{"id":915,"date":"2016-01-13T19:24:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T19:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?p=915"},"modified":"2016-01-13T19:24:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T19:24:58","slug":"molly-helt-co-authors-activity-book-for-early-treatment-of-autism-spectrum-disorders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/2016\/01\/13\/molly-helt-co-authors-activity-book-for-early-treatment-of-autism-spectrum-disorders\/","title":{"rendered":"Molly Helt Co-Authors Activity Book for Early Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new book co-authored by Trinity College Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Molly Helt<\/a> is designed to make early intervention treatment even earlier than ever for infants at risk of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD).<\/p>\n

The Activity Kit for Babies and Toddlers at Risk: How to Use Everyday Routines to Build Social and Communication Skills<\/em><\/a> (The Guilford Press, 2016) shows families \u2013 in easy-to-understand terms \u2013 how to support their child\u2019s development by incorporating scientific principles into their day-to-day lives, even before receiving an official ASD diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\"MollyHelt<\/a>\u201cI\u2019m the parent of a child with autism, and parents are told to give their children up to 40 hours of intervention a week,\u201d Helt said of her own experience with her oldest child. \u201cSo what I found myself doing was adapting a lot of applied behavioral analysis programs to daily routines like bathing, changing, feeding, or going to the playground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concern for her second child led Helt to look into early intervention techniques for children who are considered \u201cat risk.\u201d She knew that children who have an older sibling with autism have a roughly 20 percent chance of developing autism, but she could not find much information about parenting at-risk children. \u201cAutism is something we can\u2019t diagnose until 18 months at the earliest, and I couldn\u2019t just sit around for 18 months and do nothing,\u201d Helt said.<\/p>\n

In reality, a child may be significantly older than 18 months before any treatment begins, Helt said. \u201cThe average wait time once a parent identifies that they have a child with a problem, to get an appointment [for diagnosis], is nine months nationally,\u201d Helt said. \u201cHere in Connecticut, once you have a diagnosis, you then have to wait an additional three months on average for early intervention to start \u2013 and Connecticut is better than a lot of places in the United States. These are crucial months in which a child\u2019s brain is the most plastic and developing the most quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspired both by her own children and by her professional experiences working with parents who are frustrated by having to wait so long for diagnosis and treatment, Helt researched typical development and ASD treatment programs. She and her co-authors adapted those concepts for families with young children who may have ASD \u2013 or who may be at risk \u2013 to use anytime, anyplace. \u201cIt\u2019s basically all about getting autism therapy into your day-to-day life,\u201d Helt said.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s introduction, says, in part, \u201cFrom the moment your child wakes up to the time she goes to bed, you have many opportunities to build language, social skills, imitation, and pretend play. This book contains games to play while you dress your child, rhymes and songs to use during mealtimes and chores, ways to enrich development and learning during play and errands, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this book serves as a \u2018how-to\u2019 on how to do early intervention yourself,\u201d Helt said. \u201cWe know from autism research that autistic children will do things for their parents they won\u2019t do for anyone else. I really want to inspire parents, to say, \u2018You can do this.\u2019 Even if you have a job, you have to eat with your kid and bathe them, and so you can be part of this plan. A lot of these activities are embedded in games, and we want it to be fun and manageable. It doesn\u2019t have to be something that takes away from living your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helt plans to test this program as part of her ongoing research at Trinity. \u201cIn the field of autism, we\u2019ve made very little progress in genetics and underlying biological mechanics of autism over the last 20 years,\u201d she said. \u201cHowever, we\u2019ve made huge strides in our ability to diagnose earlier, and outcomes have drastically improved. Where we\u2019re making the gains is in early identification and early intervention, and so that\u2019s where I want to go with my research, and that\u2019s where I see the real way to make progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s co-authors are Helt\u2019s mentor Deborah Fein, Ph.D., a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut; Lynn Brennan, BCBA-D, a board-certified applied behavior analyst based in Massachusetts who has worked with children with autism spectrum disorders for more than 20 years; and Marianne Barton, Ph.D., a clinical professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut, where she is also director of the Psychological Services Clinic.<\/p>\n

Helt holds a dual Ph.D. in clinical psychology and developmental psychology. She currently teaches developmental psychopathology, developmental neuroscience, clinical psychology, and a senior seminar called \u201cThe Social Self\u201d at Trinity College. The Activity Kit for Babies and Toddlers at Risk is her first book. The publisher is already translating the book into Korean and Turkish and has plans to translate it into more languages.<\/p>\n

Written by Andrew J. Concatelli<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new book co-authored by Trinity College Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Molly Helt is designed to make early intervention treatment even earlier than ever for infants at risk of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The Activity Kit for Babies and Toddlers at Risk: How to Use Everyday Routines to Build Social and Communication […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1424,"featured_media":916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[133,272,21,143,20,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":918,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}