Teaching Children with Autism: A Manual for Parents and Instructors

This book provides the basics of designing and managing a program for teaching children with autism – information that you need if you have a child with autism or if you are a professional working with one.

Originally trained as a teacher, my background is primarily in clinical psychology and, although I began my psychology career by working with children, I only returned to working with that population about twenty-five years ago, after many years of working with adults.  That began when my daughter, who was working in daycare, had responsibility for several children who were autistic, with the result that her job evolved into that of instructor/therapist.  Since I thought that I should at least have some idea about what she was doing, I started to self-educate and eventually reached the point where I thought I might be able to talk with other psychologists in the field.  Dr. Janis Williams, Clinical Director for the Central West Region of the Ontario government’s newly established Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) program for children with autism was not only willing to talk with me, but she also offered me a job.  

For the next nine years, I worked for ErinoakKids, helping to develop their IBI program.  The bulk of the information about teaching children with autism contained in this book was assembled within that context, both as an attempt to clarify my own thinking about ABA and as guidance for parents and instructor-therapists alike (cf Appendix A, Senior Therapist Task Analysis).  In my opinion, it contains most of the information that parents of children with autism need to get started in teaching their children with autism.