Summer Happenings!
June 12, 2012

Well summer is in full swing! I hope your family is looking forward to exciting adventures or peaceful, lazy days! Here at Behavior Plus, we're excited that our summer groups are off to a great start! Some are having field trips to practice the skills they learned this spring. Others are coming for the first time and learning all about Expected and Unexpected Behavior and many other topics that are so critical to learning to think about others. Thinking about others is what it is all about - any time you share space with other people, you have to think about them and how your behavior affects them. This is a hard job for our students. And understanding how to help this learning take place is a hard job for our parents.

As I was thinking about our parents recently, I realized that we have many new parents joining us who have recently been told their child is on the autism spectrum. As some of you know, this "pronouncement" brings mixed feelings...relief that now you know what is going on with your child, and anxiety that now you know what is going on with your child! I believe the best way to help our students is to help their parents. Parents spend much more time with our students than we do, so it just makes sense to empower them and teach them the skills they need to help their children become more successful. This thinking made me realize it has been quite a while since I have held parent workshops for our parents. So, you will notice below in the Upcoming Events section that we are having a Parents' Academy. I have scheduled a series of six 2-hour workshops for parents that cover everything from what ASD is and what it means to your family to practical strategies you can learn that will greatly help your child control himself better, have less anxiety, react less intensely to small situations, and feel more at ease in general. Each workshop is complete in and of itself, but taken all together they provide a significant amount of practical and much needed information that will enable you to be supportive of your child in more efficient ways. I really hope you will take time to read the full descriptions of each and make plans to attend the ones that would be most beneficial to you.

We also have a new Nurtured Heart Approach parenting class beginning on Monday, June 18. That class is nearly full, so don't delay if you are looking for an approach that will strengthen your child's self-esteem while teaching him to be more responsible, more respectful, and more motivated to demonstrate the behaviors you want to see. This Approach works with everyone, so your child is not too old or too young - in fact, you may want to use it on your significant other or even yourself!

Thanks for visiting the website! I hope you'll join us this summer for some of the activities we have planned. We promise you'll leave being glad you came!

Nancy