Abstract

Does your child struggle with brushing their teeth? Is it difficult to get them dressed and undressed each day? Do they struggle to understand their body's relationship to the world?

This book is brimming with simple ideas, activities and exercises to address these daily challenges that young children with autism face. Easy to carry out and to fit into your routines, they will help improve a child's sense of body awareness, coordination and motor skills, and address key tasks such as eating meals and healthy sleep. There are also ideas for tackling social challenges, including playing with friends, going on holiday and staying calm at school. The final chapter of the book explains the different support professionals parents of a child with autism are likely to encounter and how each can help their child.

This jargon-free book shows how occupational therapy techniques can be used to help your young child with autism to live life to the full, and will be an essential tool for parents and carers.

Quite often when presented with a diagnosis of ASD it is difficult for a parent or carer to know how best to help their child. This book, by Debra Jacobs and Dion Betts, not only provides a veritable cornucopia of practical suggestions and insightful advice, it goes one step further. It teaches how to reach and relate to a young child with ASD in a calm, confidant and loving way. The writers have left nothing to chance. Starting with babyhood, they show how to maximize the learning potential of every waking moment and demonstrate how this can be fun for everyone involved. This book could stand alone as a handbook for raising all children, but combined with the authors' astute insight into autism, it is a triumph of empowerment. If you follow the advice set out in its pages you will, undoubtedly, be training your child with ASD to live life to the full.
K.I. Al-Ghani, special educational needs teacher and author of Learning About Friendship and From Home to School with Autism
This guide to incorporating occupational therapy techniques into routine activities combines the expertise of Jacobs, an occupational therapist, and Betts (superintendent, Boyertown Area Sch. District). It introduces readers to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and describes how ASD can affect areas like body awareness and the senses, then presents clear, simple activities that can be performed by families throughout the course of the day to work on specific issues. VERDICT: This work is an indispensable tool for parents and caregivers seeking to improve the lives of children with autism, whether they are performing daily tasks or just having fun.
Library Journal
Debra Jacobs and her co-author Dion Betts have developed an excellent resource for families who are struggling daily in their homes with challenges related to raising a child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ...This book provides families with multiple strategies for promoting daily life activities through sensory adaptations to routines. ... I applaud this book for promoting love, happiness, and function in families.
From the Foreword by Carol A. Just, OTD, OTR/L, Department of Occupational Therapy, Thomas Jefferson University, USA