milestones autism resources
As I consider making goals, whether for the whole year of 2018 or just for upcoming situations I know will be challenging, I utilize a pattern I learned in my first semester of college. This strategy may be familiar to you too. It’s called making “SMART” goals, which is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
Using this strategy has helped me find success in areas where I truly want to make changes or grow personally. In the past when I was not realistic, I would make goals that were far too grandiose which resulted in my giving up easily, and being unable to actually see any progress. Now I concentrate on smaller but attainable changes, and once I reach them I push the goals out further. I also set only one or two goals at a time in order to keep my focus.
For example, I struggle with asking repetitive, anxiety-provoked questions of others. Instead of setting a goal like, “I will stop asking repetitive questions,” I set a SMART goal. Applying the SMART strategy to the goal would look like this:
S (specific): I will reduce my repetitive, anxiety-provoked questions at home. I will enlist the help of a family member to give me cues when needed and keep me accountable to my goal. I will reduce the questions to two times each.
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The New Year is here and with it comes those New Year’s resolutions. Resolutions are the goals we set for ourselves for the upcoming year – try to eat healthier, save more money, make time to get to the gym.
This might also be a good time for families to reflect on what goals they may have for their children with autism. I frequently get asked the question, “Do you see this as something my child can do within one year?” Your child’s educational team also has to make this determination when writing goals for the Individualized Education Program.
In thinking about setting goals, take a page from the IEP guidelines and try to make them SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound. Instead of, “I want my child to communicate more with me,” think about what is the most important thing they learn to communicate. Instead of “I want my child to read”, maybe “I want my child to read 10 words, or 20 words,” or whatever makes the most sense.
As with any goal, in order to get somewhere, you have to know where you are at. It’s difficult to measure progress if you don’t have a baseline measurement to know what you are comparing to. Additionally, it’s hard to know whether the teaching you are doing is having the impact you want, without occasionally measuring the progress. That’s why data-driven decisions are so crucial. If you have an idea in your mind about what kind of goal you want to work towards achieving with your son or daughter, stop and take a measurement of what their current skill is in this area.
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Amanda Buzo was a young lawyer starting her career in special needs estate planning when she first heard about Milestones.
In her interactions with clients, she kept coming across the organization’s name.
“Amazing resources! Invaluable tools! You have to go to the conference!” her clients would tell her. Wanting to find out more, Amanda attended her first Milestones conference and was blown away.
“It was such a phenomenal event,” she says. “The environment was so positive and everyone was supportive of each other. It was very inspiring.”
Tell us about your first experience with Milestones.
I was an exhibitor at my very first conference in 2015. As an exhibitor, you’re on your feet all day and it can be very tiring. But the Milestones staff was very attentive and supportive, making sure we were comfortable and had everything we needed to make our experience a success.
Lauren (Daughtrey) introduced me to a board member and helped me make connections with the professional community. Milestones went out of their way to connect me, and as a result, I developed a lot of relationships with fellow exhibitors, conference attendees and the community. I had such a good experience that I wanted to be more involved.
How has Milestones helped you professionally?
Working with Milestones has given the Community Fund Management Foundation credibility and a seat at the table.
You are executive director at Community Fund Management Foundation. Tell us more about your organization.
We are a non-profit that establishes trusts for individuals with disabilities with money provided by the individuals or their families. We help families provide for a person’s needs in a way that helps safeguard their loved one’s eligibility for government benefits like Medicaid. We have 2,200 trusts in 82 of 88 counties in Ohio, which amount to about $93 million in assets. We have one of the largest pooled trusts in the US.
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If your family is anything like ours, the holidays can be a stressful time of year. After the novelty of winter break wears off, my boys quickly become bored and irritable. Unfortunately, this happy time of year can be stressful for many children and adults diagnosed with autism. Whether it is caused by a change in routine or deficits in leisure skills, extended breaks from school can be anything but joyful.
Last year, our family decided to break the cycle of the winter break blues. I had a simple plan in mind: we do just ONE family activity per day. I picked a variety of fun things to do and created a picture checklist to guide each activity. Using this method, our son participated in so many activities that he would have previously tried to escape. What really blew me away was after painting a picture (an activity that typically evoked his most cunning escape tactics), he smiled and said “painting.” Then an hour later, he looked at the picture and said, “paint a picture.” He was so proud of his work! I then realized that this was a strategy we needed to use as often as possible.
For other parents who are looking for new tools to assist them this holiday season, I highly recommend activity schedules. Activity schedules are sets of pictures that show each of the steps needed to complete a task. They help ease the stress that novel activities sometime bring by showing a concrete beginning and end for each task. They are a great way to promote independence while also decreasing the stress parents can feel during family activities. Click here to see an example of a simple activity schedule for a fun, snowman craft.
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Some of my greatest memories are holiday-related. For example, the Christmas of 1982 when Santa placed under our tree a stuffed prairie dog—Prairie Pup. My new special interest quickly became prairie dogs for the next eight years. Prairie Pup and I were inseparable, until I began middle school and Prairie Pup became the first prairie dog to be expelled from the Oakland County Schools. The special education teachers informed my parents, “Your son is too old to be carrying a love-worn prairie dog, desperately needing Rogaine.”
During the holidays, I have experienced meltdowns and stress. When I was seven years old, my Christmas gift was an army outfit, equipped with a toy machine gun, walkie-talkies, and binoculars. After a few days, the trigger on the machine gun broke. My parents did not send it back to the North Pole for repairs but instead returned it to Sears for a new set. The new army set was complete except for one small detail —the binoculars were a different style, a 1940’s design compared to modern. When I saw the new binoculars in the box—the former ones missing—my emotions erupted. I began hitting my head relentlessly, smashing everything in my path. My meltdown lasted ten straight hours; it only ceased after my parents went back to Sears and found my original binoculars.
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