What is Emotional Regulation? According to the SCERTS® Model (www.scerts.com), it is “the development of the ability to maintain a well-regulated emotional state to cope with everyday stress, and to be most available for learning and interacting.”
As adults, we constantly emotionally regulate ourselves all the time whether it be for calming purposes or for energy-boosting purposes, etc. Our children need our direct help to regulate themselves as well as how to learn how to regulate themselves without our help.

What are Transactional Supports?
Transactional Supports is a term that the authors of the SCERTS® Model created. Transactional supports are the supports WE provide our children to help them: understand, use verbal language, use social communication skills and more!
Some examples are:
1) Music
2) Breaking down your language
3) Routines
4) Contextual Cues
5) Visuals
What Transactional Supports help my child?

Check out HBO’s movie “Temple Grandin” if you haven’t already. It is a really well made film with great acting (Claire Danes….WOW) and great cinematography. We think it portrays some of the characteristics commonly associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders in a very powerful and unique way. We see this moving further increasing awareness and understanding of ASD and people with ASD, which is very refreshing.
Here are our Temple Grandin Top 10:
1. The Portrayal of Visual Thinking

Quantity Doesn't Necessarily Equal Quality
It seems like there is a new type of therapy that pops up each month focusing on the treatment of Autism. When you add an additional “new” therapy to the already long list of therapies and treatments, it can be a bit overwhelming. What do we do? What do we try? What do we have time for?

Let’s face it. No matter how healthy we try to be, not matter how many vitamins we take, no matter how often we wash our hands….we get sick and our kids get sick. This school year it seems like there have been too many flues, viruses, colds, coughs, croup for us to even count. What do we do when our child has a jammed pack week full of very important school and therapy and they get sick?
When our kids get sick, we tell our families a few things:

CNN released a shocking new article on Wednesday regarding a study done on the link between autism and vaccinations.

So I had my first week back at work after reading the “MUST read” we referred to in our previous blog…. “Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew”. Wow.
What a GREAT week I had. I had a BLAST. I had so much fun and my kids did amazing!
I truly want to thank Ellen Notbohm and my kiddos for my incredible week. Ellen Notbohm gave me some things to think about, some things to work harder on and some remarkable insight that I will be reminding myself of on a daily basis. My kids gave me themselves. They were themselves and they were perfect.

“Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew” by Ellen Notbohm. Get your hands on a copy NOW.
We have read countless books, research articles, journals, magazine articles, memoirs, synopses and lecture notes about Autism Spectrum Disorders. NOTHING is quite like this. Ellen Notbohm breaks down her top 10 things parents, teachers, therapists, friends, family members and people of the community need to know about Autism. She intelligently, humorously and compassionately does this is in a way that is so incredibly moving and that just makes perfect sense.

KidSpeak is taking a break from blogging to wrap up the rest of 2009 and celebrate the holidays! Be sure to check in on us around mid-January, when we should be back in action.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year