Helping Your Autistic Child

This self-help guide focuses on practical, proven techniques to help parents support their autistic children in many common areas of difficulty. A useful focus of the book is the information it provides for parents seeking advice on how to help their autistic child manage anxiety. It also includes advice on managing communication needs, sleep, feeding and sensory needs. Ann Ozsivadjian’s book also covers how to understand sensory responses in autism and how to manage distressed behaviour, including self-harm and demand avoidance * Autism Eye *
This is a welcome new book to support parents of autistic children. While it will be really helpful for many parents, I have no doubt that this book would be equally valuable for many professionals who work in this field. The book is very much structured around the ‘gold-standard’ multidisciplinary team approach that, where available, offers the best holistic perspective towards the management of such children. Thus, there are chapters written by skilled occupational therapists, speech therapists, feeding disorder therapists and sleep psychologists. In this way, the book embraces the complex comorbidities that so often add to the complexity of helping these children and families. The book works from a strength and growth mindset perspective and is sympathetic to the different terminology used to discuss autistic people. Each chapter is clearly set out and detailed, explaining each intervention’s ‘why’ and ‘how’. This avoids the often patronising ‘but you need to see a professional to have support on this’ approach. With waiting lists longer than even to see children with suspected autistic spectrum conditions, this book can fill the gap and give practical support immediately to those who need it. This book is high on my list of ‘recommended books’ for families I see whose child has a new autistic spectrum diagnosis – Professor Paul Gringras, Sleep and Neurodisability, Evelina Children’s Hospital and Kings College London

DR ANN OZSIVADJIAN is a clinical psychologist in independent practice and also a visiting senior lecturer at King’s College London. After studying at Royal Holloway and completing her doctorate in clinical psychology at Oxford University, she worked for several years in a complex neurodevelopmental conditions team at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, where latterly she was the senior psychologist providing assessments and treatments for a wide range of neurodevelopmental difficulties and co-occurring conditions. Her particular research interests and clinical specialism are mental health problems in ASD and adapting interventions for young people on the autism spectrum, and she regularly presents at conferences on these topics. She also provides training courses across the UK to NHS and other services on the assessment and treatment of mental health problems in autism spectrum disorders. She has published a number of papers and co-authored book chapters. She has also produced a number of podcasts and webinars in conjunction with the Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

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