Best Practices

Dr. Ozonoff made some very good points in this video about interactions with the child during assessments.  I think for many professionals assessing a child, who potentially may have autism, they need to have some form of interactions with the child.  By interacting with the child, they can direct the interactions for specific abilities and interactions that might indicate an autism diagnosis.  Professionals should be well informed of all assessments, so they know what to look for when interacting with the child.  I think it was also important that doctors provide the parents at 12, 18, and 36 months a questionnaire about the development of their child.  The early a child is diagnosed the early they can receive services and it also will assist parents, especially first time parents in observing their child’s development throughout the early years.

A functional behavior analysis is a very important part to the assessment process.  During the analysis, professionals conduct direct observations along with interviewing parents and other individuals that are in close contact with the child, to gain as much information as possible.  It also allows interacting and consulting with other professionals in other related service areas where the child might have needs.

When it comes to best practices in bridging the clinical, educational and classroom practices, it is important for all parties to plan a meeting or clinic every 6 weeks or so to discuss the progression of the child and address any questions that might be arising in their daily encounters.  These clinics should be also at the convenience of the parents as well.  Some children display different behaviors and difficulties in different environments and sometimes with different people.  These clinics will provided everyone with the same information and paint a big picture of the child’s strengths and weaknesses and hopefully address any problems and possible solutions to help the child.

When determining whether a child might have high functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, I think it is very important to pay attention to the little differentiations that Dr. Ozonoff pointed out.  This is where the observations and interviews with parents become very important especially because of the little differences among the two groups.  High functioning autism has a communication delay where children with Asperger’s have normal language development and also do not meet the standards in the DSM for autism.