the advice and opinions expressed by
Dr Gran piche and her guests are meant solely as suggestion and should not be
in any way construed as child specific advice Dr Dar Dr dor ANTM dor Dr Dr
dor Dr dor Grand is a Visionary in the field of autism now you can
ask her questions on Ask Dr D good morning and welcome to ask Dr Daren I'm
Shannon pen and I'm here with Dr Dorian gry good morning good morning Shannon good morning
everyone so thrilled to be here with you than it's lovely to be here an
d so thrilled to be here with
you guys I I will say this is one of my favorite hours of the week I enjoy being with my kid too
that's the only thing that rats higher than you but I enjoy this because you and I get to have Dr
Grande all to ourselves for an hour it's fun it's a lot of fun for me just to kind of get in touch
with the families and talk about their kids kind of hear the pulse of what's going on uh so if you
happen to be joining us for the first time let me tell you welcome uh an
d you're here with Dr gry
Shan and if you don't know her she's a true expert in the field of autism she's been working in this
field for over 40 I'm saying four zero years I think it's much more than that but I really can't
get my head wrapped around that because that can't possibly be true but she has been working in this
field that long and really being such a voice for people on the Spectrum all ages from very young
babies up through senior citizens and everything in between I don't thin
k there's anybody else
who has a bigger heart and more compassion and empathy for individuals who are on the Spectrum
and helping them to get to enrich things in their lives that matter to them not putting something on
them that's you know not useful but helping them to get to things that are important to them
I hope so thank you it's my pleasure always and you I have been the beneficiary of that if
you watch the show you know um that my son was treated um through your program and your trai
ning
and it has made all the difference in our lives thank God that's awesome I'm never gonna be done
saying thank you and being grateful don't want to get all emotional right away but um thrilled that
we have this opportunity so that you guys can ask her questions that's really what this hour is
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aying that like at least five times a day we say thank God for Chris Desmond uh because he's so
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sted you should know that we are in our 14th year of this program so there are 14 13 plus years
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got some exciting things happening because on the autism Network we're about to launch a couple of
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lla Tessier I'm so excited about that
all in espanol that's fantastic is wonderful it is it's so exciting so make sure when is that
starting well we're we're filming and we're doing a little bit of a bank of them I'm hoping
in April we're going to be able to launch that exciting and Gabriela you guys know her she's
the morning anchor on Univision she's she's an amb award-winning journalist and she's amazing
yeah she is she's amazing um and she's a board member of autism care today today tha
t's right so
um we we've known Gabriella you've known her for a long time long time very excited that she's
doing huge fan of yours I'm a huge fan of hers well um you know I we that's we're all fans of
both of you let's say that and leave that alone uh but anyway our we always start with a topic
every day but then we'll take questions on any subject whatsoever so feel free to start writing
in I always encourage you don't wait till the last minute I know we get to the half hour mark and
the
n all of a sudden people go have 100 questions I'd like to ask a question then we get to the when
we've got 15 minutes left and I've got a stack of questions is when everybody body asks a question
and that I have to be honest that stresses me out a little bit because I want you to get the
answers to your questions so ask early and often like they say about voting today's topic though
is educationally enriched environment we're going to start with that um the first question that
somebody ask
ed was what do you mean when you say educationally enriched environment because you say
this a lot sure sure yeah and so I always go back to uh you know studies that have shown for many
many years that uh the more you I guess engage and activate the brain the more you keep the brain
busy uh the more growth there is and more learning and it makes sense obviously because especially
if it's early in one's life but also later in life like you know early in one's life what you're
doing is if you
're engaging in activities that are problem solving let's say or even if you go very
early in life if you have a lot of it's you know I'll give you an example when a baby is born right
at the very beginning and they cannot see colors yet they just basically see black white or red
you are you can buy as a parents a lot of these uh stimuli that like you can put it behind the
driver's seat or in a mobile or something and the baby is looking at all these like patterns
that are black white and r
ed the reason for that is that when you uh visually engage so when you're
showing the the baby the infant all these various stimuli you're producing growth of nerve cells
dendrites and axons are growing in the brain and you're causing like more connections right
between the various parts of the brain and then later of course as the child starts to understand
it's about language and it's about giving them a lot of sensory feedback and then gradually it's
just about uh learning and uh you kno
w giving them all the different things that help them learn and
problem solve and and now you can fast forward all the way to as a senior and they you know we have
like crossword puzzles or Wordle or any kind of problem solving thing and they say if you do that
every day it's very good to keep your brain active and so the concept is the same when we're talking
about an educationally enriched environment and I'm really glad you're bringing this up Shannon
because one of the things that is re
ally important is for parents and for you know clinicians
everyone to realize that any kind of Engagement is better than no engagement like activation of
the brain has to do with just someone interacting with you presenting stimuli to you presenting
things that are maybe challenging or just not even challenging but entertaining like just keeping
your brain active is is a very good thing and the reason that I say this right now is because I'm
working on uh you know trying to figure out withi
n card why there are so many difficulties with
matching our Behavior therapists our technicians to children and providing all the hours of
intervention that a child is authorized to receive and sometimes it's because uh a supervisor
may feel like or parent may feel like oh I already have four or five people working with my child I
don't want an additional one I don't want to have a sixth person and you know it is true that it's
harder for a supervisor to manage when there's six or seven peo
ple but for the child it is always
beneficial to have one more hour even if it's with one other person it is always better to have some
form of educational or you know any kind of brain activity than nonone than like just you know not
doing anything or or you know not paying attention to some educational stimulus absolutely I always
think back because you know you think everything in life prepares you for where you need to be
when you need to be and um my dad had a stroke very early in life
and um and because of that he
lost most of his language and he had to relearn language and I remember being in my 20s and my dad
being this way and it was so frustrating to me a lot of what I learned about him having a stroke
and relearning his language ended up helping me when jeem was diagnosed with autism and one of
the things that I remember very distinctly my parents retired because my dad couldn't work
anymore and they were living on a farm in Iowa and they bought a riding mower beca
use my mom said
this will keep him busy he could be on the riding mower and he can go out and mow but it would take
him like four hours to mow the entire it's a farm you know and and he would come back in and my
mother would realize he couldn't talk for the rest of the day because it was a Mindless activity
right it was only doing this and only doing that and she went to the doctor and the doctor was
like no that is just horrible you need to give him puzzles and things that activate his bra
in and
engage him and challenge him and ask him questions and you know and and have him doing crafts and
things like that that are hard that not so hard that they're frustrating but just on the CP of it
and you know get him involved in those things and and so you know when when jeen was diagnosed I
realized oh we got to do so much more of that yeah because otherwise he will go into his he
had a very rich life that was happening inside his head that we couldn't get into right um but
making
it so that the thing for me is that I used to be a teacher so wasn't that hard for me but
one of the questions we had from somebody this really struck a chord with me they said I'm not
a teacher so I don't naturally think of things to do with my kids when they're at home is there a
class I can take or to learn how to or a site that I that tells me exactly what to do what advice do
you have for the people who aren't thinking about they they don't they haven't worked in the field
of okay this
is how I engage a child and keep them engaged a lot of people put the kids in front
of the television set or an iPad yeah yeah and that's a great question because honestly it's
not one that I had ever thought of before like that that it's an issue for parents to know kind
of what material to present or what exactly to do with their child so um I think depending on the
age of the child there's a lot of resources out there right so if your child is I would start I
mean like this is just an e
xample I would start with just uh buying workbooks right workbooks are
really easy we actually have a lot of worksheets yes on our I think on my website which is one of
the resources that I want to make available to parents it's also on skills because I think that
uh worksheets not to not to you know just put a worksheet in front of a child and then leave them
but to give you an idea of the type of stuff that your child should be engaging in right now because
it's important to be um age lev
el and when I say age level I don't mean chronological age when
you're talking about a child who has let's say a disorder like autism or some other thing
going on ADHD whatever it might be you want to give them material that is at their mental
age level and then start to gradually make it harder or higher levels so a child might be eight
but their level of functioning might be three and you want to start at what a typically developing
three-year-old would be fun so so that it's not like Way
Beyond the child's capability it has to
be within something that they can engage in right and that could be and then you gradually as they
master that obviously you go higher and higher but you want to make it so that the child has a um
different types of input so for example it's one thing if you're doing let's say calculations right
so um for those of you who like sudokus I I always mispronounce that that's all pure math calculation
right so that has to do with one part of your brain and
one type of functioning which happens
to also be the same area of your brain that is activated with music so you could either do math
or music right and those both are really working on one particular area of your brain um the other
things could be just you know word related problem solving uh and again it goes back to the child
like if it's a younger child you want to do things like drawing that's a very creative you want
to also give the child the ability to develop their creative side w
e're just talking about Chris
and how creative he is right so there's all these different things you also want to maybe see what
the child is interested in a lot of children are interested in mechanical type things right and you
want to be able to give them the opportunity to build for instance um those are all developmental
things that you can do and I'm sure these days obviously if you Google that like my child is
three what types of activities are good for him it is really just about not
letting the child
drift off right as you said and keeping them very engaged skills of course the the platform that we
built does go based on kind of mental age so it starts with asking the parent a lot of questions
about the child's capabilities and then it gives you a Le list of lessons that you can engage your
child in you don't really need something like that you can also just go with um stimuli that are for
sale as you know Shannon one of the things we're doing now is um we are uh part
nering with stages
learning and they have fantastic materials um that we will be um making available to our families and
these are all very very important for a child's development I don't think people realize you know
I was looking at the stages material and I love them because they are very wellmade and they have
beautiful cards with pictures but they also have three dimensional objects like there's a picture
of a a sheep and there's an actual plastic sheep it's really identical and looks
really really good
I one thing I'll tell you as as a parent is that when we do IQ tests tests of intelligence we we
use very much the same material it's very similar to that so becoming familiar with these types
of materials for kids automatically helps them be much more comfortable when someone is testing
their intelligence right because they've already seen these and so on so there's lots and lots
of resources for parents it's just a matter of I think the biggest issue is to schedule the
child
especially like you know if you remember we pulled out all our worksheets when Co first started right
and it was hard for parents to keep their children busy and that's what it is it's about scheduling
and make sure that you schedule you give free time like motor activity as well so like you do
a little bit of sitting down then maybe a little bit of running around outside biking or whatever
then coming back maybe you know uh making some food with you like different types of activitie
s
but just keeping the child busy and put it on a visual schedule so the child can see what's
cominging and you're reminding me because you said Co and I was like oh right we I have a list
that's a it started out as 101 things to do with your kids right and that's that exists somewhere
we'll find it and CJ Miyaki also made a list of sites that you could go to that have games and
things that you can play with your child but you know what you reminded me of is on our YouTube
channel we have
a playlist that's called smarty and smarty is all videos that are aligned with
skills even before you go to skills to sort of get a feel for what they're all craft projects the
wonderful Susan o shinsky yeah hosted these for us and made them and she's so creative and and it's
like a project that you do with your child and she you know it's like a three-minute video but
she shows you here's what you need to have here's how you do it and here are the skills that you
will will be working on an
d it shows you where the lesson is in skills if you happen to be using
skills but you can also use it without skills and prob like 20 of them on that playlist because we
had her doing it for a couple of years so you and they're available on YouTube go to smarty if you
need to this is what I mean like we've produced so much stuff that I really want all of them in one
place for parents yeah it's got to be one place we're working on it we're working on it okay
uh we've got some questions that
came in Nancy I haven't seen you in so long this is so great
to hear from you so great to have you watching she says what was the result of the study card
participated in in regarding fecal transplant is there going to be any action changes in treatment
to uh to follow followup studies great question Andy so C did not participate in a feal transplant
study but there have been a lot of feal transplant studies going on the main person to go to about
this is Jim Adams in Arizona he's I think h
e's at the University of Arizona it's important to
contact Jim they're actually embarking on a new program now having to do with FAL transplants
um and they're fundraising for it um and there has been some pretty significant finding with FAL
transplants for kids who have very very poor uh you know very significant GI inflammation due to
uh not having a good uh you know bacteria in their gut the fecal transplant process has to be done
exactly right and it's you know a very precise procedure
but it does very quickly uh produce a
healthy uh GI environment for a child once they've received a transplant of uh fecal matter that has
the good bacteria um so and it is it's you know starting to become something that more and more
people are interested in and uh I think their study is fantastic and Jim has done amazing work
um but it is something that you should probably interact with Jim Adams about I will say that
one of the things I'm trying to do at card is that I'm trying very hard
to bring back a kind
of understanding that uh our kids need to have medical care as well as ABA and we're partner ING
with a number of different healthare institutions Physicians so that all of our patients can have
this type of intervention not just this but any kind of intervention that is necessary for the
medical Intervention which will obviously help the child then kind of learn faster with their
Ava I do think I know she put FAL transplant there because I think that's where we all th
ought the
the poop study that card did do was going to lead to and I think that's what she's referring to but
I think it's it's important for us to talk about FAL transplant and I'm assuming Nancy that that's
but there was I call it the poop study that was not what it was called it was long time ago that
was a long time ago um but um and Co kind of got in the way of that um I'm not sure yeah that
was we were just providing samples and to try to start analyzing again the the kind of you know
the environment of the GI tract of children on the Spectrum and I think five years later now or 10
years later or however long it is um it's pretty clear that not just kids with autism but a lot of
individuals do not have a healthy uh environment in their gas in their GI track and uh you know
that's a it's a longer discussion but it's about um what we've done in the US unfortunately is that
over time we have have produced an extremely clean hygienic environment and as a result of that as
a result of overuse of antibiotics as a result of all of our food being GMO and there's a lot of
different reasons that the biota in the gut just becomes uh wrong right and like we don't have the
right percentages of good bacteria most people I would say in the states with this um and so these
this is one way of replacing the bacteria in the gut and it is very important of course because
if you don't have the right bacteria in the gut it leads to all kinds of inflammation which can
then lea
d to leaky gut and many other types of issues and brain fog brain fog and lots of other
you know more very serious problems yes lots and lots of stuff NH says um Shannon when you talked
about a very rich light life inside Jem's head that reminds me so much of my son he's six fully
verbal but spends a lot of time in his imagination dreams as he calls them did that slowly fade over
time or did it happen at around a certain age he's so different when he is in his head sometimes it's
like talki
ng to a wall versus when he's engaging I will say that for jeem the path out for him was
being able to communicate his ideas and that um what we discovered is that he's a writer and that
it's perfectly acceptable for him to have this Rich inner life that's imaginative and creative
because he has a pathway to put it on paper and share it with people I don't know that that's
the pathway for your child but for Gem we saw a huge difference that he was much more willing
to share when he had the
ability to communicate what was going on and there and we made it so
that it was a positive experience for tell us definitely I love that I think I I was going down
the same path in regards to this I think that you need to kind of interact with what's going on
in the child's head and there's two things I would say you have to do one is like you have to
pull that information out through writing through drawing through just storytelling through music
through whatever singing giv them a camera
and letting them film and set up characters yeah any
and all kids are different right and some kids can't vocalize to that level but uh they can
sing about it there's like different things so they can paint painting is a way to get it up
so I think that it's important to do that but it's also important to uh limit it to a certain
period of time so set shifting is becomes very important because um there are children as I'm
imagining as you're saying and is that you can't it's hard to pull t
hem out because they they're
kind kind of in a zone right they're they're just somewhere else so I would do a few things just to
and I don't know your your child and I don't want to alarm you in any way but I think it would be
important to first just practice set shifting set shifting is uh getting the child to switch from
one activity or one brain uh engagement to another right so like I'm watching TV but Mom calls me
I need to stop that and pay attention to Mom and I know that I will come
back um and especially
if he's engaged in this I would really practice that frequently with him and make sure that the
activity that you're trying to get him to uh focus on is rewarding and positive because what's
going on in his head is rewarding and positive and so you want to make sure the transition is not
going from a preferred activity to a non-preferred activity so maybe you know just calling him and
making sure he can uh look over at let's say some new thing you've bought for him o
r look at the
TV or show him a picture or something like that that switching which is called set shifting is so
so so important to brain activity and to life and to being able to get through everything in life um
and to learning Because unless you're set shifting you stay in this kind of bubble and you're
missing everything that's going on on around you so teaching him that is very important if you
find that it is extremely difficult to get him out of his thoughts then just do you know cont
act
a a university clinic and um ask make sure he's not having subclinical seizures sometimes our
kids um are completely like parents will come and say like sometimes he's so zoned out I can't
even get his attention no matter what I do and they're having a a seizure it's just a very very
minute seizure so it doesn't really show up in Behavior but it shows up on a on an EG right and
if you do an EG uh just measure brain waves you can see that but hopefully that's not the case um
and it's ju
st that he has a vivid imagination and he's thinking about something but teach him rapid
shifting between things that's very important and if you want to have more information on how to
do that we have a whole section on this kind of stuff and skills um under the executive function
curriculum or under cognition I'm not sure it could be either under either or or both um and it
is just called set shifting so take a look at that amazing and I will say as scary as it is getting
that EEG if anyb
ody kind of important if anybody has the opportunity to do that when your child is
Young take if the doctor is offering it don't be afraid of it get it done right because having a
baseline EEG is often very important for later on in life so take advantage of that uh Anisha wrote
in and she said I have a two and a half year old um he had regression right before he turned two
and we started ABA two months after go Anisha that's pretty fast um he is doing around 30 hours
a week of ABA of which
six hours are at school so doing around 24 at the center home and the rest is
at school two and a half years years old he also does OT speech and PT additionally he is verbal to
the extent that he can label and say what he wants I have to make school plans for next September
uh her questions are do patients that recover typically do 30 to 40 hours excluding school is
it worthwhile to keep doing school hours or just focus on ABA and is socialization important at
the age of three next questi
on we're doing some supplements and going to see Dr Rosal in in March
are there any other providers you recommend were based in New York but willing to travel obviously
because Dr Rosal is here in California your work and talks have provided me with so much hope for
my son oh that's awesome and I see that you're actually here with us too so that's great I think
she just joined oh um okay so several different things um I don't know what kind of ABA they're
doing with him at school if it's in
a group in environment is Aba is generally done Ono one there
are situations where group ABA is beneficial and helpful so you have to evaluate whether your child
is actually learning new material from whatever they're doing in school um so and that's the I
guess the measure of good Ava is learning new material and not aversive to him so he's enjoying
it or he's receiving stuff it's at his Pace he's not getting bored uh it's not too difficult they
uh everyone in your team is and that applie
s to your other ABA as well it's just is it do you see
good progress you always have to see good progress don't think of it as this is just keeping my child
busy and it doesn't sound like you're that person but looks like you're someone who's very very like
driven to do this do the right thing so I think you have if if things are and if also the question
about social if your child uh is able to socialize if your child is aware enough of other kids and
wants to interact with them it's great
keep him in that environment if he is not and that you know
this is again because I don't know your child if he's not and if he's um kind of still very much in
his own world then it doesn't matter so much for him to be in school usually I like to teach the
kids a little bit of skills so that when they're in school I can use that environment to have the
child go up to other kids ask other kids or answer other kids imitate other kids play with them like
benefit from that environment if you fe
el like he is benefiting from that environment then honestly
I'll say you have a pretty good set of hours like six here 24 there really good you have some speech
you have some OT fantastic you might want to add some Rec creational things like for instance
music class or uh you know crafts arts whatever but I mean you have a pretty well covered um you
just want to make sure that he's uh continuously learning and also learning the right things so
honestly Anisha I would really recommend for y
ou to get on skills uh you know become a skills
member and do the assessment because because it's very important to teach the right lessons um
ABA can teach anything um so it's not really about the ABA techniques which we know you can use them
to teach anything it's about the content so for instance right now he's doing labels I want to
make sure your ABA provider whoever is working with him uh knows how to get start with labels but
get him by the age of five to have full sentences know how
to converse tell jokes pay attention
to the right things in his environment take care of his own adaptive need I mean there's
like a million things and if you do the skills assessment you'll see all the things that he's uh
needs to achieve right so it's not just like the things he might be a little bit behind on but
it's how do I get from single labels to Long descriptive sentences how do I get from from uh
just interacting with one person to interacting with a group how do I get from payi
ng attention to
one stimulus to learning from my environment how do I it's just so much stuff right so do skills
because it's a really really good assessment and it will really help you nowhere to go right so
that is I think vital what were you gonna say well there's so much you want to say there is so
much I want to say only because it's funny because I think you have more faith in the school system
than I do yeah I mean I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to diss something withou
t knowing
about it and I think that that's a really measured response um and I'm a school a former school
teacher I love school I love Educators I don't think Educators understand ABA right so it's
possible you know and this is you know contempt without investigation exactly what you're talking
about I don't know it's possible that these six hours of ABA and I I'm putting quotes in the air
because I don't believe it I don't don't believe that what they're doing I have been in classrooms
wh
ere they go don't worry I'm doing ABA and it's as anti- ABA as anything I've ever seen so I just
want to say to this parent because you know it's so hard to get a robust program right now I'm
thrilled that you're doing 24 hours and I hope it's good ABA that's the other thing like make
sure it's good ab yeah make sure it's good ABA because there's people doing crap ABA too but if
I could wish anything for you I would say you know do the OT and the speech at school but push for a
4 program wi
th a really good ABA provider because he's going to be three in the fall yeah yeah and
I don't like and that's the other I guess it's so funny because I have the same uh I guess questions
or doubts it's just it matters what the quality is yes of course just as much as it matters what
the hours are yes and it matters that not just the administration quality so like not just that
your therapists need to know how to do things like a discrete trial or you know shaping and chaining
and all you k
now Extinction and all the Dr and all the procedures that are in ABA it just it matters
just as much if they know if your supervisor your bcba knows how to go from A to B to C to D all of
that matters all of that matters yeah and if you have a supervisor who doesn't know how to get
to executive functions doesn't know how to get to Advanced language or abstract language you're
going to be stuck he's going to get bored ABA is going to become aversive if you have therapists
who don't know how
to do shaping and chaining he's going to get frustrated he's not going to
want to learn if you have a school that's way say so all of it needs to be watched you know but
if you're an on it Mom which clearly you are you had regression and two months later you had ABA
you're an onit mom yes then you know and if you're watching the show and learning about what good ABA
is I would say be an on it Mom and fight push for that if you can totally I I just was on the a
phone last night with a mom wh
o is just hitting a wall trying to get ABA just driving me crazy
how much runaround she's getting it's hard it is hard but but if you can if you've already got
24 hours I believe you can do it um okay we got to get to some other questions here but I want She
also asked about oh the phys supplements and what are their what are their medical you're seeing Dan
who is one of the best doctors which is terrific that you got in to see him he is extremely busy
you can also go on his Med Maps which
is the organization he founded and there will be a list
of physicians in different areas uh Ken Bach is in Upstate New York you can also go to Kenny um
and there are others I'm trying to think but you can look on the med maps and they're on there as
well and find Physicians who are in closer to you but you're seeing uh Dan Rosal and he's terrific
so and I'm assuming and I should never assume but if you're seeing Dr rosenal I I'm assuming that
you're already on taka's website and looking uh
medical because he works very closely with taka
but if you aren't because the other question that she had written in was about what other medical
interventions are worth looking to into yeah and so that's very very child specific and I think
what you need to do is they will they they're going to want to do some blood and urine tests to
see if your child is deficient and needs specific supplementation you're going to fill out paperwork
that will uh give them an idea of if there is if there a
re sleep issues if there are neurological
issues if there are gastrointestinal issues um and then the focus will be to treat whatever there
is it's not so much you know there's no um there's very few studies so all of the studies that show
children with autism have medical issues are correlational so there's no studies that really
say oh if your child has this medical issue it's going to lead to autism no causitive studies but
we do know that children with autism tend to have specific issue
s uh for instance a lot of kids have
more gastrointestinal inflammation so whatever it is with your child then Dan will select and help
you treat that particular thing usually when it's regressive he's going to be asking you a lot of
questions about toxicity and you know if the react occurred at a certain point was it after a toxin
after an illness after vaccination he's going to want to know all of that so and then they will
work on trying to detox your child in various other ways I just w
ant to say that Jill wrote
in and said I agree that the school system uh wants my son to act like all the other kids yeah
and Susie says I feel like schools hold back our kids from their full potential some of them do
you know there are some people who are doing good but yes I have big doubts um um I want to get to
this question uh and I don't know how much of this we can answer but dear Dr grye I saw you speak
on news2 Long Island New York regarding autism and its cause I wonder if you fee
l it could be
related to radiation emissions from cell antennas and small cell antennas as well as Wi-Fi and
cell phone radiation emissions I have read about the relationship and listen to world-renowned
activist Dr Deborah Davis speak on this topic most notably however cell antennas in cell phone
and Wi-Fi autism rates were significantly lower one in 200 plus as cell phone and lowly small
antennas to power those phones have increased in usage throughout the world I've noticed autism
rates
climbing immensely is there a relation also are installing uh we are installing more and
more artificial turf grass loaded with pfas is that an issue I'd love to hear your opinion
on these two items of concern and they said thank you yeah really good question and there is
a relationship it's an indirect relationship but it's an interesting one the turf issue with PFA
is that's just one other environmental Toxin and there are lots and lots of environmental toxins
right so there are toxins o
n our food pesticides and so on there in our soil there's toxins in the
use of plastics there's toxins in the environment uh Turf is a good example all uh there's a lot of
toxicity in the environment now and and you know a lot of children with autism have an difficulty
detoxifying um and eliminating those toxins from their body as rapidly as the rest of us do right
so they there're and obviously if you are exposed to toxins and you have a hard time detoxifying
or you have low Redux your bra
in is going to be affected by this now the interest in connection to
electromagnetic fields so cell phones and you know in the past we used to have cell towers you don't
even need them that much anymore because there's such a massive electromagnetic field between
above us just because of the use of our phones so yes there is a huge electromagnetic field that
we all live in what that does it's not that it is Toxic by itself but what it does is it lowers the
blood brain barrier the blood brai
n barrier is this chemical wall think of it as a chemical wall
that controls what gets from your body and your blood into the brain and if that is that threshold
is thrown off because of electromagnetic fields more toxicity in your body gets to your brain so
that is how it's connected is that yes we all I don't know if you know we all are somewhat more
sluggish than you know 20 30 years ago so and that's that is because more toxicity is get
into our brain there's not a question about that s
o that's how electromagnetic fields are
connected to this there are um folks in our in the you know there are scientists who work on uh
how to make a home less exposed to electromagnetic fields um there are people who actually uh produce
blankets that are made of silver for instance and that protects the child during sleep there are
or bedding you know there are uh you know a lot of people who believe that they should shut down
all of their uh Wi-Fi systems when they sleep at night there ar
e things that you can do to help
make your specific environment a little bit less exposed but unfortunately the world around us
is is there and it's it and it's just one of I was looking up because years ago I was going to
a conference and I asked you and you said oh go see this talk and I couldn't remember what her
last name was Dr Claudia Miller who does a whole thing on she calls it tilted and tilted STS for
something um but there's a because I think we all know or experienced ourselves
that you can handle
a certain amount of stuff exactly like what you're were talking about but then at a certain point it
it gets tilted and then start a l autoim issues and and she she has a tilted checklist to see if
you are you or your child tilted and you have too much and then and she has suggestions for how
to make a bedroom as less toxic as possible and you know and it's a graduated scale you can make
yourself fully nuts and go live off the grid and you know you could do that if you i
f you know if
you had to but there are gradations of it right that you say oh okay I'm G to change my toothpaste
or I'm gonna put a water filter in or you know and and then incremental changes so there you go um
I do want to get to Esther I just want to Kelly which is behind before that even Kelly did I miss
Kelly oh I do I did all right let's do Kelly hello I have a child starting kindergarten in the fall
after two years of ABA awesome um and that that was her saying awesome I just gave it
the extra uh
any recommendations for how many hours he should have once starting full day kindergarten with
supports and many things thank you Kelly uh yeah so thank you for writing and I wish I knew more
about your child but two years is good it's not I'm not and I have had children who've completely
faded off ABA after two years but I generally try to to maintain ABA in the afternoon after school
until the child is closer to age level functioning so I can't really answer that because I d
on't know
enough about your child but the idea is the ABA continues kind of as as specialized tutoring right
um on whatever area your child might continue to have needs academic I'm not worried about because
you you're in school now but we're talking about about you know social and language and cognitive
skills and executive functioning skills and adaptive skills and all the different things
that your child needs to learn so the ideal the best thing to do is to at this point and usually
wh
en you start school or kindergarten they should be offering a test so there's like a series of
testing done that can establish what areas your child is still somewhat delayed in and that's
where you focus your ABA and so you know your child is going to be in kindergarten so they're
going to be 30 hours a week in school you don't have as much time anymore but I would still try
to do maybe um something like six or seven hours eight hours during the week in the afternoons and
then try to do a
little bit of ABA on the weekend until you feel like your child doesn't need
it anymore really that's the that is the the deciding factor is I don't think my child needs
it anymore because my child's learning uh from his environments from school and he's not falling
behind on any of those other uh skill areas that are related to the diagnosis of autism I almost
think the more relevant question is how many hours of ABA can you get because how many can be
staffed you know I'm G to guess that'
s a b part in the current environment that um you should take as
much as you can get yes I mean it's hard it's hard because it is hard that's exactly what happens
Shannon is that a lot of kids are in school and then ABA providers have like a rush of people
needing ABA right after school from 3: to 600 to 3: to 7 yeah and so but it is important and you
keep doing ABA until your child no longer needs it there we go Esther we're hugging Esther Esther
says my four-year-old son with ASD started
potty training last month and was doing well until this
past week when he started having more accidents I want to note that I just had a new baby two weeks
ago and they want to know are the two related and what do we do she had a followup also other
unrelated question at what point do you recommend starting a social skills group what skills should
my child have before starting thank you again for all that you do congratulations on the new baby
that's congratulations and yeah I mean it could
be related a lot of times our kids the function
of their behavior is attention so it's very is entirely possible that he's doing that in order
to get your attention back right so that's one thing thing the issue is what to do and what to
do is just what you would do whether or not the cause was having a new baby which is essentially
put him back on a um more uh structured schedule right and obviously if you have a baby who's two
weeks old I hope you have some help because it's very hard ri
ght now but yeah I think it's just a
matter of getting him back on a schedule and also just giving him a lot of attention giving him a
if possible a little bit of alone time so that he knows you are not going to you know you're you're
still there for him and I think that is a big part of it but make sure you the attention is given for
good activity good behavior like don't be giving him attention when he does have an accident that's
not the right time to give attention schedule a different
time with him every day where you are
doing some activities solo with him and giving him a lot of attention at that time and then just
put him back on a structured schedule so that he doesn't have accidents and then you can fade off
again it's got to be so hard I I never had more than one kid but I I always remember one friend
of mine she had one little girl and the little girl was three and she had been the world to her
parents and they were having the second baby and one of the things tha
t she did that I just always
thought and and it's you can't do the same thing now but you could do something like it she hung
this ribbon across the room in the month before she had the second baby and every day they would
take and cut one little bow off the ribbon and would say we're one day closer to you being a big
sister and you get a big sister present today that you're a big sister and and so by the time and
by the time they got to the end and the baby was coming she got a big big sis
ter present it was
like you finally get to see your babysit but she had built paired it with being a big sister is big
thing that means attention for me I just thought it was brilliant yeah abely brilliant absolutely
and not an APA person but so but making that that new role now you're a big brother and when you're
a big brother you get to have this yeah attention that's right and also like teaching the older
child something they can do with the younger child I think is really important I l
ove love love
that okay uh we had another question that came in about the educationally enriched environment so
much of our day is spent in the car and I feel like it is wasted time we have to go to the center
go to speech go to OT go to the store I feel like that is all time my child could have used therapy
do you have any wise words or tips yeah so many years ago we made a set of games called Camp
discovery which are some of our earlier lessons and we put them on the uh you know app Libra
ry
for iTunes so you can download Camp Discovery on an iPad at least take advantage of your child
being in the car and uh so that there actually and Camp Discovery is just one of them there's lots
and lots of really good educational software out there so you can absolutely get your child engaged
in and it's educational like they're actually learning things going forward so certainly you
can do that um you can introduce your child to other things like music and singing when you're
in the ca
r you know there's other things that you can do to engage but I hear you I know what you're
talking about it is very hard when you're driving from one place to another Etc ask yourself if
all of those activities are benefiting your child I always tell people this because every
parent thinks they have to do everything and you don't you have to do the things that your
child needs right so everybody honestly should be doing ab because that's the way our kids
learn uh I'm not sure that every ch
ild needs OT for instance so you know do the evaluations
determine if that that particular intervention is necessary and beneficial cut down and reduce
to the things that are necessary and beneficial and that'll help reduce your your drive time a
little bit Yeah and since you say that you've got all these therapies you could also say to these
people what could I be doing in the car yeah we play games all the time our supervisor like I
remember when we were working on colors that we would pu
ll up to a stoplight and and we would be
like what color what color is this you know and when is it going to change to yellow and what does
yellow mean yellow means you go and Y and then we would play I Spy in the car absolutely we we spent
so much time in the car and and it would became so beneficial to both of us and I had better
conversations with him because he was locked in his car SE totally that I still on trips uh road
trips with my son just so that I can you can have conversation t
rue and I remember like time in the
car with my kids I remember like driving Sunny to uh Thousand Oaks which was quite a long distance
and we would always I'd like tell him a story and ask him questions about it and like that you know
so he could pay attention to parts of the story those types of things or like I'd introduce him to
all the music that I like to hear and then we talk about that yeah conversation there was one summer
Gem and I drove up and saw all of the offices up in Northern
California and we listened to books on
T we would discuss them afterwards about so what was the theme oh I learned so much about my kid
uh amazing okay we're almost out of time but I do want to acknowledge that NH said her for her son
who has the rich uh she said sometimes I ask him what he's thinking about and he says I'm not going
to tell you that's so cute he can write but it still takes some time for him he hard to pull him
out explains him exactly isn't that a brilliant response well
that's an awesome response and it
automatically tells me it's not a seizure type thing right because he's he just wants to keep his
thoughts private at this point so I honestly I do think that what Shannon when my son was little
he um would do the same thing and I told him why don't we make a book and he then started like
um writing and it was all gentic writing at that age he was very young and then at the top I would
draw a line for him he would write on the bottom multiple lines and on t
he top he would draw it and
he that became his thing for at least five years and actually I got some of those published for him
printed so that they look like a book and I would say if he is into writing get him to like start
writing stories or get him a tape recorder have him like record stuff on his on a phone you know
like that kind of of stuff so it's awesome that he's actually saying I'm not gonna tell you that's
kind of cute H kind of cute honestly it's funny because you know your son
is a screenwriter my
son's studying to be a screenwriter and um is that interesting that's probably comes from yes back
then yeah but and jeem started doing something similar and what was because he didn't have a
phone yet but what we found was he liked a little pad that was like the shape of a phone that was
sort of a spiral thing like a a reporter notebook and and he would make nobody could read it nobody
could read he what we found out initially was he was creating a video game in his h
ead what he
wanted and we have pages and pages and he can look at it now and tell you but I couldn't read it then
but that was the beginning of and now they have things that you can get so your child can create
their own video games absolutely even Nintendo we had one of them in the toy guide this year uh that
there's an element that they can build cardboard things but then the character goes into the video
I know it's amazing I just this this technology this world okay we're pretty much ou
t of time
but uh and I think we got to everything and if we didn't I I apologize profusely um but I wanted
to take just a second and say that we've gotten a wonderful wonderful guest on the show tomorrow A
young man who's a filmmaker oh great um a student um who's on the Spectrum and uh Joshua Pitney is
going to be with us and we there's a film about his life right now that's out that you guys might
have seen on social media we're going to talk a little bit about that but I was so intereste
d in
the film it talks about a film that he made that we want to be talking more about so he's going to
be with us tomorrow we're gonna have conversations about that so that will be wonderful uh so you
want to tune in tomorrow for autism live same time same bat Channel all of those wonderful things
but thank you so much it's such a pleasure thank you so much such a pleasure for me and and to be
with all of you what a gift all right uh we will be back tomorrow until then give all your kiddos
a
hug for me and one for YouTube bye bye for now bye everyone don't forget you
can watch ask Dr Daren live every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
Pacific time we hope to see you there
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