Shirley Cohen

Self-Determination and Young Children.

The development of self-determination in individuals with severe disabilities is recognized as a critical goal for special education. Although increasing attention is being paid to this subject, efforts to date have focused largely on adolescents and young adults. It is highly unlikely that the characteristics associated with self-determination suddenly emerge in adolescence. This article calls attention to the need to look at the early roots of self-determination from a developmental point of view and examines the relationship of selected practices in early childhood special education to skills associated with self-determination. Curriculum and instructional approaches that appear to support the foundations of self-determination are discussed.

An Analysis of Selected Parent-Intervention Programs for Handicapped and Disadvantaged Children

homes of blind, deaf, or the physically handicapped children, more recently they have also included families of children with other types of disabilities. In the main, home visits to the handicapped have emphasized the acquisition of self-help skilts or the provision of physical therapy. However, current efforts with parents of handicapped children have expanded, and many now deal with cognitive skills as well. The programs selected for the present review reflect this changing orientation. Because educators of disadvantaged children have developed effective parent-intervention programs of interest to those working with handicapped children, a review of these programs is also included.

PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF FAMILY ABUSE OF CHILDREN SERVED BY UNITED CEREBRAL PALSY CENTERS

Two preliminary surveys were performed of children under six years of age to determine: (i) whether handicapping conditions may have occurred as a result of abuse, and (ii) the incidence of abuse among children who already had disabilities. The first group of children were in preschool programs operated by United Cerebral Palsy affiliates and the second group were in respite care programs operated by such affiliates. 42 preschool programs with 2771 children and 14 respite care programs with 435 children responded to the survey questionnaire. The results suggest a high incidence of abuse among handicapped children in preschool programs, but a lower incidence in respite care programs. There is a need for greater awareness and reporting of abuse in programs for young handicapped children.

Supporting Families of Children with Severe Disabilities

This article addresses the issue of how best to provide families of children who have severe disabilities with the support services they need to maintain their well-being. Relevant federal and state programs for family-related services are analyzed, and current service themes are discussed. Principles for program design are presented, and recommendations for policy are offered.

Book Review: Reaching Out, Joining in: Teaching Social Skills to Young Children with Autism, Positive Behavioral Support in the Classroom: Principles and Practices Reaching Out, Joining In: Teaching Social Skills to Young Children With Autism . WeissMary Jane and HarrisSandra L., Baltimore: Brookes, 2001. 225 pages,

This is a valuable book for parents and beginning professionals whose focus is young children with autistic disorders. It will be particularly useful to those parents and professionals whose children or students are receiving intervention services within an Applied Behavior Analysis framework in which discrete trial instruction is the starting point for teaching new skills. Other parents whose children have not demonstrated substantial growth in social interaction skills over time, whatever the intervention approach used, may also find some of the information and techniques in this book useful. Reaching Out, Joining In is likely to be of lesser value to parents of children with autism spectrum disorders for whom more naturalistic intervention strategies are being used to good effect. Although the book, according to the introduction, targets the full autism spectrum, it seems to focus primarily on the needs of children with autistic disorder. However, even parents of children with Asperger syndrome, and parents whose children are responding well in general to naturalistic teaching strategies, may find this book of some value because it clarifies in a concrete way the struggles that children with autism spectrum disorders face in dealing with what appear to be the simple tasks of early childhood. The authors acknowledge that “even mastery of every skill covered in this book will still leave many children in need of continuing help in the development of social relationships” and that “learning how to teach social and emotional skills to people with autism remains one of the major challenges in our field” (p. x). This challenge has given rise to differing teaching approaches and strategies. The authors present some of these strategies and how they can be used, e.g., social stories and video modeling, but some naturalistic instructional strategies such as incidental teaching are given very limited attention, and pivotal teaching strategies (Koegel, Koegel, Harrower, & Carter, 1999) are not referred to at all. What this book does extremely well is present systematic teaching procedures that combine discrete trial instruction and other selected strategies such as scripted interaction scenarios to help children master the elements basic to social interaction. The clarity and simplicity of presentation in this book may be especially helpful to parents. The chapters of Reaching Out, Joining In focus on play skills, the “language of social skills,” understanding different perspectives, and using social skills in classes with typical children. Each of these topics is addressed by identifying typical behavior, describing how the behavior of children with autism differs, and presenting a paradigm for teaching the discrete steps involved in achieving the targeted skills. As the authors write: “Our goal in this book is to introduce readers to social skills programs for preschool and elementary school aged children with autism. By ‘programs’ we mean detailed descriptions of how to teach specific activities . . . ” (p. x). Prerequisites for various activities and strategies are listed and illustrations of how strategies can be implemented with individual children are offered. Some readers of this journal may be disquieted by the frequent delineation of “prerequisites” for particular activities. It might have been more productive to refer to behavioral characteristics that would make particular learning activities easier to master, more pleasurable, and/or more meaningful for the child. Children with autism often develop skills not based on the typical developmental foundation, i.e., they skip the expected prerequisites. When the authors turn to the subject of inclusion they are more cautious about the idea of prerequisites. Weiss and Harris give recognition to the different perspectives on that subject and then present their own view. The point at which they would advocate for inclusion is when a child is able to learn in a group, shows an awareness of other children, and rarely if ever engages in behavior that might upset classmates. It is interesting to contrast the dominant strategies presented in Reaching Out, Joining In with the naturalistic cognitive strategies often used by Echo Fling, the mother of a young boy with Asperger syndrome, as described in her book Eating an Artichoke (2000). Trying to figure out a way to teach her son to express empathy for a child who was hurt (his younger sister), this mother hit on the idea of using one of his central interests or obsessions—Thomas the Tank Engine—for this purpose. Her son was able to make the connection between Thomas having an accident, crying, and feeling sad, and then being helped, and how his sister felt when she had an accident, and was crying, and should have been helped. Echo Fling didn’t have to break the task down to its minute elements for her son in this situaResearch & Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities copyright 2002 by 2002, Vol. 27, No. 1, 93–95 TASH

16.95 Positive Behavioral Support in the Classroom: Principles and Practices . JacksonLewis and PanyanMarion Veeneman. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, 2002. 365 pages,

. This collection of selected papers presented at the Third International Conference on Early Identification of Children Who Are Developmentally &dquo;At Risk&dquo; offers early childhood professionals a concise yet comprehensive review of studies and developments in the screening of developmentally delayed (&dquo;at risk&dquo;) infants and children. Furthermore, the contributors and researchers identify factors that have influenced the development of screening devices and procedures and the directions that are likely to be taken by professionals in the near future in screening young children at risk. The contributors of the thirteen chapters present a broad array of interests, concerns, and research findings directly related to screening and identifying developmentally delayed children and also provide the interested reader with clear, international view of the emerging science of assessment and the screening of potentially handicapped children in the Philippines, Sweden, Holland, and the United States.