I have bread baking in the oven.  Gosh I’m domestic.   I like it better than dealing with conference calls and action plans.   It makes the house smell good too.

We watched a new modeling video the other night.  Ethan was really excited about it.   We have found video modeling a very powerful tool.  Generally speaking, we try to limit TV & videos both quantity and the types of video.  We mostly watch preschool education oriented slow moving shows or Pixar or Disney videos for a treat.  Right now JoJo’s circus and Koala Brothers are his favorites.  They’re good shows.  He memorizes and scripts so much.  Like many autistic children, he’s extremely visual.  I’m a big believer in playing to strengths.  So I’m going to recommend a couple of video series.  (Note: this is a personal experience recommendation and I have no financial interest or connection to either of these companies).

The first is for typical infants and toddlers as well as kids on the spectrum.  The bee smart baby products are excellent.  Both my kids enjoyed the vocabulary builders, action words, numbers, & alphabet.  More info here:  http://www.babybumblebee.com/  I also see them on Ebay all the time.  Many of our son’s first words came from these videos.  Simple video set to classical music.  They repeat the words multiple times.  The action and alphabet videos contain lots of kids.   He gets so much more out of watching other children versus many instructional type videos have adults as the main characters.

When our son got a little older, I read an article about video modeling.  I figured it was worth a try.  We’ve sampled a few and by far the best are at http://www.modelmekids.com/  It’s kids acting and narrating.  We bought the first one (Time for School) when it was the only one.  They’ve since added 2 more in the series: Time for a Playdate and the newest I can Too which we watched the other night.  He gets a lot out of them.  I think it helps him to make sense of things and put them in perspective if he can view them in the video form.

I realize today’s entry is a bit like a commercial, but my hope is to put some content out there that may be useful to other parents.  I hope to talk about IEPs, school and various therapies.  I’m also likely to rant about (look out) some of the voo-do0 that many quacks out there are trying to pass off as cures or therapies.    I know I’m bound to offend someone, but I come from a clinical background and believe in data, controlled studies and peer review. Besides it’s my blog.