NWACS 2015 Fall Conference {Summary Post}

This past Saturday was the Northwest Augmentative Communication Society's (NWACS) annual Fall Conference. Every year, NWACS invites a speaker to come present on a topic relevant to working with children (and adults) with complex communication needs. Susan Lewis Stokes was this year's speaker. Her topic: Challenging Behaviors Communicate!

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Come Hell or High Water (guest post)

"Today, without the head slapping tantrums and gallons of tears, my son can tell me when he needs to use the bathroom or wants to go to the park. He can tell me that he is frustrated or angry. He can even tell me that he loves me. Picture by picture, tap by tap, he is coming into his own and we are finding our way."

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ABA & SLP: A Collaborative Approach to Intervention (guest post)

"As a team, it is evident to me that BCBA’s and SLP’s are well suited to provide state of the art treatment for individuals within their care and doing so will depend on their mutual understanding of each other’s abilities."

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On the Importance of Being Part of the TEAM

I work in a solo private practice. Many of the children on my caseload are nonverbal and have significant behavioral challenges. In addition to their school teams, they have several community-based professionals. The reality is we know best practice is for collaboration and teaming, however that information has not reached the decision makers. As professionals, we need to keep advocating and educating for what we know is best practice, but ultimately ...

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Teaching the Passage of Time

Have you ever gotten "lost" in the depths of Pinterest for longer than you care to admit? Task management, an important executive function skill, is all about understanding the passage of time. It is understanding that everything we do takes time; learning how to estimate how long a task or activity will take; recognizing that if...

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