April is Autism Awareness Month, so this month, I would like to highlight people and organizations that shine a light all year long on Autism Awareness and, more importantly, Autism Acceptance.
In previous posts, we have discussed the three core pillars of transition:
1. Further education and training,
2. Employment and vocational skills, and
3. Independent living/activities of daily living (ADL’s).
In today’s post, I want to share a resource related to Independent living and ADL’s.
Who is the Autism Life Skills Lady?
Julie Swanson is from Connecticut and started her journey towards becoming the “Life Skills Lady” after her son was diagnosed with Autism in 1997. According to her bio page, Julie went back to school and received a degree as a disability specialist. Since then, she has created the “Life Skills Lady” website and also works as an advocate at JS Advocacy, which she founded.
The Autism Life Skills Lady Website
I came across Julie via her Facebook page when L was 17, and we were really deep-diving into his transition planning. L has expressed that he would like to move out of the family home and live independently with friends and a caregiver to help support him and his roommate as needed. To prepare him for this goal, we started working on those life skills that he could do independently or as independently as possible.
Parts of her website that we found helpful are:
- The “Life Cheat Sheet for IEP Planning” and the “IEP Discussion Guide for Life Skills” were good starting points for us as parents to educate ourselves on how to break something as overwhelming as “life skills” down into its different components and integrate them into his IEP while he was still in school. This also helped us identify which categories L wanted to focus on first and which ones built upon themselves so that we could provide him with the proper resources while in school and at home.
- The “Big 10” adaptive skills: This page goes deeper into the 10 areas of life skills that she has identified and broken down into three categories. Again, we found this resource helpful when we were developing the IEP and have continued to reference it as L has been creating his ISP.
- Her Assessments tab: While discussions around transition planning can begin earlier than 16 years old (or younger depending on your state) while the student is in school, transition assessments must begin once the student turns the age of transition. We found the website’s assessment tab helpful because it broke down and described some of the assessments that can be completed during this time.
Call to action:
- Even though transition planning “legally” begins at age 16 at the federal level (and younger, depending on your state), your student transitions every year.
- Life skills and ADLs can be taught at any age! When my kids were growing up, they would appear as “chore charts.” Don’t wait until they are a year or two out of moving to start teaching these ADLs!
- Anyone can do it: while there are some ADL’s that your person may not be able to do, think about which ones they can do independently, or with modifications and adaptations and assistive technology so that they can participate in the task. Just because they can’t do the entire task independently doesn’t mean they cannot do a small part with some level of independence.
Until next time,
Cheryl
#Life Without a Filter 