TEACCH Methods and My Daughter
by Jamezetta Bedford
November 1st, 2002
This is a second article about how families and professionals have learned to use structured teaching and other TEACCH methods to enhance their lives.
Today, my daughter is 15 years old! and lives in the 1 year old PATH group home in Oxford that is run by Murdoch Center in Butner. Murdoch is one of five state regional mental retardation centers and before the PATH program opened, one had to be 18 (or petition if a younger male for waiver) to live in one of the cottages there. Generally older, or more severe or more physically/medically disabled people reside at Murdoch. My daughter is low verbal, having learned to speak a few words starting at age 6. She has a great scatter among her skills, with low verbal scores, but genius puzzle scores for example. She learns best through visual means with lots of repetition. Until age 12 when Obsessive Complsive Disorder with anxiety and adolescence overwhelmed her, my daughter was low to moderate functioning, happy and independent. BUT, in her younger pre-school years, she was a live-wire!
At age 3 she entered a separate special ½ day preschool at Rolling Road School in Baltimore County, MD. She cried every day until she was moved to a new TEACCH classroom. A psychiatrist had written in the initial evaluation that she did not have PDD. Well, Ed read everything about PDD, and autism is exactly what we thought she does have! A group of 5 mothers in northern Baltimore (i.e., rich) were piloting a TEACCH class at their special school and we went to observe. Finally! Here were my daughter’s peers! Immediately we began advocacy to replicate the program at Rolling Road. We even got to suggest which teacher should teach the class (because the school had sent my daughter home with a dislocated elbow and lied about it and other things which gave us leverage).
Anyway, the staff and some parents received 5 days of TEACCH training. Marie Bristol (former director of the TEACCH preschool) was one of the presenters and Ed bonded with her immediately. He’d call her in NC with questions. He then came home and put up a picture/symbol card on the tree out in the backyard. He hand-over-hand showed my daughter how to get the card, give it to him and that he’d push her on the swing, her most favorite activity, immediately. She got it!!! The next step was to add a second card. I think it was of a wagon. No, she did not discriminate between them at first. But, after several hours, showing her how the picture matched the actual swing, putting her in the wagon if she gave that card, she got it! We taped and nailed plastic card holders in the house on the dishwasher and in the yard. We paid the big bucks for a set of pic/sym cards and xeroxed and laminated them onto index cards. We started with favorite activities and foods. Tantrums decreased at once.
She still had them when frustrated (daily), but now some communication was possible. As parents we felt so much better.
Mrs. Funn set up a TEACCH preschool class and selected 10 students including my daughter. This “upped” the ante, as schedules were now added to their routines. What a tremendous difference this made in the lives of these 10 little children. We knew my daughter had some smarts, and now she could show it, and learn because the tasks were organized for her, presented visually, and her need to finish helped her to follow her schedule and work system. We all celebrated when she first went around the class and changed every kid’s schedule to have snack next!! (Mrs. Funn had to then teach, of course, that my daughter cannot set the schedule.) We used the baskets and work system for quite a few years to do an additional teaching session at home with my daughter.
However, we never really used the schedules at home. I do regret this. Yes, for the next 8 years my daughter could easily function at home without one as she watched us like hawks for cues as to what was coming next (e.g., if I got my purse, she jumped up to get in the car.) And, home life was fairly predictable for her. But, when hormones and mental illness hit her at age 12, our lives would, I believe in retrospect, have been more manageable if schedules with their power had been a part of home life. We tried to institute them then, but it was too late even with additional measures. So, I know it is hard to make the time to make and use a schedule with your child at home, but I highly recommend it. I now have so much more experience in choosing what type of schedule (object; 1st, then, next; picture; written, etc.) to use, I’d be glad to help and other parents have shared the computer program Boardmaker which also makes this easier.
Your TEACCH consultant or your classroom (or itinerant) teacher would be delighted to assist you with figuring out a good schedule too!
The other important TEACCH concept that I just didn’t know about before, was to teach our children how to cope and calm themselves as part of their daily routine. Then when they do get upset, we can cue them to go into their calming routine and their quiet place which they already know - and sometimes we can do it preventively. Kathy Hearsey presented to CHALU last year and Barbara Bianco just talked about these strategies last week.
Sometimes people think we have to use TEACCH structured methods or Applied Behavioral Analysis to the exclusion of each other, when really, they overlap a great deal! To me what TEACCH does though, that is beneficial, is look below the tip of the iceberg to see what is really the cause of a behavior which because of autism can be very unusual, but make sense for the autistic person. The PATH home doesn’t have the picture symbols, but we have seen that residential and institutional settings run like clockwork and as such are so predictable that people with autism are calmer by being in such a setting due to the daily and weekly routines. For example, at 2:30 every single day, without any variation ever, the second shift arrives at the group home. At 3:30 they go for a van ride. It’d be better if there were a schedule for her to learn to have it for future placement, but my daughter can and does depend on this regularity and routine in her life. She is happy again and
visual structure will always be need for her!
Jamezetta Bedford
jamezetta@juno.com
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November 1st, 2002