[Deleted User]

What an excellent idea Courtney! I hope that many of the board members will join this team and that many of the instructors within this field will take the day to join the front lines.

I wonder if some of the politicians who verbally backed us up before the election might like to join us?

And maybe some of our kids, old enough to walk or young enough to stroller it, and able to participate in signature signing might join us?

[Deleted User]

Hi Everyone,
I am a SEA Student looking to get into the ABA field of work. I start Practicum as a SEA in an Elemantary school come Fed.10 until March 10 during the day, but I am willing to work after school. I am interested in learning more about Autism and getting in to a career of ABA (I have to start somewhere) I am 20 years old and have many abilites for help. I live in North Surry/fleetwood area and I do have a car. You can email me at Jamie_Callard@hotmail.com or JCallard@pac.bluecross.ca
thank you very much,
Jamie Callard

[Deleted User]

WOW — The Dr. Sallows Presentation tonight was a huge success.

Special Thanks to Jemi and Danny for organizing and coordinating this event form start to finish and to Dr. Sallows for donating his time and expertise.

There were over 150 young UBC students that attended this presentation… all the seats were taken and folks were sitting on the stairs, and standing at the back.

Should you be in want of green therapists I would recommend that you contact Margo at EAP…. as they all were blown away by the live demonstration of the therapy technique and many were wondering how to get into the field.

Thanks again to the UBC Psychology Student Association and AIMS for producing such a high-calibre event!

[Deleted User]

There is a wonderful program in Seattle sponsored by FEAT of Washington called "Transition into Teens". The program was developed by Dr. Peter Gerhardt. Unfortunately there is nothing available here, locally. I would also be interested in having my son participate in a similar program.
DeeDee
deedeedoyle@hotmail.com

[Deleted User]

This is an exciting opportunity for young undergraduate students to see and experience the power of ABA first hand, FOR FREE, on campus. And for those already engaged in the field this could be a career changing event.

Please encourage your therapists to drag their friends to this one — and if you parents missed the West Van and WhiteRock August presentations, then this is a "must see" for you too.

This opportunity might not come back again soon.

t

***************************

UBC AIMS (Alternative & Integrative Medical Society) and the
UBC Psychology Student Association

– jointly present –

THE EARLY AUTISM PROJECT
by Dr. Glen Sallows, Ph.D. and Tamlynn Graupner

DATE: Tuesday, January 24, 2006
TIME: 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Woodward IRC #5, UBC
COST: Free
INCLUDES: A Live Demonstration!

ABOUT THE LECTURE
Autism is a treatable and possibly reversible neurological condition that affects normal development of social interaction and communication skills.

Today with high-quality, intensive, early ABA intervention 48% of autistic children can have an average IQ point increase of 28 points — That's enough to move a child from the mildly retarded to normal intelligence range.

In his presentation Dr. Sallows will describe and demonstrate the treatment approach, predictors for success and residual symptoms of “best outcome” children as well as cognitive improvements made by all children in the study using Lovaas-ABA.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Glen Sallows, Ph.D. is the Director of both the Wisconsin Early Autism Project (WEAP) and the Early Autism Project in Vancouver. He has been working in the field of autism for over 20 years. Both Dr. Sallows an Ms Graupner trained under Dr. Ivar Lovaas at the University of California, Los Angeles in becoming proficient in using techniques known as Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), otherwise known as The Lovaas Program.

More info:
http://www.aims.ubc.ca
info@aims.ubc.ca

[Deleted User]

I spoke with our wonderful "registrar" today and she informed me that there will be drop in spaces available for those who have not yet registered but still wish to attend.

Theresa and I feel that given the space we have rented we should be able to accomodate all who register on site on saturday.

Just a quick addition: registration for the intermediate workshop is filling quickly. We have not always been able to accomodate drop ins for this workshop so please do register early if you wish to attend.

[Deleted User]

Just a reminder,

Spaces are filling quickly for the FEAT of BC basic workshop on January 14th. If you are planning to attend but have not yet registered, please download a registration form and contact FEAT of BC immediately to reserve your space.

I will post closer to the workshop date as to whether there will be drop in spaces available. Our workshop numbers are purposefully kept low to allow for quality of interaction so we can not always accomodate drop ins.

Michelle Karren
FEAT of BC Workshop Instructor

[Deleted User]

Need Your Help

Dr Sallows has agreed to do a reprise presentation of his recently published research findings on the amelioration of Autism, as well as a live demonstration of the Lovaas-ABA technique.

Tentative dates are: Jan 19 – 23. We are hoping for this to fly at at least one of the following provincial institutions: UBC, SFU, Langara College, BCIT, or UVIC.

The idea is that this event would be presented through the Undergrad Students Union, NOT through a faculty. We have a full proposal drafted and need help contacting the societies to make this a “GO” ASAP; coverage of the event through CUP (Canadian University Press) may also be forthcoming.

Should you have the time and energy to contact student unions – we could really use your help to get this event off the ground, and make sure it happens. Please email taml@telus.net; subject “Sallows Presentation”.

Again, I really need your help, or this event will not happen.

t

[Deleted User]

I'm new here and trying to find out if there are any schools or districts that actually implement effective interventions or strategies that work well with ASD children.

I have a very high functioning child that has been deemed nothing but a behaviour problem yet still no usable IEP or any evidence of any practical interventions.

Has anyone been successful with advocating without going through the Human Rights Tribunal?

Thanks,
Kathy

[Deleted User]

Interesting article from the UK, which I had to censor a little ?

George

'If I was offered one wish, I'd ask not to have Tourette's for one week. But it won't happen, will it?'

<http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1676456,00.html>

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Raines talks to Simon Hattenstone about a life spent watching her mouth – and her experiences in a new reality TV show

Monday January 2, 2006
The Guardian

A teenage girl answers the phone. Her voice is angelic, her manners impeccable. "Would you like to speak to my mum?" she says. "Can you hold on, please? I'm so sorry, she's just cooking at the moment, would it be possible to phone back in, literally, five minutes? Thanks so much. Bye."
Two days later, I meet Jessica Raines and her parents, Alan and Anne, at their home in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Anne and Alan are welcoming. Anne makes tea while Alan, an optician, tells me about his recently purchased print of a Bob Dylan painting by guitarist Ron Wood. Jessica smiles and says hello. At the same time, her index finger shoots up, fast, aggressive and unambiguous. "Oh, sorry," she says.
"THNK," she shouts. The voice, which is shrill and unlike her conversational tone, seems to come from deep within her – as if it were an unwitting act of ventriloquism. The word sounds like "think", but she says it is not – it's just a sound, a verbal tic, she has made for years.
"THNK," she shouts louder.
Jessica has Tourette syndrome, a neurobiological condition that causes tics. Tourette's tics are both physical and verbal – movements or sounds that are repeated again and again. Physical tics range from blinking to sniffing, eye-rolling, nodding, twitching, throat-clearing, head-shaking, touching the ground every few paces, touching other people, and rude signs. Most of us do these things at some point and to some degree, but for Touretters they are compulsions. The two main verbal tics are coprolalia (involuntary swearing and bad language) and echolalia (repeating words over and over).
The part of the brain that normally censors the flow of information from brain to mouth or hand is not working as it should be in people with Tourette syndrome. As a result, they say and do things that many of us might be tempted to but have the sense or control not to. They trample all over taboos, causing huge offence (racial or ethnic slurs are common) and endangering themselves (Jessica shouts "BOMB!" at airports). The figures for Tourette's are variable – conservative estimates suggest one in 2,000 people may be affected; other studies suggest it may be as high as one in 100.
Jessica's parents knew there was something different about her from day one, even though they couldn't pin it down. Before long, she started to make strange noises. Jessica emits a snort and high-pitched "EH" as if to order. "If anybody mentions it, I have to do it. THNK!" she says. The sentence is calm and lucid until the spasm of the last word.
The physical tics caused Jessica's parents most concern in the early days. "We'd be walking along the pavement and she'd be bobbing and jumping towards the traffic. It was a nightmare," Anne says. "On the way back, she was running backwards. These tics are much better now." Having said that, her parents still have to put the baby lock on the car door, otherwise Jessica will open it with the car in motion.
"THNK!" Jessica barks.
She was first diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – a form of autism associated with obsessive-compulsive tendencies and an a inability to "read" social situations – when she was five years old. The diagnosis of Tourette's was added later. Anne says it was a relief having something to explain Jessica's behaviour.
For Jessica, who is 16 next week and of above average intelligence, it has always been difficult to find a suitable school. In year nine, she was asked to leave a school after two years. A couple of schools then felt unable to accommodate her after an overnight trial. Anne says Jessica is now experiencing relative happiness and stability at a boarding school in Somerset. "No, Mum," she shouts. "They put pressure on me, and it winds me up. They are trying to make me control something I can't."
"The problem is when the tics get too intrusive in the class for the other kids …" Alan says.
"Yeah," Jess shouts. "But they don't need to do it like that. Can you tell them about that, Mum, tell them how pressurised it is?" She later admits that the school has been pretty good.
She is sitting next to her mother, leaning into her bosom. Jessica is sucking her thumb. "She uses her thumb as a way of not ticcing," Anne says.
Jessica features in an ITV documentary, screening tomorrow night, in which five British children with the syndrome go to "Tourette's camp" in the US. The programme is fascinating, but unfortunately seems more interested in the reality TV-style conflict than exploring the condition. Jessica and her parents feel, with some justification, that she has been portrayed unfairly as a "bit**". At one point, Jessica is accused by a fellow Touretter of feigning her tics – the programme never gives her a right of reply. "That's despicable," Alan says. "Why would anybody want to feign such symptoms in the first place?"
Jessica is also, bizarrely, "accused" of making friends with non-Touretters on the camp. The family feel the documentary failed to understand the complexity of Tourette's. For example, there are times when she will swear like a "normal" teenager (it's easy to tell when because Jessica does so in her normal voice) but the documentary appears to find this difficult to reconcile with traditional Tourette's.
"Good television is what they wanted, so they made me look like the baddie. They did 90 hours of filming and they concentrated on the one fight," Jessica says.
Certainly, Jessica today seems less b****y and more considered than the Jessica of Teenage Tourette's Camp. Sure, she's obstreperous, but often she's incredibly sweet. Her tics also appear to be considerably worse than the last half of the television programme suggests – although they do ease up as she relaxes.
"We had a screening a while ago, and Jessica cried her eyes out at the end," Alan says. "She said, 'Everybody's going to hate me from that, they're going to think I'm horrible.'"
An ITV publicist says: "We feel that the film is a fair and true representation of what happened at the camp. We feel that the programme is sensitive to all parties involved and to the central issues of Tourette's. We also strongly believe that it tells the story of their trip in an open and impartial way. It was certainly not edited consciously to portray any of the teens in a particular way. Because we are dealing with young, vulnerable people, we were at pains to be as even-handed as possible, whilst accurately reflecting what happened."
When Jessica was very young, she says, she was not bothered by how others perceived her. "Then when I was seven or eight, I got really embarrassed because I could see people were looking at me. From that day on, I've not been able to do some things I want to." Such as? "I stopped going to the cinema. But I have started again. I didn't like going to public places."
Do people get annoyed with her? "Yeah."
And does she get annoyed with them? "Yeah! We just tell them that I can't help it. P*** OFF! Sorry. Most people understand, but you do get some people …"
Tourette's sounds exhausting, I say.
"Yeah, it is tiring sometimes."
Anne: "Once the film's on …"
Jessica: "Yeah, I watch it, yeah …'
Anne: "She gets involved."
Jessica. "Yeah. P*** OFF!"
In 2003, the tics got so bad that Jessica stopped going out. It was just too uncomfortable.
What's the worst thing? "The verbal tics. NIGGER!" Now the voice sounds so deep within her, and so alien – like Chucky in the horror film Child's Play. "So yeah. Sorry. PAKI! I'm not racist, but I say the worst possible thing that comes into my head." It was back in 2003 that she first found herself using the word "nigger" after listening to the rapper Eve.
She takes offence when people call her racist. "I've got loads and loads of black friends. When I say it, I won't make a reaction, I'll just act normal. If somebody comes up to me and says, 'What are you saying?' I'll say, 'Oh sorry, I've got Tourette syndrome,' and 99% of the people who are black will say, 'Oh, I'm sorry.' Even the baddest people, like the girls who are all ghetto and who will smack you and they just go, 'Safe, safe, that's fine', and they're normally really good about it. People have called me racist in the past and I could just kill them. Accusing people of racism is a bad offence." She's becoming worked up.
Anne: "Yes, don't shout, Jessica."
What is the effect on everyday life for her parents? Do they ever feel desperate?
"Absolutely. Regularly," Anne says. She says she swings between despair and relative optimism about Jessica's future – yes, she believes Jessica could hold down a job if she found a sympathetic employer.
Jessica gives me the finger, sharp and nasty.
What if I give finger back? "Oh, don't," she pleads gently. "I'll do it even more. Sorry."
Anne: "We've had times when Jess has behaved so badly that I could … well I have, I've just walked out, haven't I? Got in my car and gone somewhere else just because I couldn't stand it any more."
Jessica: "PIG ***K."
Anne: "She has difficulty concentrating, so doing homework is a difficulty."
Jessica: "I DO DO IT."
Anne: "I'm just trying to explain how the rows start. On the internet, they call it rages. Rages, not tantrums. Rages. One bloke described it as a black cloud and they could see it coming but there was nothing they could do – once it spirals, they can't get out of it. They see it coming, and they just explode."
Touretters often have rages, and can't reason their way out of them. The more they are challenged, the louder and more unreasonable they can become. As soon as the rage is over, it's as if it never happened.
Alan: "They are not as verbally violent as they used to be, and don't last as long. You almost try to control them, don't you? Sometimes."
How does Jess feel about the rages? "It makes me feel really bad afterwards, but at the time I'm just really angry so I don't care."
Anne: "The argument is, 'Will you listen to me? You're not actually listening to me, you don't get it.' What it actually means is, 'You're not agreeing with me'.
"**** up!" Jessica shouts in her normal voice.
The Tourette Syndrome Association tries to present the condition in a positive light – it stresses that many Touretters are successful (Samuel Johnson, Manchester United goalkeeper Tim Howard), witty, animated, life-of-the-party types. Jessica herself tries to embrace Tourette's and says it is much easier to live with these days, but admits that for much of her life, it has been the most terrible curse.
She says that she found it unbearable at camp meeting a little American girl with Tourette's. "I got really upset looking at her because it was like looking in the mirror. I cried for her because I knew what she had to come. She was eight, and I knew that the next six years are going to be hell for her because it was for me. Puberty's the worst. She'll have tics, problems, everything I had. I don't know how to explain it – it's just everything. Difficulties with friendships."
Jessica doesn't find it difficult making friends, but keeping them is not so easy. Often she knows she is being excluded because her friends are worried she will embarrass them, or friends withdraw because they find her hard work.
Does she think of herself as normal? "Yeah! Course I'm normal," she says instantly. Then she stops. "Well, I'm special. Rare. I'm a rare species." She giggles.
Does she like herself? "Course I like myself." Always? "Well, not when I'm shouting at my parents." I ask her what the worst years were like. "Really hard. Really difficult. Eheheheh!" She's laughing, but she doesn't seem to be finding it funny. "Yeah, just really difficult. That little girl will have a stage where she wants to kill herself. I've had that, haven't I? I really wanted to die.'
Anne: "Yes, you do get quite despondent."
Jessica: "There have been loads of times when I've wanted to die, but you just get through it."
Anne: "She's quite pragmatic."
Jessica takes medication to control her tics, which tend to be at their worst in the teens. Despite everything, she says she feels more upbeat about the future than she has before.
Has Tourette's made life better in any way? "It makes it more funny. My friends like me for me, but sometimes I'm funny, more interesting. Sometimes."
"No, I don't think there's anything better about it," Anne says. "Absolutely not."
Jessica says she'd like to present her own television programme. "Like After Nine. I'll be like, 'I'll see you next week, so f*** off.'" She bursts out laughing.
If she could wave a magic wand to make the Tourette's disappear, would she? She shakes her head. "No. I'd say I want my Tourette's."
Her mum looks appalled. "Would you really? Why do you want to have it when you're 20?"
Jessica: "Because it's me, and I want it to go naturally. I don't know. You don't know what it's like."
Anne: "But it affects you, you can't do all the stuff you want to."
Jessica: "Yeah, but it's me." She stops, and asks if she can have another wave of the wand. "If somebody said to me you've got one wish, I'd say to not have Tourette's for a week and after that decide then. But it's not going to happen, is it?"

· Teenage Tourette's Camp is on ITV tomorrow at 9pm. The Tourette Syndrome (UK) Association helpline: 01892 669151

[Author]

Posts