Skip to main content

Book Review: The Special Needs SCHOOL Survival Guide: Handbook for Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD, Learning Disabilities & More! By Cara Koscinski MOT OTR/L (The Pocket)

The Special Needs SCHOOL Survival Guide looks like a thin book but it has one of the highest “fact per page” scores of any of these types of books. It's really packed with information. It’s not the kind of book you can simply read cover-to-cover. Instead, you’ll find yourself wanting to stop every few minutes to note an activity that you might want to try or a web site you might want to visit. 

The book focusses on the resolution of school problems for kids with many different kinds of special needs. There's some information for parents, particularly in the early sections but the bulk of the book seems to be aimed at teachers and school occupational therapists.

The first chapters deal with the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and the 504 plan. The book covers what they are, how they differ, how they work and what parents and teachers can expect to get out of them.

From there the book dives into occupational therapy in school in detail, In particular, it covers exercises which can help specific areas of academic and social learning and provides many links to diverse and relevant information sources on the Internet.

Early chapters cover many different aspects of handwriting including pre-handwriting preparation, letter reversal, pencil grip and techniques for dealing with left handers. There's also a good chapter on fine motor coordination.

Each chapter contains loads of tips and therapies, most of which don't require any significant resources. There are also plenty of “out of the pocket activities” (tips).  Nearly every chapter ends with a long list of relevant URLs for further reading.

The author, Cara Koscinski, has a children on the autism spectrum as well as OT qualifications - and it shows in her writing. She writes both as a parent and a teacher. She discusses her personal experiences with other OT’s and highlights the problems and benefits associated with various therapies. She makes some very interesting personal observations, particularly relating to “letting your child spin”.

This is a great book for teachers and OTs and it's ideally suited to people who encounter lots of children with various differences every day. It has lots of good information on identifying specific conditions including co-morbids and there are entire chapters dealing with some of the major differences. In particular, the chapters Autism and Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and ADHD are particularly good. They contain some very good insight (particularly from the point of view of the child).

The Special Needs SCHOOL Survival Guide: Handbook for Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD, Learning Disabilities & More! By Cara Koscinski MOT OTR/L (The Pocket) is published by Future Horizons and is available in paperback from Future Horizons, or in paperback or Kindle format from Amazon.

Cara Koscinski writes for the Pocket Occupational Therapist at http://www.pocketot.com/ it’s a great site with lots of good information and freebies.  Well worth a visit.

Honesty Clause: I was provided with a copy of this book free of charge for review purposes. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aspie Myths - "He Won't Miss Me"

I apologise for the excessive "male-orientated" viewpoint in this post. I tried to keep it neutral but somehow, it just works better when explained from a male viewpoint. Here's a phrase that I've seen repeated throughout the comments on this blog on several occasions; "I know that he won't miss me when I'm gone because he's aspie" Today, we're going to (try to) bust that myth; Individuals I'll start off with a reminder that everyone is an individual. If all aspies were completely alike and predictible, they'd be a stereotype but they're not. Each is shaped by their background, their upbringing, their beliefs and their local customs. An aspie who grew up with loud abusive parents has a reasonable chance of becoming loud and abusive themselves because in some cases, that's all they know. That's how they think adults are supposed to behave. In other cases, aspies who grew up in those circumstances do a complete about-fa

Why Do Aspies Suddenly Back-Off in Relationships? (Part 1)

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is why an aspie (or suspected aspie) suddenly goes "cold" and backs off on an otherwise good relationship. It's a difficult question and the answers would vary considerably from one person to another and would depend greatly on the circumstances. Nevertheless, I'll try to point out some possibilities. Negative Reasons I generally like to stay positive on this blog and assume that people are not necessarily "evil" but simply misguided. Unfortunately, I do have to acknowledge that there are some people out there who take advantage of others. I read a book a few years ago on "sociopaths in the workplace" and I was stunned by the figures. They suggested that sociopaths were so common that most workplaces (small business) had at least one or two. The fact is that there are lots of people out there who really feel very little for others and who are very manipulative. I'd like to say that aspies aren

Why do Aspies Suddenly Back Off in Relationships (Part 2)

In part one, we looked at the role that Change Resistance plays in causing aspies to suddenly go "cold" in otherwise good relationships. This time, I want to look at self esteem and depression; Self Esteem The aspie relationship with themselves is tedious at best. People with Asperger's commonly suffer from low self esteem. As discussed in earlier posts, this low self esteem often results from years of emotional turmoil resulting from their poor social skills. Aspies are often their own worst enemy. They can over analyze situations and responses in an effort to capture lost nonverbal communication. This often causes them to invent problems and to imagine replies. Everything made up by aspies will tend to be tainted with their own self image. This is one of reasons that people with Asperger's will sometimes decide that they are not good enough for their partner and that they must let them go. Sometimes, the aspie will develop a notion of chivalry or self-sacrific