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BY YOUR SIDE – Autism Therapy Services is a multidisciplinary provider to the Autism community with a focus on 2 key environments: In Center and In-Home.
Inside the Centers
This room is set up to resemble a typical family room within a home; it is informal and serves multiple purposes. The family room serves both social and recreational needs as it provides opportunities for playing games, book sharing, storytelling, video games, conversation, and a variety of other interactive activities. The setup allows for individuals to learn to maintain and focus attention while in a less structured environment (i.e.: sitting on a couch or cozy chair rather than a desk). Within the family room, younger children can learn the basic principles of game playing in a relevant setting whereas for older children it provides a second setting to generalize learned skills.
This room is a small room with minimal lighting and reduced noise. It is a safe place for clients to temporarily escape from the demands of a learning environment while receiving the appropriate sensory input relevant to their needs (i.e.: a weighted blanket, vibrating pillow, sound machine, etc.). The quiet room is always the client’s choice that allows for a break from learning in a non-stimulating environment in order to improve behavior and performance.
This room is set up like a typical dine-in kitchen. It provides a natural setting to practice and learn a variety of skills including sharing meals, practicing appropriate mealtime behaviors, improving feeding skills, and expanding food repertoires. A snack shared at the table creates the natural activity of conversing during a meal which allows the practice of asking/answering questions, maintaining a topic, changing topics, and listening to others. Cooking activities allow for natural learning of the following skills: following directions, sequencing, and exploring a variety of sensory inputs through touch, smell, and sight. Food is never used as a motivator but rather a natural learning activity.
This room is designed to be a rich environment of play and language, especially for our younger friends. Play is critical for building functional and social language skills. Everything in the room is accessible to the child providing them the opportunity to independently explore and engage with a variety of toys and activities. The items within the room allow children to learn both functional and imaginative play skills. This provides foundational skills for basic learning and social interactions. This room is a large space allowing multiple children to share the space and encouraging parallel play, peer modeling, and interactive play.
The playground is the centerpiece of BYS providing a highly motivating environment to explore and engage with peers and adults. This area provides opportunities for sensory regulation, social engagement, vocabulary building, motor coordination, interactive play, and many other skill-building activities. Although visually appealing, the playground can often be an intimidating and daunting place for an individual with autism. The chaotic and unpredictable nature of the playground combined with equipment (which requires coordination), may often cause a child to retreat to corners of the playground or preferred equipment. The playground area was created to help individuals learn a variety of skills allowing them to actively participate and generalize these skills to all playground settings.
This room is designed for art projects and wet/messy sensory activities. Art provides the opportunity to experience language through the sensory system. It provides relevant activities to learn basic concepts (color, shapes, sizes, and texture) for our younger friends and the chance to explore self-expression for our older friends. Sensory integration activities are meaningful and appropriate when experienced during art activities. Productive leisure skills can be one of the greatest challenges for individuals with autism. Finding and maintaining productive leisure skills through art allows opportunities for individuals to explore, create, and express themselves creating a bridge for communication and interaction.
This room was designed to be free of distracting stimuli to allow for direct instruction. Typically developing children learn many basic concepts and skills incidentally, by simply being exposed to the activity. One of the distinct features of the autism spectrum is the lack of incidental learning and the need for direct instruction. The study rooms eliminate distractions and are dedicated to direct instruction. A second distinct feature of autism is the difficulty generalizing learned information outside of the teaching activity and room. It is for this reason that both learning environments, study rooms, and “home” rooms, are included in the design of the center. There are two study rooms, one for younger/preschool-aged clients which includes a corner for learning circle time. A second for school-aged children that incorporates an independent work station modeled after the principles of TEACCH of the University of North Carolina.
This room was created to be a comfortable place for our tweens and teens to enjoy conversation and a variety of games and activities. Participating in age and socially appropriate games such as board games and card games require critical thinking, problem-solving, awareness, and the ability to predict other’s actions. It is crucial to learn and understand social language and activities in order to create appropriate and meaningful interactions with peers and siblings. Most social activities require individuals to process multiple pieces of sensory information and multi-task between conversations, attending to an activity within the game, filtering unnecessary information, and making verbal and emotional contributions to the group. Learning these skills in the safe and relevant environment of the therapeutic setting allows individuals to build skills and confidence.
This is an open area designed for large motor movements. A ball pit, crash pit, and a variety of swings are the centerpieces of this room. There is plenty of room left for tunnels, walking paths, obstacle courses, and scooters. The sensory system is a multi-dimensional system requiring a variety of activities to meet its needs. This multi-purpose room was created to meet varying needs. The gym is not only used for occupational therapy but it is available for all learning activities. A variety of language learning and social activities are experienced within this room and it allows individuals to combine language learning and motor movement. Research shows that involving the whole brain (movement and language centers) improves the performance of language learning activities.
This room provides a space for puzzles, legos, and other building projects to be enjoyed without being disturbed. Puzzles and construction activities require an individual to activate multiple parts of the brain and coordinate a variety of skills to reach a single outcome. The sensory system, language, fine motor skills, spatial relationships, deductive reasoning, problem-solving, and hand-eye coordination must work in unison to create the final product. Although puzzles are typically thought to be an independent activity, large floor puzzles and building projects create opportunities for cooperative play, compromise, and being part of a group. Completion of puzzles and building projects, whether done individually or as part of a group, teach self-confidence, maintaining attention, and emotional regulation (i.e.: patience and perseverance).
This room provides a space for puzzles, legos, and other building projects to be enjoyed without being disturbed. Puzzles and construction activities require an individual to activate multiple parts of the brain and coordinate a variety of skills to reach a single outcome. The sensory system, language, fine motor skills, spatial relationships, deductive reasoning, problem-solving, and hand-eye coordination must work in unison to create the final product. Although puzzles are typically thought to be an independent activity, large floor puzzles and building projects create opportunities for cooperative play, compromise, and being part of a group. Completion of puzzles and building projects, whether done individually or as part of a group, teach self-confidence, maintaining attention, and emotional regulation (i.e.: patience and perseverance).
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