Special Needs School in New York City

Emotional self-regulation refers to the ability of a person to deal with their environment in a way that is flexible enough to allow for varying, socially acceptable responses. Emotional self-regulation abilities help people assess situations to know if it would be feasible to respond spontaneously or modulate their impulses.

Children with autism often find it hard to regulate their emotions which makes them subject to phases of emotional dysregulation. Emotional dysregulation is an emotional response that indicates poor modulation of one’s emotions reflected in a way that isn’t socially feasible.

Why is emotional regulation so important?

Emotional self-regulation is important for several reasons. For school-aged children, it is imperative to be able to regulate one’s emotions for effective learning.

When a child is emotionally regulated, they are most available for engaging with their teachers and peers and for retaining what’s been learnt.

Causes of emotional dysregulation in autistic children

Children with autism find it hard to communicate their feelings and concerns. As they also find it hard to symbolize their experiences, they are prone to disorganized emotions. Other possible factors that make autistic children prone to emotional dysregulation include:

Physiological factors

Autistic children often face sensory processing issues which implies that it is difficult for their brains to process sensory stimuli in an organized manner. A child with autism may be hypersensitive to bright lights or loud background noises, for instance, making them susceptible to feeling emotionally distressed during such conditions.

Psychological factors

Children with autism may find social settings difficult to cope with. Their anxiety could be triggered by being part of a social situation that puts them at a loss for what to do or makes them feel uncomfortable. Being put on the spot at school by being asked a question or being required to perform a complex academic task could act as triggers for bringing about a state of meddling and overwhelming negative emotions such as anxiety and fear.

Special education schools assist autistic children in the regulation of emotions by employing preventive strategies that are aimed at creating an environment conducive to learning. This could include offering opportunities for physical movement through sensory gyms to calm and organize the child’s mind and body and using visual supports in the teaching process, among other things.

Reactive strategies used by special education schools in the USA and other parts of the world include creating a place for students that can serve as a quiet haven to resort to in times of emotional distress. Other techniques involve reducing the duration of an overwhelming activity or simplifying it when the child shows signs of being overwhelmed.

Some special education schools in NYC, such as Rebecca School in Manhattan, have a deep and thorough understanding of the various behavioral issues that children on the autism spectrum tend to struggle with. These special education schools are known to provide therapeutic teaching programs that aim to provide not just cognitive development for the child but emotional development as well.To know more about special education schools NYC visit: www.rebeccaschool.org/

Floortime therapy is an essential aspect of the DIR/Floortime intervention aimed at helping children with developmental disorders grow and develop past their diagnoses. The therapy involves joining a child’s world and pulling them into a shared world where they can develop key social, emotional, language and intellectual abilities.

Floortime therapy was developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan for helping children learn through meaningful learning interactions that are orchestrated while taking into account the child’s functional emotional developmental capacities, that is, their ability to relate, communicate and think. Effective Floortime therapy also requires taking into account individual sensory processing differences. Children on the autism spectrum often face difficulties processing sensory stimuli from their environment. They may by hypersensitive, under-sensitive or a mix of both to sensory stimuli such as sound and touch. A therapist (or parent/teacher) who is not considerate towards these differences could alienate the child much before the therapy starts to progress.

Joining the child’s world

The first step of a Floortime therapy session, which usually lasts for 20 minutes or more and can be conducted by a parent, teacher or a professional therapist, is an attempt to join the child’s world by following their lead.

If a child is wandering and jumping around the room, you may start doing the same. If a child is moving their truck around on the floor, you could make a tunnel with your hands through which they could drive the truck.

Respecting a child’s interests establishes a sense of warmth and intimacy between the caregiver and the child. This is essential for making the second step of a Floortime therapy session possible.

Gently pulling the child into a shared world and helping them develop essential functional emotional developmental capacities

The second step of Floortime therapy involves playfully challenging the child to master essential functional emotional developmental capacities that include the successive abilities to:

Attend to the environment while remaining calm and organized
Relate to others
Engage in purposeful, two-way communication
Engage in complex communication
Form ideas
Stringing ideas and emotions together to form a more complex chain

Developing these capabilities require parents, teachers and therapists to attempt to engage the child’s senses and motor skills in order to pull the child into a shared world that challenges them to hone their ability to relate, communicate and think.

This can be done through an unlimited means of creative and innovative activities that should be based on the child’s current abilities and their sensory processing differences. For example, with a child who’s hypersensitive to stimuli such as touch and sound, you’d have to be soothing yet compelling in your interactions. For a child who is under-sensitive to such stimuli, it would be effective to be energetic and stimulating so that the child wants to pay attention and engage in an interaction.

The Floortime therapy model should not be restricted to isolated therapy sessions. Rather, it should be applied throughout the course of the day. The aim of all or as many interactions as possible during the day should be to join in the child’s world and challenge them to build their ability to relate, communicate and think.

Rebecca School in New York is a therapeutic day school for children with autism spectrum disorders or other developmental disorders. The school programs are established upon the ideologies of the DIR model/Floortime therapy. To know more about Rebecca School, you may visit: http://www.rebeccaschool.org/

A prominent sign of a child who may be suffering from autism or another type of disorder of communicating and relating is their inability to hold a conversation like a neurotypical person can.

Special education schools have teachers and certified specialists who understand the special needs of these children and what is going on in their heads as they engage with the world.

The reason why an autistic child communicates differently than a neurotypical one lies in their preferred mode of communication. For the purpose of this blog we will focus on the two main styles of communication which are common with children who suffer from autism.

Instrumental communication

Instrumental communication is communication that you carry out with a definite right/wrong or yes/no response in mind.

It is communication that is instrumental in provoking a predictable or desired response.

For example, the question, "When will we reach school?" is an example of instrumental communication.

Experience-sharing communication

Experience-sharing communication is communication that is held to not achieve any desired objective but to simply derive from the pleasure of engaging in sharing experiences with another individual or a group of individuals.

For example, "Hey, it's cold today" or "I really feel that that political party should not have won" are statements that express a specific mental state.

Experience-sharing communication is the act of sharing information about subjective experiences.

Children with autism and similar disorders may not speak much unless prompted. This may be because they cannot imagine another person as having certain thoughts, state of mind, beliefs, opinions or intentions.

To them, their sole reference point may be their own mind.

What to do when dealing with children with disorders of communicating and relating?

Special education schools that cater to children with special needs understand the keys to eliciting conversation from these kids.

There are several such schools in NYC whose teachers and administrative staff excel in knowing how to communicate to a child who has trouble communicating and relating.

Being a teacher or a parent, the following guidelines can serve you well when talking to a child facing social challenges:

• Do not keep asking questions.
Questions put undue pressure on the child to come up with the 'right response'.

• Model 'experience-sharing communication' by sharing your experiences with the child, instead of bombarding them with questions in an attempt to coerce conversation.

• Talk about what's happening in the present moment, preferably with the child.

Say things like, "That painting on the wall seems to be interesting" or "The song that you are humming has some really high notes."

When you point to what the child is experiencing, you create a 'shared experience' and increase his ability to relate.

Children with autism cannot make out other people's state of mind.

Share what you know or don't know and pause, in order to elicit a reaction.

There are several schools in NYC that cater to children with special needs. In order to know about them or for more information on how they deal with children who require special education programs, you can visit: www.rebeccaschool.org

Finding special education schools in New York City is not easy for any parents to a child suffering from Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We don’t blame you. No one should choose a school for their child without thorough research, autistic or not. We will try to help you a little to decide.

1. Children with special needs are usually not very comfortable in social interaction. Inability to relate to and communicate thoughts enrages them. One thing that can really help them with this is music therapy.

Music therapy sessions are particular structured according to each child’s needs. There are a number of activities involved, like listening to music, singing along and even learning instrument. Learning instruments gives them an outlet for their thoughts and emotions.

2. Children suffering from ASD often are averted to crowd, chaos and noise. Sometimes it may become overwhelming for them. At such times what they need is a quiet refuge. Somewhere they can calm themselves, without the constant struggle of trying to cope with their surroundings.

These are a few things that children suffering from ASD may need at a special education school in NYC. Rebecca School gives your child all this and much more. We have music therapy sessions, structured by our expert team. We have Quiet Areas near each classroom for when a student might feel the need for a refuge. Our academics are specially designed too. Our foremost goal is to move the child up the developmental ladder, rather than testing his/her memorization skills.

We understand the parent’s worry for the child. That’s why we have a number of facilities for the parents too; to make life easier for the entire family. We provide you with a social worker, who becomes a bridge between you and the school. You can contact this social worker for any emergencies too. There are parent support groups so you can share your experiences and listen to other parents’. We also have parent workshops to educate the parents about any relevant topics regarding their child. Choosing the perfect autism school for your child mustn’t be done with half knowledge. That’s why we give you a tour of our special ed school in NYC you can see our facility and the ongoing classes. Contact us for a free tour.

Again, these are only a few highlights of Rebecca School. For more details go through our website and don’t hesitate in contacting us!

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders are usually presented with difficulty in sequencing their actions according to their emotional intent and their desires. These children may have the desire for closeness but they experience difficulties in translating these desires into action. In other words, they possess the capacity for having a warm, empathic and loving relationship but the primary hurdle that most children with autism face is with their communication abilities and expression of emotions.

The DIR Model or the Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based” Model was developed by Stanley Greenspan. It is a comprehensive and integrated model of human development explaining typical and atypical developments including autism spectrum disorders. This model focuses on:

· “Developmental”- Six Functional Emotional Developmental Levels.

· “Individual-Difference”- It bears the assumption that children with ASD possess unique psychological, physiological, communication, neurological, motor and sensory processing differences.

· “Relationship-Based”- Relationship between the child and his/her caretaker is a central organizing factor playing a crucial role in their development.

The DIR model focuses on developing the fundamentals of relating, communicating, and thinking by focusing on more than just changing surface behaviours. Since Autistic Disorders do not necessarily entail similar symptoms, problems in every individual are dynamic. In other words, we are not dealing with a fixed disorder that a child either has or does not have, but rather experience certain challenges in their ability of reciprocating emotions and establishing two-way communication to varying degrees.

The DIR model follows a method of assessment which:

• probes into the child’s developmental capacities,

• probes into the child’s individual characteristics, and

• probes into the quality of caregiver-child interactions.

Since emotions play an important role in integrating all aspects of human development, the floor time therapy sessions focus on the development of language, intelligence, personality, and social skills through meaningful relationships. The sessions are developed while keeping in mind individual differences between students; The sessions follow the child’s lead and are built upon his/her natural interests. The interaction is established according to the developmental level of the child and is focused on repetitive interactive circles. During ﬂoortime therapy play sessions, the therapists follow the child’s lead to affectively utilize toned interactions through gestures and words.

The abilities of sharing gestures (both complex and simple) and problem solving are developed through abstract thinking and establishment of continuous circles of communication. Interactive play sessions individually address the core deﬁcits of relating and communicating in a manner no other approach can. Interaction is the most crucial facilitating factor in promoting development of children with autistic spectrum disorders.

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