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Archive for Asperger’s

Identifying and Expressing Feelings

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· August 21, 2018 
· No Comments

Therapists and counselors are often concerned about a child’s emotional literacy. Emotionally literate children can manage their feelings and their reactions to those feelings. They can recognize and respond to other people’s feelings, which is a significant advantage in life. Many of our clients are not emotionally literate and our work with those children includes developing and enhancing the child’s ability to identify and express their feelings. Feelings are the most basic building blocks of social skills. Without the ability to recognize feelings in themselves and others, children are not able to master social interactions. Children adept at identifying and expressing their feelings are likely to display increased empathy which is crucial for social competence, social relatedness, and pro-social behavior.  Children with deficits in their ability to identify and express their feelings may display excessive anger and frustration, and have more troubled interpersonal relationships with peers, teachers, and family members.

Since the development of The Talking, Feeling, and Doing board game in the 70’s, there have been hundreds of games developed to promote feeling identification and expression. Below is a brief survey of six of the most popular games currently on the market.

Feeling’s Detective is a matching game and is especially helpful with children who have difficulty picking up on social cues. It is suitable for children in grades 1-6. Feelings Detective helps children understand their own feelings as well as the feelings of others. It is especially helpful for children who tend to misread social cues, including those who have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or are at any other position on the Autism Spectrum. Specific examples help players link specific situations and thoughts with specific feelings.

The Emotions Mania Thumball is a great ice breaker for children, families, and groups.  Thumballs are a soft, stuffed ball that is safe for indoor use. Game play is simple. Simply throw, roll, pass or catch the thumball. Look under your thumb and react to the feeling word found there. Each panel has a different word. The Emotion Mania Thumball includes words such as happy, sad worried, curious, silly, proud and lonely. It is suitable for children, teens, and adults.

Go Fish: Fishing for Feelings teaches the skills needed to successfully deal with feelings, recognize feelings in others, and identify appropriate feelings. Players practice talking about their feelings in a non-threatening way. Players answer open-ended questions before receiving a requested card. Each question prompts a discussion about successfully dealing with feelings, recognizing other people’s feelings, or identifying appropriate feelings. The game plays like classic Go Fish. There are two decks of 50 cards in each game. One for children ages 5 to 8 years old, and the other for children ages 8 to 11 years old.

 

Emotional Bingo for Children (Spanish & English) is a great game for groups, class rooms, and individual sessions. In this bingo game players identify feelings rather than numbers on their Bingo cards. Emotional Bingo helps children learn to recognize various feelings and make empathetic responses. The game rules provide opportunities for children to discuss their own feelings and to respond with empathy to the feelings of others. The children’s version is suitable for children ages 6-12 and there is a version available for Teens.

 

The Yes I Can! Talk About Feelings cards are designed to facilitate conversation, insight, expressive skills, and increase an individual’s feeling word vocabulary. It is suitable for families, classrooms, counselors, & therapists and improves feeling identification and the expression of emotions. The Yes I Can Talk About Feelings game is great for enhancing self-awareness and the impact of one’s behavior. The instructions include several fun activities and suggestions for using the cards. This game is suitable for ages 5 and up, 2-6 players.

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Categories : Asperger's, Autism, Behavior, Child Development, Communication, Feelings, Play Therapy, Play Therapy Games
Tags : board games, child development, child therapy, counseling games, feelings, Play Therapy, play therapy gams, therapeutic games for children, therapeutic games for teens, therapy games, thumball

May Play Therapy Wrap-Up

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· June 9, 2017 
· No Comments

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.”

–  Roger von Oech (President, Creative Think)

 

Blog

Thanks to Amy Flaherty for helping us get the sand toys organized. Shelf by shelf she reshaped the room that helps her client’s shape their sandtrays! If you need to organize your playroom and you need ideas for how, this is the post for you! Click here to read more!

Stacy Garcia re-invented the classic board game Sorry! and made it a great fit for her play therapy practice. Stacy believes that any game can be implemented as an effective tool for intervention and to help her clients learn.  Read about how she uses Sorry! here.

Articles

The Stellenbosch University of South Africa has done a study that shows that the emotional and behavioral health of teens with PTSD can be dramatically improved with therapy intervention. The treatment consisted of prolonged exposure therapy or supportive counselling in up to 14 sessions of 60 to 90 minutes each. The children who received the individual therapy maintained the benefits of the counseling longer then those who received group therapy session. For more information click here.

A new medication is being tested for autistic children that is thought to be helpful in children up to 14 years old. Tests so far on the drug have an effect that “restarts a more normal pattern of neurological development.” More testing is needed on the drug before it will be approved and available to the public. For more information click here.

While medication can be helpful to children with ADHD, a new study has shown that a more effective treatment may include Neurofeedback (NF), a form of behavioral therapy which aims to build skills in cortical self-regulation, in addition to medication. There are still more studies needed for NF training and its effect on children with ADHD. For more information click here.

 

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Categories : ADHD, Asperger's, Autism, Behavior, Child Development, Monthly Wrap-Up, Wrap Up
Tags : development, feelings, mental health disorders, Play Therapy, play therapy intervention, therapy intervention, therapy toys

Psychological Testing and Diagnosis

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· June 15, 2012 
· No Comments

Reading through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV it quickly becomes apparent that most of the diagnoses that we make for a child or adolescent are not dependent upon data obtained through psychological testing. Most DSM-IV diagnoses are based on history and symptoms. The most obvious exceptions are Learning Disabilities, cognitive processing disorders and Mental Retardation. In some cases, psychological testing is not required to make a diagnosis, but it is clearly indicated. For example, most clinicians recognize psychological testing can provide valuable information when there has been trauma at birth, developmental delay, a drug overdose, head injury, surgery, regression in development, or a serious medical illness.

Given that psychological testing is not needed to make a diagnosis, why is it so common for children referred for behavioral and emotional problems to undergo psychological testing? There are a number of very good reasons. In many cases testing can assist in clarifying a diagnosis. For example, depression and anxiety share many overlapping symptoms and behaviors. A brief battery of tests can assist in clarifying what the salient issues are. Testing is not decisive when making the diagnosis, but is undertaken to clarify the nature and extent of a particular problem. Psychological tests can be used to rule out other disorders and identify strengths and weaknesses. For example, a child suspected of having a Mood Disorder may be administered an IQ test, projective testing, and may be asked to complete a variety of questionnaires. The goal of this testing would be to ensure that there are no complicating factors such as a cognitive impairment or co-morbid condition, identify factors involved in the mood disorder (e.g., body image, self-esteem, peer issues), and to assess the seriousness of the mood disorder.

In some cases guidelines promulgated by professional organizations provide strong recommendations for obtaining information that can only be gathered through psychological testing. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics makes the following recommendation when assessing for ADHD:

“In the evaluation of a child for ADHD, the primary care clinician should include assessment for other conditions that might coexist with ADHD, including emotional or behavioral (e.g., anxiety, depressive, oppositional defiant, and conduct disorders), developmental (e.g., learning and language disorders or other neurodevelopmental disorders), and physical (e.g., tics, sleep apnea) conditions.”

As we learn more about disorders such as ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s it is becoming very clear that most children with one of these diagnoses have other cognitive issues that affect their functioning. Impairments in long-term retrieval, working memory, and cognitive fluency can only be identified by psychological testing. Further, without proper assessment, appropriate accommodations and interventions cannot be identified. Children exhibiting behavior problems may have limited intellectual capacity, a learning disability, or a language delay. While a thorough Diagnostic Assessment can assist in identifying these issues, only a comprehensive psychological battery can rule out the presence of a learning disability, low intelligence, cognitive impairment, or language delay.

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Categories : ADHD, Asperger's, Bipolar Disorder
Tags : psychological testing

Sand Tray Scrapbook: Asperger’s

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· December 17, 2008 
· No Comments

I thought it might be fun and to start a series of entries with pics from my own sand tray sessions. It’s interesting to see the results of sand tray therapy in the context of various difficulties and disorders the participant is struggling with.

This first picture is from a session with a child with Asperger’s.

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The child was referred for anxiety and school problems. He spent a lot of time pouring sand over walls and was very adamant that he wanted monster (barely discernable in the middle of the picture) to be seen.

If you are interested in Sand Tray Therapy or want to share your own sand tray experiences, leave a comment or email your pictures with a brief note about each to jcwilburn@gmail.com. I think this could be a great feature that many people could participate in.

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Categories : Asperger's, Sand Tray Scrapbook, Sandplay/Sand Tray Therapy

Bop Bags and Aggression Toys

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· April 17, 2008 
· No Comments

There has been a decline in the use of bop bags in play therapy.  The concern is that bop bags simply provide an opportunity to rehearse aggression, and serve to support further aggressive behavior.  I have discontinued the use of bop bags in my play sessions due to the kinds of responses that I would get from clients. They would wildly attack the bop bag and seemed to perseverate on that kind of behavior week after week.  I treat a large number of neurologically impaired children (bipolar, Asperger’s, PDD) who are also impulsively aggressive, and seem poorly motivated by the consequences of their behavior.  The focus in therapy has turned to restraining anger, restraining expressions of aggression, and controlling behavior, rather than venting and cathecting.  However, I have not eliminated all aggression toys. I still have guns, including dart guns.  It appears that these toys do not elicit as out-of -control behaviors as the bop bag.  When these neurologically impaired children used the bop bag, it appeared to be impulsive and out-of-control aggression, as opposed to symbolic or purposeful play.  I would be interested in hearing what other providers are experiencing and how they are using aggression toys.

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Categories : Anger, Asperger's, Autism, Behavior, Bipolar Disorder, Intervention Ideas, Play Therapy Toys

Symptom Grid

Posted by Gary Yorke 
· April 15, 2008 
· No Comments

Differentiating Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, and Asperger’s can be difficult because of the overlap of symptoms. In order to differentiate between the three disorders I developed the following symptom grid.  The more Xs, the more prominent the symptom in that disorder.  Of course many of these children will have a dual diagnoses.  For example, it is likely that over 90% of children with a Bipolar Disorder will also have ADHD.  In addition, there appears to be a subset of children with Asperger’s that also have Bipolar Disorder.

Symptom  ADHD  ASPERGER’S BIPOLAR
CORE DEFICIT:Impairment in ability to inhibit and postpone a response to an event–to impose a delay between an event that we experience and our reaction to it  XXXX  X  X
CORE DEFICIT: Impairment in ability to initiate, sustain, and maintain social interactions  X  XXXX  X
CORE DEFICIT: Impairment in ability to regulate and modulate mood  X  X  XXXX
       
Executive functioning problems and learning differences  X  X  X
Irritable/depressed mood, mood lability, “walking on eggshells”  X  X  XXXX
Positive family history for learning disabilities, ADHD or mood disorder  XXXX  X  XXXX
Socialization and communication difficulties (not a language delay)  X  XXXX  X
Hypomanic Episodes      XXXX

 

What play therapy strategies have play therapists found to be helpful with this population of children?

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Categories : ADHD, Asperger's, Bipolar Disorder
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