An occupational therapy assessment item involves having youth identify which finger I touch, with their eyes closed. It’s taken from the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers, and often doctors watching me evaluate youth are surprised I do it with high school students with typical intelligence and a history of PTSD, especially when they make repeated errors. […]

Sensory matching is an evidence-based strategy for replacing repetitive self-injurious behavior with an alternative activity that provides similar sensory input. Sensory matching is consistent with the evidence-based behavioral intervention of (NMS) non-contingent matched stimulation (Davis et al. 2013). Behavioral and sensory modulation theories are integrated in the sensory matching strategy to functionally replace repetitive self-injurious

The arousal level strategy helps children and adolescents by facilitating awareness of how their extreme arousal levels contribute to misbehavior. As such, it prepares youth to for arousal level modulation towards a quiet alert state that improves behavior. The arousal level strategy uses consistent traffic lights and smells to promote arousal level awareness. Some children

I had a great time presenting in Toronto, Canada. Visiting a different country gives me cultural insights that are helpful in therapy. The Canadian health care system seems better than others, but the therapists there still face a lot of challenges. It initially seems in my blogging and presentations that Ayres Sensory Integration intervention is

I developed the FAB Turtle Strategy as a simple method for teaching children and adolescents with complex behavioral challenges to avoid aggression. The FAB Turtle Strategy enables kids to anticipate and avoid aggression. It is a modification of the PATHS (Promoting Positive Thinking Strategies) Tucker Turtle Technique used with permission from developer Dr. Greenberg. It

An extremely effective approach for improving behavior is often unknown to most of the therapists in my workshops. The approach is Pivotal Response Training (PRT) which has been shown to significantly improve behavior, speech and neurological development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Ventola et al., 2014). PRT was developed by an expert in Applied