Emmaus Home at the Franklin Institute

Emmaus Home recently had an exciting outing to the Franklin Institute. It is important for our adults to be in a such a fabulous learning environment with others to practice social skills and increase the thirst for knowledge.

To help our work with God's children at Emmaus Home, please donate HERE. May the Lord reward with eternal life all who do good to us in His Name.

Ben Franklin

The Franklin Institute

The Giant Heart

Technologies to Lessen the Distress of Autism

From Behavior Imaging:

While the incidence of autism has risen precipitously in the last decade, one thing hasn’t changed much. It is still enormously expensive to provide ongoing education and therapy for autistic children. One proven treatment for autism is early and intense educational intervention. However, for many parents, that intervention is cost and/or distance prohibitive. In some areas, there are few or no options for after-school care or babysitting.

The increased incidence of autism paired with an ongoing dearth of professional resources means that families often wait for weeks or months for an appointment and must travel to the nearest major medical center for care, sometimes over great distances. As they wait for meaningful care and instruction, the family faces a host of risks.

In the paper, we said:

The constant vigilance to protect one’s child, one’s family, and one’s partner as well as one’s self can leave parents irritable and on edge indefinitely. These symptoms may cause clinically significant problems in daily social and occupational functioning, both from the perspective of PTSD and other physical and mental/behavioral health perspectives

(Read more.)

Kevin at the Surrey Center

Here is Kevin of our Emmaus Home family, working at the Surrey Senior Citizen Center as a volunteer for the first time. We are so proud of him!

Finding a Sitter

From Healthline:

The first place — and, arguably, the easiest — most special needs parents look to is within their own families and friend groups. Trust them? Absolutely! And they work cheap! But as grandparents age, or aunts and uncles move away, it can be difficult for parents to tap into that existing network. Additionally, you might get the sense (whether rightly or wrongly) that you are “imposing.” But, honestly, if you had abundant resources for your child care needs, you wouldn’t be reading this post anyway. (Read more.)

Early Diagnosis of Autism

From The Herald Sun:

Researcher Dr Megan Clark said sometimes parents and the medical community were hesitant to diagnose a child as being on the autism spectrum too early in life. “Currently in Australia, only 3 per cent of children are diagnosed as early as 24 months,” Ms Clark said. “We found, of the children diagnosed early, 73 per cent continued to meet the criteria for autism from toddlerhood through to school age, so it is possible to conclude that an early diagnosis is reliable and stable.”

The study found three-quarters of children who were detected early went to a mainstream primary school, compared with 57 per cent ­diagnosed later. “Often, one of the first questions around diagnosis is: ‘Will my child be able to attend a mainstream school?’ And our findings are encouraging for parents,” Dr Clark said. “Autism is a lifelong condition, but we know early intervention improves children’s ability to communicate and their cognition.” (Read more.)

Parenting an Autistic Child

From The Mom Kind:

Often times, we find ourselves doubting our parenting skills.  There’s this automatic shame you feel for not better handling a situation. This embarrassment for feeling sad. It is so hard not be hard on yourself.  As parents, we want the best for our children.  We want them to be the best person they can be and to live a happy, fulfilling life.

All too often, this expectation overruns us parents. The constant juggling act it takes just to make a trip out of the home can be overwhelming.  When we are feeling weak, this is when we feel as though we’ve failed.

The key thing to remember, their diagnosis doesn’t define who they are.  It’s okay not to explain their diagnosis everywhere you go. It’s also okay to do so as well.   Sometimes, you will feel like a warrior. You can conquer the world single-handed. Yet other times, you feel run over.  As if nothing at all can go your way. (Read more.)

An Autistic View of the World

From Mummy Est.2014:

I have to admit that lining things up has been something J has done so long that I can't remember when it started. It definitely wasn’t one of the first signs that concerned me. My concerns were his regression in his communication to the point where crying or laughing were the only real forms his used. He didn’t react to his name, or sounds the same as others his age, and he would develop ‘obsessions’ (it started as opening and closing doors, drawers, cupboards and you couldn’t stop or face a day long meltdown). Once he spent 15 minute opening and closing the same door in church.

J’s lining up started with lining cars up. He was very specific and would put them bumper to bumper and facing the same way. He would get frustrated if any of them were knocked or removed. When out and about he would line up sugar and sauce packets in the restaurants/café. I wasn’t overly concerned, after all that’s the way cars drive isn’t it? Following each other in a row? The problem we had was that at this point cars and vehicles was the only toys he would play with. We didn’t know how he’d react to other resources. Soon after we found he would line pretty much everything up-magnets on the fridge, stones in the garden etc. (Read more.)