Simple Autism Strategies for Home and School: Practical Tips, Resources and Poetry

by Sarah Cobbe, Glenys Jones (Foreword)

Offering a unique overview of a child's point of view of life with autism, this guidebook will help parents and teachers better understand how this condition is experienced in day to day life. Organised by topic for easy reference, it explores the issues that can arise in everyday situations from toilet training to homework.

Learning points, situation-specific activities, and further resources offer practical guidance, while discussion tools such as original poetry illustrate the perspectives of children with autism. Concise and accessible, this book takes a creative approach to understanding autism, and will be an invaluable reference book.

Genres: Autistic Spectrum Disorder

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 19, 2019

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a decent book. Much better than most information written for parents of autistic children, which is why I rounded it up to 4 stars.

I wish that more parents, carers, and educators who work with autistic children would read and listen to other autistic adults (especially those of us who are parents). This would a good book to start with for parents who don't have the option to separate themselves and their children from society enough to allow their children to be more themselves and develop more at their own pace.

This book gives suggestions of parenting/teaching ideas to add to your repertoire while keeping in mind the autistic perspective and experience. Not every suggestion will be a good fit for every family, but this book gives some framework that's helpful and not solely based on behaviorism.

One thing that sorely disappointed me in this book is that, aside from the poems, the author doesn't give her own perspective overtly through recounting her own experiences as an autistic person who used to be an autistic child. That's one of the most valuable perspectives to share, in my opinion, and I was disappointed to see such a lack of it.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very quick and easy read, however really lacked the depth required when parenting and teaching autistic children. The strategies discussed are indeed 'simple' as the title suggests, but they are also very specific to certain situations and behaviours.

If you haven't read much about autism it could be a very soft place to start. But if you are after depth, read elsewhere.