Sharing An Inspiration on the "7 Principles of an Eagle" ~By Author Dr. Myles Monroe

1. Eagles fly alone at a high altitude and not with sparrows or mix with other smaller birds. Birds of a feather flock together. No other bird goes to the height of the eagle. Eagles fly with eagles. Never in a flock. Even when Moses (Old Testament Bible) went to commune with God on the mountain, he left the crowd at the foothills. Stay away from sparrows and ravens. Eagles fly with eagles.

2. Eagles have strong vision, which focuses up to 5 kilometers from the air. When an eagle sites prey- even a rodent from this distance, he narrows his focus on it and sets out to get it. No matter the obstacle, the eagle will not move his focus from the prey until he grabs it. Have a vision and remain focused no matter what the obstacle and you will succeed.

3. Eagles do not eat dead things. He feeds on fresh prey. Vultures eat dead animals but not eagles. Steer clear of outdated and old information. Do your research well always.

4. The Eagle is the only bird that loves the storm. When clouds gather, the eagles get excited. The eagle uses the wings of the storm to rise and is pushed up higher. Once it finds the wing of the storm, the eagle stops flapping and uses the pressure of the raging storm to soar the clouds and glide. This gives the eagle an opportunity to rest its wings. In the meantime all the other birds hide in the leaves and branches of the trees. We can use the storms of our lives (obstacles, trouble, etc) to rise to greater heights. Achievers relish challenges and use them profitably.

5. The Eagle tests before it trusts. When a female eagle meets a male and they want to mate, she flies down to earth with the male pursing her and she picks a twig. She flies back into the air with the male pursuing her. Once she has reached a height high enough for her, she lets the twig fall to the ground and watches it as it falls. The male chases after the twig. The faster it falls, the faster he chases until he reaches it and has to catch it before it falls to the ground, then bring it back to the female eagle. The female eagle grabs the twig and flies to a much higher altitude pursued by the male until she perceives it high enough, and then drops the twig for the male to chase. This goes on for hours, with the height increasing until the female eagle is assured that the male eagle has mastered the art of picking the twig which shows commitment, then and only then, will she allow him to mate with her!
Whether in private life or in business, one should test commitment of people intended for partnership.

6. Eagles prepare for training. When about to lay eggs, the female and male eagle identify a place very high on a cliff where no predators can reach; the male flies to earth and picks thorns and lays them on the crevice of the cliff, then flies to earth again to collect twigs which he lays in the intended nest. He flies back to earth picks thorns and lays them on top of the twigs. He flies back to earth and picks soft grass to cover the thorns, and then flies back to pick rugs to put on the grass. When this first layering is complete the male eagle runs back to earth and picks more thorns, lays them on the nest; runs back to get grass and rugs and lays them on top of the thorns, then plucks his feathers to complete the nest. The thorns on the outside of the nest protect it from possible intruders. Both male and female eagles participate in raising the eagle family. She lays the eggs and protects them; he builds the nest and hunts. During the time of training the young ones to fly, the mother eagle throws the eaglets out of the nest and because they are scared, they jump into the nest again. Next, she throws them out and then takes off the soft layers of the nest, leaving the thorns bare. When the scared eaglets jump into the nest again, they are pricked by thorns. Shrieking and bleeding they jump out again this time wondering why the mother and father who love them so much are torturing them. Next, mother eagle pushes them off the cliff into the air. As they shriek in fear, father eagle flies out and picks them up on his back before they fall, and brings them back to the cliff. This goes on for sometime until they start flapping their wings. They get excited at this newfound knowledge that they can fly and not fall at such a fast rate. The father and mother eagle supports them with their wings.

The preparation of the nest teaches us to prepare for changes;
The preparation for the family teaches us that active participation of both partners leads to success;
The being pricked by the thorns tells us that sometimes being too comfortable where we are may result into our not experiencing life, not progressing and not learning at all. The thorns of life come to teach us that we need to grow, get out of the nest and love on. We may not know it but the seemingly comfortable and safe haven may have thorns;
The people who love us do not let us languish in sloth but push us hard to grow and prosper. Even in their seemingly bad actions they have good intentions for us.


7. When the Eagle grows old, his feathers become weak and cannot take him as fast as he should. When he feels weak and about to die, he retires to a place far away in the rocks. While there, he plucks out every feather on his body until he is completely bare. He stays in this hiding place until he has grown new feathers, then he can come out.

We occasionally need to shed off old habits & items that burden us without adding to our lives...

Winners Statement:-

"You cannot control what happen to you, but you can control the attitude towards what happens to you and in that, you will be mastering changes rather than allowing it to master you" ~Brian Tracy

Special Needs vs Mainstream School?

I had just attended an open house in sped school to have an insight and glimpse of what software was installed, understand that there are great many number of kids in waiting list. Some parents may prefer their kids to be in mainstream ater EIP, while others may be happy just to get a place in the sped school that can maximize the kids potential in learning, ultimately it is not the academic alone that determine the success of the child learning road map, but his/her life skill of independence are as important in the aspect of cognitive ability, functional communication and social integration with the community. Having the right learning environment and providing the necessary education plan for the kids to tailor to his/her needs are critical success factors. The hard part is that while the parents/care givers may be coping with a single profile on their kids in the spectrum, teachers and special educators have to cope to cater students within the range of spectrum with multiple profiles. Putting things in right perspective base on mutual trust and learning, to encourage & motivate each others along can help to optimize the outcome in learning.

I happened to read an article on the subject a month ago from a speech pathologist and hence will like to take this blessing to share in my blog post:-
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Parents often ask the question…
“Would a mainstream preschool or school be suitable for my child?”

To be honest with you there is an incredible amount to consider when answering this question and of course all children with autism are very different. So I’d like to give you some advice to help when you are making this decision…

1. Your child’s happiness is of utmost importance! So if being in a mainstream school allows your child to be calm and happy and be supported in a safe and nurturing environment, then this is wonderful! A lot of children with autism experience high levels of anxiety so this is very important to consider when finding the right setting for your child to thrive in. If your child is unhappy and on edge then they will most likely be in ‘survival mode’ for most of the day and will not get anything out of their day… just unhappiness.

2. Will your child ‘thrive’ in a mainstream environment? Is the teaching pitched at the right level for your child? The last thing you want is for your child to be getting very little out of their day and slowing down the rate of their development. If the teaching is pitched at a level that is too difficult for your child then you might find that they are only learning 1-2% of their day… and that’s a pretty scary thought!

3. Children with ASD often find it very difficult to shift their attention from what they are doing to what a teacher or a peer would like them to be involved in. This is very much related to their challenges with joint attention. If this is the case for your child then possibly a more structured and specialised environment that incorporates the use of visuals and other specific teaching strategies could be far more effective your child.

4. It is important to remember that cognitive and academic skill advancements should NOT be the only focus of your child’s schooling. School/preschool is also a valuable environment for the development of ‘meaningful’ peer relationships and improving skills that will help your child function more ‘effectively’ and practically in their day to day environment. Please consider which type of schooling will help support this, because at the end of the day social and emotional intelligence is what will help your child live a happy and fulfilled life.

5. Finding a setting where the staff understand autism and the importance of getting to know the ‘individual differences’ of your child is critical. In saying this I have also consulted to mainstream settings where the staff know very little about ASD but they have a real willingness to learn and are incredibly motivated to help the child as best as they can. This passion counts for a lot! Each preschool and school are very different so it is critical that you do your homework and shop around.

6. Many people underestimate what a child needs to be able to ‘comprehend’ to keep up in the classroom The conversations and topics that are discussed can be quite complex and abstract. I went to see one of my 5 year old clients at school a few months ago and the children were expected to be able to look around the playground and tell the teacher what was ‘man made/artificial’ and what was ‘natural’. This kind of activity is extremely challenging for a child with autism who has difficulty understanding and interpreting the world around them!
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Teaching a child with ASD requires a different perspective, flexibility and creativity, and constant learning on our part and the rest of the staff within the special education team who see him. We are all not perfect but nevertheless, situation can be improved and compensated with effective communication and close collaborative partnership. While the parents very often are contacted about problem, Teacher's role in this communication to relay knowledge and recommendation to parents are as important, parents need to hear some success stories too from the teachers. Kudos to all the SPED professionals for doing great work in continuous improvement for the future of these special community.

Winner's Statement:-

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart."~ Kahlil Gibran

Term 3 Outing 1- Visit To The Zoo (9 July '10)

The success of this zoo outing gave me an opportunity to appreciate the great work & worth while effort that have been put up by teachers over the past year and a half in EIP, be it 3 months, 9 months or more since we first cross path. I had not failed to attend any outing in the past terms but was not able to attend this time round due to work commitment, nevertheless still rejoiced and delighted to know that our little STAR was having a great fun & enjoyable time watching the animals and show performance.

Just recalled the first outing we attended with Fabian back in 2009 Term 1 which was also the zoo outing, my wife and I were just new parents of a child with ASD then, nevertheless we just go about preparing what we think is best for his learning having little knowledge on the challenge that was about to surface due to his unique learning and behavior characteristic.

Back then, resource use was very little as we do not yet equip ourselves enough to maximize our teaching for Fabian at home to ready him. I did the animal fresh cards and using physical object to associate, but Fabian was at concrete level & non verbal, attention from him was still very poor. We can only hope for the best to manage success.

On the actual day, after teacher briefing, we experience the first challenge from Fabian, he became anxious and start to escalate as everyone starts to board the bus. He would start crying and screaming, so I had to drive him there instead, his perspective thinking and rigidity to change is lacking then, his non-verbal had also added more challenges to his behavior.

During the zoo outing, Fabian had to be carried most of the time as he still very much in his own agenda, schedule was simple and using stickers to mark off at every transition point. Snack time was when we practised his request.

Nevertheless, we were glad and delighted to have achieved objectives to his learning in general.

This year term 3 outing to zoo also enble the teachers who had taken Fabian in the past, to acertain some improvement Vs 2009, that he is very much regulated though behavior challenge still exist where we least expected at times, at least he is motivated to take the bus with the group and able to follow others agenda in walking. He is more verbal, able to identify & associate with the animal better, able to be more expressive in describing some of the animal features in simple sentences. He is much more aware of his teachers & peers now taking photos together or walking hand in hand along the trip. His perspective thinking of zoo has also improved greatly.

The results observed are external, I must acknowledge that internally, the teachers all must had put in great effort behind the scene to ready the outing & maximize positive outcome. Back at home, we are much more resourceful now when teaching Fabian to ready for this zoo trip.

We used a big picture book to walk through with him At The Zoo, using L-R, T-B sequencing to tell the animal name. We had even took out 2 animal puzzle piece sets to let him Work By Myself. To train his expressive language, we use picture card pairing with sentence matching. Photo animal cards and spelling also help him to associate the word with the animals. Physical objects also use in recalling with him after the zoo trip and also we have dedicated a home program for painting/coloring today. Will do another round on Sunday for the rest of the animal pictures we brought home from the trip.

The 2 goals set were mostly achieved with prompt 5 and at the end of the outing, Fabian & Mummy brought home with them some wonderful memories & great learning experience towards more independence.

Thankful to Teachers who were leading the various children groups for the good guidance & great support on this outing trip. At the end of the day, every child is a winner having brought back with them some invaluable great learning experiences from the visit to the zoo.

Winners Statement:-
"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on

the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and

comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile." ~ Earl Nightingale

Sharing An Overview Of Learning & Behavior Challenges Often Found In Children With ASD

Challenging Behavior

Child with ASD often seem to march to the beat of their own drummer. What motivates them, please them, and what interests them can be different from other children. Pleasing the teachers, defying the teachers, impressing other children, mastering new skills, pleasing their parents- these fundamental motivations are not necessarily lacking but may be less pressing in children with ASD. Instead, other motivations may be more pressing, such as being allowed to do their preferred repetitive activities, talking about their favourite subject, or avoiding unpleasant sensor stimulation. In the midst of all these challenges, the child with ASD often has to work extra hard to do what may come easily to the other children. Each child with ASD are also unique by himself/herself, what comes easy for one child with ASD may be slight hard or very hard to another child within this spectrum. Anything involve complex language is likely to require additonal concentration and mental effort in a child who already may be challenged in the area of sustained attention. Is it any wonder, given all these factors, that they may sometimes become noncomplaint, irritable, or shut down and withdrawn? But all is not lost or hopeless if we know how to take steps to troubleshoot their behavior, in helping them to learn more effectively.

Difficulties with attention is one of the most frequently reported problems for children with ASD in the classroom, understanding the attention deficits will help you to intervene in a way that has the best possible chance of working. A good way to describe the attention of a child with ASD is that he has trouble managing it. In other words, he may have difficulty putting his/her attention where it needs to be, he/she may have trouble sustaining his attention or sticking with something once he has started to pay attention to. He/She may have trouble selecting out the important things to pay attention to. He/She may have trouble shifting or moving her attention from one thing to another, or he/she may shift his attention to the new thing, only to derail and move his attention back to something that is more important for her(his own preoccupations, or the last thing he was doing). The description above offers many hypothesis in any behevior problem that hinder join attention.

Having said that, we can perhaps evaluate and analyse the problem behavior by first examine the behavior and then seek to identify the function served by the behavior using this ABC principles of Behavior Analysis:-

1) What are the "A"ntecedents(what comes before the behavior)?
They are analyzed for precipitating factors Eg. what activity or task ...
2) What is the "B"ehavior itself? Mood swing, throwihng tantrum, screaming, melt down, covering ears, flapping/flcikering hands etc...
3) What are the "C"onsequences(what comes after the behavior and may be serving to reinforce and maintain it)? Eg Losing interest & attention, not following agenda etc...

Determining the cause of behavior is critical to developing an effective intervention strategy. It will then allow you to develop appropriate modification to task demands, so we can achieve a win win outcome and help the child cope better into acheieving the goals.

Cognitive Strength & Weakness

Various Aspect Of Learning Challenges & Definitions:-

Language
Phonology – Structural aspect of language, refers to speech sound of language
Ability of a child to discriminate among the sounds that others are making when they are speaking and can she produce the sounds consisently and understandably

Syntax- Grammar
Using and understand word ends and using and understanding correct word order

Prosody- refers to melody of our speech-pitch,volume and rate changes that carry meaning and information, universal impairement a among child with ASD who usually speak with flat monotone

Semantics- refers to meaning of words, relationships among concepts
Ability to reason about the concept , comprehend the meaning in a general way. Child with ASD may lack or misuse of mental state verb such as “think”, “expect”, “hope”, “remember”.

Discourse- refers to ability to put together a higher level of connected speech, such as telling a story. Basic “WH” question is a challenge, Who, What & where are easier with photo level representation as visual aid to help child understand but the more abstract one like When, Why & How will be expected from their level of vocabulary.
Often learn language in a formular way like as a whole chunks rather than putting together new sentences with new words to means new thing

Pragmatics- refer to social use of language which includes analysis of speech acts or functions including things like greeting, commenting, asking questions, answering question, agreeing, requesting, protesting.
Child with ASD use their language more to regulate their environment than to be social.

Written language
Usually their strength in the area of decoding what they read & even spelling
The lack of fine motor skill may be hinderance to their ability to understand what they read and mechanics of writing what they want to say.

In summary, child with ASD has persistent problem with structural aspect of language, they may do well in concrete language but have increasing difficulty as the language becomes more complex, hierarchically organized, abstract or inferential.

Memory
Visual memory- area of strength
Memory for music is sometimes a real talent in children with ASD
Memory for verbal material can be quite difficult, for eg they do not use frame work of the story to help them remember details, but instead remember details in the story as if they were unrelated bits of information.
Sometimes they may show extraordinary memories for certain type of material in particular events and facts in great details. But yet there can be impersonal quality to these memories, as though the child is remembering facts and not recollecting a personal event. And the same child can have trouble remembering something you thought he had learn yesterday. Probably something to do with attention, with what the child consider as important, interesting or easy to remember. The challenge is then in finding a way to make the unusual ability useful in the real world.

Attention-child with ASD have a striking disconnection between their ability to attend to preferred topics or activities(where attention span could be relatively long) and their ability(desire) to attend to non-preferred activities.
-Motivation is crucial in helping them optimize their attention when performing task which they may not intrinsically interested/enjoy.
-Make material as interesting as possible, keep requirements for sustain attention a reasonable level and use external reinforcers as necessary(not necessary candy, but checks list, stickers, opportunities to earn a preferred object or activity)
Some help to focus child attention includes:-
-Using hands on activities
-Relating the material to subjects of interest to the child
-Giving imtermittent brief motor break(running an errand, erase board)
-Anticipating a simple quiz with opportunities to earn powerful reinforcer for good performance.

Executive Function-refers to cognitive and decision making activities just like an head of a organization include processes as:-
- organizing task in proper sequence
- suppressing inappropriate or irrelevant response/distraction
- Keep attention to the task in hand
- Putting forth mental effort or concentration on a task over a sustained time/duration
- Initiating problem solving activities/request for help
- Holding one part of information in mind while working on another so the two can put together at the end
- Calling to mind previously learned information without any cues or prompts
- Working for reward that is in the future instead of doing what brings immediate gratification
Most of these functions depend heavily on the frontal lobes of the brain, and depending on the age and intellectual capacity of the child, our job is to serve as the child frontal lobes(helping her to organize and inhibit by setting up external structure) or to help her develop strategies to do these things for himself.

Visual spatial skill-refers to skill that require you to perceive basic visual element(shapes, colors,movements) as well as relationships among them. In additional with motor component such as cutting out shape, copy words or designs, quickly moving pegs fr one hole to another, completing puzzle,hitting a ball.

Social Cognition-refers to understanding the social world
-Ability of a child to grasp what others are feeling, understand why they feel and behave as they do, and understand what is the expected of him.
Components include:-
Processing faces
-only recognize exaggerated expression of emotion to happiness, fear,sadness or anger.
- focus on unusual aspect of the picture such as hairline or mouth or an object in the back ground,rather than scanning the character’s eye for clues to their emotions and reaction.

Empathy- understanding and recognizing his own and other emotion with correct response. If a child may understand someone’s else emotion, he may not respond automatically with the correct response. Eg teacher suddenly has bleeding from nose, he may smile to response to his empathy rather than feeling shock and scare.
-Need to help her recognize and label his own emotion in relationship to child capacity for empathy.

Theory Of Mind- refers to the understanding we have of others’s mind, very often this is absence in child with ASD where they perceive and take it/response literally as what he perceive and not thinking about what others may think differently from the situation.

Friendship- children with ASD often have immature and oversimplified notions of friendship.
They may think that anyone they know or have played with once is a friend, not understanding that true friendships prefer each other because of common interests, feel positive emotion when interacting and share special bonds of confidence and trust.
- duties of parents and trs to cooperate in picking some likely children who share specific interest with the child to seek friendship
- need coaching in group interaction for turns taking, social rules reinforcement

Motor Skill – may be clumsy and uncoordinated with fine motor skill resulting in poor hand writing, coloring and drawing and manipulating objects in hands on lesson

Splinter Skill-area of ability that are above what the child can do in other areas
-Special talent
- some children can use written words or sentence as a gateway for communication.

Hope this sharing can create a good initial insights into understand children with ASD. Every child within this spectrum is unique, and hence has different need. Knowing more to understand individual needs of the child will help each parents, caregivers, teachers & therapist to cope better in managing the best outcome.

Winners Statement:-

"A hug is a smile with arms, a laugh with a stronger grip." ~ Terri Guillemets