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Autism Games Blog

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References & Acknowledgments

It is difficult to give credit to everyone who should get credit for ideas on this website. I have read and used ideas from so many people! I would see a good game and start using it and showing other people how to use it. And then variations would become more the norm than the exception. I have been like a bee, collecting pollen and honey from every flower. I want to provide references for specific ideas but I can't always do this.

Many autism specialists present the same ideas and use similar games but with slight variations or different focus. Below I acknowledge several of the brightest lights in my professional journey. It is impossible, if you know the work of any of the professionals below not to see their influence and often specific activities associated with them in the video on this website.

Sheila Merzer

My first and most important mentor in the field of autism is Sheila Merzer M.A., Licensed Psychologist. From this gifted woman I learned to understand children with autism and enjoy being with these children enormously. I learned to change my behavior so that children with autism could understand me, and enjoy being with me, as well. In this picture, taken many years ago, Sheila and I are in Belgrade, Serbia, where she and I saw so many children and wrote so many reports that we ended up exhausted!

Many of my all-time favorite games came from Sheila--games such as "Pop with letters" games, "Bye Bye Emotions" games, "Come to me", and games where we use dolls to represent the family members of a child. I have many clips of these great Sheila Games posted on Autism Games. In the Twin Cities and over much of Minnesota, I believe that Sheila Merzer has supported more children with autism spectrum disorders and their families, educated more teachers and other professionals, and improved more school special education programs than any other single person in the state. It was a moment of such good fortune that I happened to move into a house behind Sheila's house and that she happened to like walking around Lake Harriet as much as I did and that I happened to receive an informal graduate level education in autism from from Sheila in one conversation after another. I feel privileged to share a little of her enormous gift with others on Autism Games.

SCERTS and Dr. Barry Prizant

As I worked with graduate students over the years, I would find myself saying "and Barry Prizant says..." over and over. As I worked with parents, I found myself explaining things about autism and communication with his examples. Much of the way that I organized my practice and approach communication intervention was based on Dr. Prizant's work and the work of his collaborating colleagues who have published a magnificent set of manuals called SCERTS.

Since I had already incorporated so much of the SCERTS approach to autism before these manuals came out, the part that I found most helpful about these SCERTS manuals was that I could show parents and others these ideas without taking out my coffee stained, wrinkled handouts.

I used the SCERTS system (and their wonderful forms) to track progress when working with children in early childhood. I taught parents the SCERTS strategies one-by-one right out of a section of this manual called Transitional Supports. For anyone who is using SCERTS, the organization of games on Autism Games into three difficulty levels is based on my understanding of the SCERTS skill tracking system of Social Partners, Language Partners, and Conversational Partners. I highly recommend this system of intervention to anyone interested in a research based, well-organized, effective, and nurturing approach to teaching youngsters with ASD.

Relationship Development Intervention and Dr. Steven Gutstein and Rachelle Sheely

Four days of training, in 2001 with Dr. Steven Gutstein and his wife, Dr. Rachelle Sheely had a very big impact on my professional work and this is evident on this website. I continued to study their approach, Relationship Development Intervention, during the years when they had an extensive informational section on their website and I systematically read all the books they recommended (many of which are listed on this page because I loved these books). I tend to focus on communication in my work, so the versions of RDI games you see on this site are often modified somewhat with the learning objective being to teach some communication skill. Indeed, the idea of teaching parents specific games to play with their child was something I started after my RDI training. Prior to this, I encouraged parents to play with their child but I taught strategies, not specific games. I credit RDI with many of the games on this site that teach non-verbal communication (e.g. nodding head, shaking head, shrugging, pointing) and I have added to this repertoire recently with acting and theater games. Also, in route games where we "move across space" walking and running and falling together - these are all games that I think of as RDI games. I highly recommend his books and video (CD) to families who have a child with ASD and to professionals trying to understand ASD better.

Jonneke KoomenFinally, a warm and heartfelt acknowledgment of Jonneke Koomen, who knew how to do a proper website and told me gently and gradually how to make this site better and better. When this involved the learning of html code, she just did it herself. She edited my run on sentences and in the process managed to give a kind of British wording to the writing here and there--so if you see that, it is Jonneke's editing. My dear Jonneke, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Websites

- Guidelines for Speech-Language Pathologists in Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders across the Lifespan. This is a best practice document that outlines the responsibilities of a Speech Language Pathologist working with an individual who has autism.

DIR-Floortime is the most well-known of the play based interventions. I recommend to most families that I work with that they study Floortime in order to understand children with special educational and parenting needs, particularly in the areas of emotional development and cognitive development.
Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) is a relative newcomer on the intervention method's block but the developers of RDI have reorganize intervention ideas from many different autism intervention programs and added some wonderful original ideas of their own.
Autism Papers by Susan Stokes: For great, practical information about visual supports and more
SCERTS is a very well researched intervention system that was developed with a strong emphasis on communication and emotional regulation. I use the SCERTS methods for organizing my treatment plans and my practice. Before I had this wonderful manual, I often felt that I was perhaps missing some important component of intervention but I feel this much less using this treatment organizational system.

Must Own Book

Visual Strategies for Improving Communication: I recommend all professionals and parents buy this book by Linda A. Hodgdon's. Nearly every situation has a clever visual support strategy and Ms. Hodgdon has already figure it out!

Balance Your Perspective

Virtues Cards by Virtues Project International, Inc (2002) virtuesproject.com
I have included a link to a set of virtues cards because I love them! I use them. I feel like I need to shuffle through these cards daily. So much energy goes into identifying all the deficits in children who have autism. I use virtues cards as a counter weight to the deficit model that is central in my profession. All children and all human beings have the capacity to develop virtues. These are qualities of the human spirit that can be identified and celebrated. I use these virtues cards to help myself see children as developing these beautiful qualities, each uniquely and in their own time. I use these cards to help myself develop my unique expression of virtues.

Music

Super Simple Songs is a good source for music that is at the right speed, language level and complexity for language learners with ASD--actually any language learner. This group started out teaching English to children in Japan and so they created songs that included useful vocabulary sung at the right speed for learning the words.

More Books That Influenced My Thinking

Greenspan, Stanley I., M.D., and Wieder, Serena, Ph.D. (1998) The Child With Special Needs. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.
Gutstein, Steven E., and Sheely, Rachelle K. (2002) Relationship Development Intervention with Young Children. London, England: Athenaeum Press.
Gutstein, Steven E., Ph.D. (2000) Autism/Aspergers: Solving the Relationship Puzzle. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons.
Hodgdon, Linda A., M.Ed., CCC-SLP. (1999) Solving Behavior Problems in Autism. Troy, MI: Quirk Roberts Publishing.
Janert, Sibylle. (2000) Reaching the Young Autistic Child. London: Free Association Books.
Miller, Arnold, and Eller-Miller, Eileen. (1989) From Ritual to Repertoire. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Miller, Arnold, and Kristina Chretien (2007) The Miller Method. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Prizant, Barry M., Wetherby, A. M., Rubin, E., Laurent, A.C., and Rydell, P.J. (2006). The SCERTS® Model: A Comprehensive Educational Approach for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Volume I Assessment. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Prizant, Barry M., Wetherby, A. M., Rubin, E., Laurent, A.C., and Rydell, P.J. (2006). The SCERTS® Model: A Comprehensive Educational Approach for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Volume II Program Planning & Intervention. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Quill, Kathleen Ann. (1995) Teaching Children with Autism. Albany, NY: Delmar Publishers, Inc.
Wetherby, Amy M., and Prizant, Barry M. (2000) Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Transactional Developmental Perspective, Volume 9 in the Communication and Language Intervention Series. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Wolfberg, Pamela J. (1999) Play and Imagination in Children with Autism. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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