In “Failing Sam,” Jessica Shyu—who taught special education for two years at an American Indian reservation school in New Mexico—makes an important point about what we provide educationally for students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Teachers may become lulled by having a quiet, disruption-free classroom and overlook the need to provide beneficial instruction. She recalls a particularly challenging student named “Sam.”
His reputation preceded him. A week before he even arrived at school, the teachers were eagerly sharing horror stories they’d heard about the 12-year-old. It was a mix of rumor and truth. They told me about his alcohol problem. They told me about how he doused his cousin with gasoline and lit her on fire. They told me I would be lucky to get him to sit down and not hurt anyone.
Continue reading ‘Teaching them matters’
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Thanks to Christina Samuels, I’ve learned of a resource that I didn’t know previously. It’s called Act Early Against Autism Blog and it looks like a winner. AEAA Blog is the product of a parent, Jayne Lytel, who took the plunge and began to blog during the summer of 2007.
I am the mother of two little boys, now eight and ten years old. My book, Act Early Against Autism: Give Your Child a Fighting Chance from the Start (Penguin-Perigee 2008), traces the arc of my journey—the four worst years of my life—when my younger son, Leo, began to show unexplainable behavior after his first birthday and subsequently was diagnosed with autism, a horrible brain disorder.
There might have been a bit of over-reach in the early posts (e.g., “Act Early Against Autism is the leading source of new information on early intervention techniques”), and then she disappeared for a year. But Ms. Lytel provides important perspectives, views that deserve mention because she examines ideas perspicaciously and writes about them clearly. To be sure, she’s hawking her book, but that’s O.K. We can hear what she has to say.
So slip on over to “Act Early Against Autism and poke around. Then check back on it and see how things develop. Thanks, Christina.
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I’ve been meaning to post this for quite some time and, as I prepared for tomorrow’s class, I just now remembered it.
For any (of my two) readers who are interested in the hypothesis about mirror neurons’ connection to Autism, in October of 2007 Professor Marco Iacoboni of UCLA gave a pair of talks in the distinguished lecture series hosted by the M.I.N.D. Institute at U.C. Davis. Although it is probably the second one that will interest readers of EBD blog, the first one provides very valuable background concepts. Set aside time, as these are each about an hour long.
“The Problem of Other Minds: Intersubjectivity and Mirror Neurons” via Quicktime or Windows Media. “The Mirror Neuron Hypothesis of Autism” via Quicktime or Windows Media.
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Christopher Badcock and Bernard Crespi, professors of sociology and biology, respectively, developed a new and intriguing hypothesis about the causes of severe disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Under the titles “Imbalanced genomic imprinting in brain development: An evolutionary basis for the aetiology of autism” in Journal of Evolutionary Biology (2006) and “Battle of the sexes may set the brain” in Nature (2008), Professors Badcock and Crespi suggest that “A tug-of-war between the mother’s and father’s genes in the developing brain could explain a spectrum of mental disorders from autism to schizophrenia.”
In addition to challenging researchers with new ideas to test, their hypothesis is garnering coverage from the popular press. The story is being covered by New York Times, Discover, Autism Vox, and other sources. Part of the reason it’s getting this attention is that there are other implications of the hypothesis. For example, Professors Badcock and Crespi suggest that some scientists’ behavior—fascination with things and perseverance in analyzing them—may also be a result of the tension between gene expression.
Continue reading ‘Severe disorders as extremes in gene expression’
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Sally Ozonoff and colleagues at the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute have identified a potential early indicator of Autism: At age 12 months children with autism play with objects differently than typical peers and children who later develop other problems. Professor Ozonoff’s study was published in Autism.
Continue reading ‘Infant toy play predicts Autism’
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