child’s ability to cope with people or things in his or her surroundings. We try to understand the meaning of the tantrum – since this varies from child to child. For one child it may come about because he or she cannot cope with the shift from one situation to another and needs help with this. For another, it may stem from a feeling of loss triggered by a teacher turning to another child. Whatever the source of the tantrum, we do not deal with it by “time out” (placing the child in a space removed from teacher or other children). Instead, we try to meet the need being expressed, to signal transitions from one activity to another more clearly, and to use repetitive (and often reassuring) rituals to help the child reorganize. If all else fails we hold the child while talking to him or her calmly about what is happening in the classroom, what will happen next, etc.

What is different about how you teach language?

We find – in accord with other developmental theorists – that language begins with directed body action toward or with objects and events. We also find that when PDD children are placed on elevated boards 2 to 4 feet above the ground they become more aware of their bodies, better focused, and far more able to cope with obstacles or demands directly confronting them. Our research has shown that many children who cannot follow directions on the ground can do so in these elevated board situations. When we place obstacles in their paths and “narrate” what the children do as they climb over, in, through, across these obstacles, the children develop a repertoire of meanings which can readily be transferred to the ground. Since these “narratives” are accompanied by manual signs and words related to their actions the children soon become sign and word guided in these activities.

Goals of the Miller Method® are to

assess the adaptive significance of the children’s disordered behaviortransform disordered behavior into functional activityexpand and guide the children from closed ways of being into social and communicative exchangesteach professionals and parents how to guide the children toward reading, writing, number concepts, symbolic play and meaningful inclusion within typical classrooms

How much does ABA therapy cost?

intensive therapy can cost between $60,000 and $80,000 a year

Does therapy help autism?

The overall goal of occupational therapy,Development therapy, speech pathologist and other therapy is to help the person with autism.

 improve his or her quality of life at home and in school. The therapist helps introduce, maintain, and improve skills so that people with autismcan be as independent as possible.