In this issue:                                     

A Night Under the Big Top

Linking Schools with Telemedicine

Autism Redefined?

Glenwood Entertainment

Donors & Tribute

In this Issue:

Dr. Kevin Elko Luncheon

Christmas Program

Golf Tournament

ABA in the Classroom

Community Membership

Junior Board Updates

Glenwood’s Generous Supporters

Families with children on the Autism spectrum face many challenges during the Holiday season.   Little things that most are unaware of can cause difficulties for children with Autism.   Here are some tips from Examiner.com on how to prepare for the Holiday season.

 What can you do?  With some planning, preparation and a few of these tips, the holidays can be less more enjoyable than stressful. Here are some tips on how to prepare your friends and relatives whom you will be visiting:

• Explain the difficulties your child has with the holiday dinner environment, decorations, noise etc.
• Let them know your child is not just misbehaving, and that he is learning little by little how to handle these situations.
• Explain about dietary challenges so they don’t expect him to eat what everyone else is eating.
• Ask if there is a quiet room (child –proof in terms of décor) where your child can retreat for some quiet time to escape the commotion and noise.
• Send them a short but sweet letter or email explaining explains why your child acts the way he does and the difficulties of the holidays form his point of view. They will have a better understanding of why she won’t wear a dress or he won’t wear a necktie, and why as more and more people start arriving, he tries to escape the room.

To prepare your child:

• Make a social stories book about what will be happening and the behavioral expectations. If possible include photos of who he will be seeing, and the house as it was decorated at last year’s holiday season. If he is going to church, do the same for that environment.
• Play some of the music he may be hearing at this holiday season.
• Practice unwrapping presents – wrap a bunch of boxes up with favorite treats inside and have him open them to get to them.
• Practice a handshake if he can tolerate that.
• Write rules together – ie. how long he thinks he can tolerate sitting at table, and expected behavior.

On the day of the holiday celebration:

• Remind your child of the agreed upon rules
• Packs some little toys he can play with in his lap at the dinner table
• Bring some foods he can eat, especially if he is on a specific diet.
• Arrive early so that the noise level builds up slowly for him.
• Do not let the expectations of others ruin your day. Do what you need to do to make it as comfortable as possible for you and your child.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Holiday Tips for Families and Children with Autism – National Autism & Adolescence | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/autism-adolescence-in-national/holiday-tips-for-families-and-children-with-autism#ixzz1eXYsjrXf

We are so appreciative of volunteers at Glenwood.  Last week we had a wonderful opportunity to work with Protective Life.  They offered to come to Glenwood and give 3 separate Halloween parties for our individuals.  We had parties for our preschool, Allan Cott and Lakeview schools and our adults.  The parties were absolutely wonderful!  We had everything from moonwalks to monster mash games, snow cone machines and cookie decorating.  Everyone had so much fun dressing up and being in the Halloween spirit! Thank you so much to our friends at Protective Life for these awesome parties!

Here are a few pictures from the parties:

Enjoying decorating cookies

Our preschool children loved having the face painting

Our adults enjoying the Halloween festivities

Allan Cott School and Lakeview School had a costume competition

This is the 60 Minutes segment, “Apps for Autism” which originally aired on October 23rd, 2011. It is such an interesting and informative piece. In it, Leslie Stahl discusses what it is like to have autism and how special Apps have provided breakthroughs in the communication barriers.  Be sure to watch the 60 Overtime clip on Temple Grandin.

(CBS News)- For people with severe forms of autism, communication is often impossible, leaving them unable to convey what they want or need. But as Lesley Stahl reports, touch-screen apps designed for tablet computers like the iPad are now giving autistic people new ways to express themselves, some for the first time. Teachers and parents are hailing the technology as a breakthrough, one that can reveal the true depth of knowledge and emotion trapped behind a wall of silence.

In the weeks since Steve Jobs died, there has been an outpouring of gratitude from his fans for the way his inventions, like the iPad, changed their lives.

Among the most passionate are parents of children with severe forms of autism, especially those who can’t speak and appear hopelessly locked inside themselves. Those parents often say these kids understand more and know more than they’re able to communicate.

“60 Minutes Overtime”: Temple Grandin: Understanding autism

Well now, with the iPad and other tablet computers spreading through the autism community, some of those parents are finding out they were right.

It turns out that children with autism show a real interest in the iPad with its easy touch-and-swipe screens. With specially-designed applications, or apps, these computers are helping them communicate and unlocking the isolation.

To watch the full segemtent: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

“Utilizing the talents of all Americans is essential for our Nation to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.  During National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we recognize the skills that people with disabilities bring to our workforce, and we rededicate ourselves to improving employment opportunities in both the public and private sectors for those living with disabilities.”  This is a portion of the proclamation signed by the President on October 3^rd, 2011, naming October as Disability Employment Awareness Month.

James Watkins, one of Glenwood’s ‘stars’, was honored with the Personal Achievement Award from the Alabama Association for Persons in Supported Employment (AL-APSE) on July 27^th , during the AL-APSE annual conference held in Montgomery.   James was recognized for his twenty years of full-time work in the mailroom of Protective Life, a national insurance company headquartered in Birmingham. James is an outstanding example of the contribution people can make to their community when the focus is on people’s abilities, rather than the disability.

Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month!

Autism is one of the most common genetic alterations, caused by a deletion of the 27-gene cluster on chromosome 16. By generating mouse models of autism, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) provided the first evidence that inheriting fewer copies of these genes leads to features resembling those used to diagnose children with autism.

“Children normally inherit one copy of a gene from each parent. We had the tools to see whether copy number changes found in kids with autism were causing the syndrome,” CSHL Professor Alea Mills was quoted as saying. In 2007, Professor Michael Wigler, also at CSHL, revealed that some children with autism have a small deletion on chromosome 16, affecting 27 genes in a region of our genomes referred to as 16p11.2. The deletion — which causes children to inherit only a single copy of the 27-gene cluster — is one of the most common copy number variations (CNVs) associated with autism.

“The idea that this deletion might be causing autism was exciting,” explained Mills. “So we asked whether clipping out the same set of genes in mice would have any effect.”

After engineering mice that had a chromosome defect corresponding to the human 16p11.2 deletion found in autism, Mills and her team analyzed these models for a variety of behaviors, as the clinical features of autism often vary widely from patient to patient, even within the same family.

“Mice with the deletion acted completely different from normal mice,” Guy Horev, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mills laboratory and first author of the study, was quoted as saying. These mice had a number of behaviors characteristic of autism: hyperactivity, difficulty adapting to a new environment, sleeping deficits, and restricted, repetitive behaviors.

Interestingly, mice that had been engineered to carry an extra copy, or duplication, of the 16p11.2 region did not have these characteristics, but instead, had the reciprocal behaviors. For each behavior, the deletion had a more dire consequence than the duplication, indicating that gene loss was more severe. This might explain why 16p11.2 duplications are detected much more frequently than deletions within the human population, and why patients with16p11.2 deletions tend to be diagnosed earlier than those with duplications.

The mouse models also revealed a potential link between 16p11.2 deletion and survival, as about half the mice died following birth. Whether these findings extend to the human population might be answered by future studies that investigate the link between this deletion and unexplained cases of infant death.

The researchers also used MRI to identify specific regions of the brain that were altered in the autism models, revealing that eight different parts of the brain were affected. The group is now working to identify which gene or group of genes among the 27 that are located within the deleted region is responsible for the behaviors and brain alterations observed.

These mice will be invaluable for pinpointing the genetic basis of autism and for elucidating how these alterations affect the brain. They could also be used for inventing ways to diagnose children with autism before they develop the full-blown syndrome, as well as for designing clinical interventions.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online October 3, 2011