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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Our Typical & Atypical Developmental
Patterns, Profiles & Experiences
Who is the audience for this web site?
This is a site for adults who are the care and service providers to people within the Autism Spectrum, and to all those who support us. We hope to outreach to families of newly diagnosed persons with Autism, as we are feeling ready, able, and willing to get a "Bigger Picture" awareness of Autism, and to seek a much deeper knowledge base in relation to this condition and the impacts it creates on us all. The INTERVENTION row of links is one place to start on that journey.
It provides best practice information on the three basic Behavioral-Eclectic-Developmental models of Autism intervention.
Threshold offers humane and affordable Developmental intervention models, that provide safe and effective best practice alternatives. We advocate for person-focused assessment, system-reorienting providership, community-based programs, and family-centered planning using well-established intervention approaches. The strategies Threshold uses are productive, positive, principled, and proactive in nature and in their nurturing impacts. They focus on building immediate communication connections with, and maximum independent functioning for, people with Autism of all ages. If in browsing this site, you believe this approach is not for you, then this is probably not the place for you to study in the long run. That is O.K. Threshold actively supports the Autism community having a full range of options to choose from. You will find other Autism intervention model possibilities and their contacts in our horizontal rows of literature SOURCES and provider RESOURCES links on the homepage table. However, we hope you will return to visit our site often, and send us feedback, so that your and our understandings of people with and without Autism may grow, change, and become stable. That is the long term goal of our site and our organization.
How has the study of human development helped us understand Autism?
The most useful studies of human development in relation to people with, and without, Autism are not only about different measurable levels of our ableness. This is because human beings with, and without, Autism both have wide ranges of levels in our PHYSICAL, MENTAL, and EMOTIONAL capacities. Therefore, the other important aspect of human development and diversity in relation to our two population groups is how significantly typical or atypical the characteristic patterns of our developmental growth, change, and stability may be over our life spans. This developmental paradigm leads to another new and important area of inquiry about the nature and growth of mutual awareness between our two groups, in ways that can help us all begin relate to each other in more productive, positive, principled, and proactive manner, despite the impacts of Autism. That is due to the dual nature of personal empowerment versus the CULTURAL POWER we may have in relation to each other as individuals and groups. The transformative models of adult education of Dr. Laila Aaen and Judy Magee, M.A. of Pacific Oaks College have helped Threshold fully understand the work that groups of people with and without Autism need to do for ourselves, and with each other to both survive, thrive and build bridges. All these fields of investigation can work together to help us more fully understand human development and PRACTICAL ways we can live, work, and cope together across our Able Diverse Worlds. This approaches balances our needs of doing and being, as we realize all our fullest potentials again.This is our hope for this site, and for people with Autism across our diverse communities.
Why do people with Autism have "atypical" developmental profiles?
Most young children with Autism will usually present with very unusual, but clear and pervasive developmental problems, delays and losses across all the three of the major domains of our BIOLOGICAL, COGNITIVE, and PSYCHOSOCIAL development. It exists in degrees that are both highly significant and very profound in the way they impact our life experiences and functioning, even when our Autism is mild and we are verbal. However, it is very important to be clear that all people with Autism will also usually have many typical developmental features, and that we can share in the human experience in very real ways, no matter how severe our Autism appears to be. It is important to have a full and clear understanding of our complex condition and its rare patterns of splintered developmental gains and losses. How our multiple biologically determined developmental features interact with our social spheres of work, school, home, and community create each individual's and every groups' BIOSOCIAL worlds. This reality is not want we want to hear as new parents and novice providers. However, when we are ready to hear it--we can begin to rapidly make progress.
One first step to this clarity is to realize that the needs of people with Autism are very similar to those of people without Autism. To be able to survive, function, belong, and develop we all need safe and comfortable environments, clear and mutually understandable communication systems, more secure and meaningful social connections, and well-matched resources over all of our full life spans. Therefore, our shared meta-need is to have these needs met in equitable ways that are fully adaptable to who we are, as both individuals and biosocial group members. This is the new advocacy frontier for the Autism community.
At Threshold, and in other well-known developmental Autism research and practice centers, people with Autism all across the spectrum have lead us to an awareness of our shared humanity. Therefore, to fully understand Autism we will need to learn to better understand both typical and atypical patterns of human development across our individual life spans and between our many diverse FUNCTIONAL and CULTURAL communities. Then we may learn how to become more adaptable to all of our human realities and needs in authentically inclusive ways. That is the vision of this site and the value of our research.
Threshold's web information is protected intellectual property. We ask that you invite others to come and visit this site, rather than to take anything away from it. |
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