I wanted to add, I don't think you should in anyway feel like you are failing or feel guilty for using extrinsic motivation. If that is what is needed to get some buy in, that is what I would I would do. It goes back to the best parenting advice I ever received while at a friend's baby shower: don't feel guilty if you can't or don't want to breastfeed your baby, only feel guilty if you don't feed the baby. You are looking for the best way to help your son. Only feel guilty if you stop looking for ways to help him. I would start with just one thing though - both for your sake and for his. Pick which ever it is you think you can most likely get success with and go from there.

I haven't really ever used a reward system for my son, so I don't speak from any personal experience. I wasn't quite sure from what you wrote if you are wanting to use a reward system for skill acquisition or for skill performance. If it is more for teaching/skill acquisition would it work to just structure it to be right before a very preferred activity?

Not sure. I think originally they were marketing this more to schools and I think now they have perhaps now moved on to more individual use so maybe it will stay at that price point.

I have looked at it 4-5 in the last 9 months or so and it has always been around the $200 mark. I was giving up on getting i but was telling dh about it today and wanted to show him the clip they have and saw it on sale. I thought the same thing about it being something to reuse over the years.

Not sure if anyone has used this program, but I thought it looked like it would be very helpful for my son and have had my eye on it for a while. It is on for a very good price so I went ahead and purchased it today and thought others here might be interested. I will try to add a link, but it is always 50/50 from my iPad... http://www.safeandstrong.org/ I also ordered this book that just recently came out: The Essential Guide to Safe Travel-Training for Children with Autism and Intellectual Disabilities. Will happily post an update once I have read it for anyone interested. it may take me a bit, as usual I ordered quite a few new therapy and the like books for ds today..

How awesome that she is so proactive and able to advocate for herself!

I love that Social Thinking and Me set. We have been working our way through it slowly but surely. For the black/white thinking, I would suggest looking at the book Learning the ROPES for Improved Executive Function. It probably sounds like a strange recommendation, but basically it is a CBT approach to executive function. She uses these awesome graphic organizers that have helped my son with that kind of thinking. That said he really is fairly flexible in his thinking for a child with ASD. She has this basic thinking tool that links situation action outcome and several expansions of that tool for other purposes. We have used this with my son since he was a preschooler and it has been so effective and is something he has internalized and uses all the time on his own accord.

Wasn't trying to say it did. I know you were talking generally about the whole thing, and thought I should clarify what my issue was with the book. Ds is a visual thinker and we have built his language skills utilizing that strength. I have along with the guidance of our SLP also done lots to ensure that his language has been built in as organized a fashion as possible. This makes it so that he can so that he can recall things quicker. Our SLP has always compared it to a filing cabinet. You can just jam everything in there, but it is going to take you a long time to find it when you need it. Clearly it has helped, now I just need to find a way to challenge him to see if we can make any further progress.

My problem with the book for ds is that it is too easy for him.

Think, Talk, Laugh! A Workbook for Increasing Verbal Processing Speed. I can't really give a review as of now. Since ds has had access to a great SLP since he was 2 we have covered most of this anyway, but there is still some worthwhile stuff. I can see it being more useful if someone didn't have access to an SLP and are trying to piece together stuff on their own.

It is so fascinating, isn't it? It makes so much sense and in many ways is very simple, but it is just not something that I ever stopped to think about how ds may or may not be experiencing these sensations. I haven't been doing much with it yet, I am trying to finish this other program I have been working on with ds to improve verbal processing speed. I really think the heart rate activities are going to be the key for ds. I do think it will take a good amount of time working on it though.

Okay, I am back with a bit of a description of the activities for anyone who may be reading. There isn't anything specifically about bathroom use, other than using some scheduling reminders, etc while you work on the activities. That is because the plan in the book works on increasing introceptive awareness as a whole. Obviously as that awareness increases problems should decrease. The simplest way to describe the plan would be to say they are in a way like mindfulness exercises, but different. She is trying to teach and breakdown this attention/awareness of all the sensations in your body by starting in the most concrete manner possible. Hopefully that makes some sense. I really did find it very interesting and plan to start putting the ideas into place as soon as we finish up a couple of other goals we have been working on.

Lol. I don't want to be held responsible if it doesn't have what you are looking for. I do think you will find it useful.

It does. I only paid attention to the ones that were applicable to our situation, but I am happy to let you know if she did in fact have specific exercises bathroom use - I am sure she probably did, I just would have skimmed by them. She had some really cool one about heart rate that I plan to do with ds. I am just out for the day and don't have the book to look at right now. I can post back tonight.

I haven't used the assessment book. She provides the assessment in the book with a do not copy watermark. I could tell from that where ds would have trouble and what we needed to work on. I think the assessment pack she provides is just for therapists wanting to use it in their practice.

There is a book: Interoception the Eighth Sensory System that offers lots of strategies to increase awareness by Kelly Mahler. I found it a fascinating read and very helpful. In addition to addressing hunger, thirst, need for restroom, and pain she talks about the role it plays in acting as an emotional gauge. That emotional gauge part was what I was reading it for. She offers her program of activities to increase awareness, so there are lots of practical ideas in there as well.

nt

The social thinking website is where you will find the most resources. A book I really enjoyed using with my son, that I am not sure it on the social thinking site is Make Social Learning Stick.

Just to be clear, my posts were not based on the above.

Meant to add, do you think part of the trouble could lie not so much with her conversations skills but with her problem solving and overall flexible thinking? Not that I am expecting you to answer, Just thinking it may help to look for tools that support those areas and see if you make any headway.

Well since I come at this from having a child with ASD, my thought when reading about the problem you are encountering is that I would use the narrative process called SOARR that is outlined in the FLIPP book. Not sure for your purposes it would be worth buying, but maybe you can get it from the library?

I will second these suggestions. I really like FLIPP and have been using the ideas for a while with my son with some success.

Best of luck, hope it all works out!

Oh sorry, I wasn't really commenting on their appropriateness for your family, just wanted to mention that point for anyone else reading that may just dismiss them as being too young, that is all.

While I certainly can see why you would say this, I did want to point out that there are many ideas in both the More Than Words program and the Talkability Program that I still use today in my interactions with ds. I guess they are just ingrained in how I use language with ds. Perhaps how to vary the ideas to an older child wouldn't always be apparent to someone who hasn't used it before, but the are still very valid long term strategies that meet the child where they are at and allow for continued langue development and growth.