Your autistic child needs the right services and care to ensure they are receiving the education, medical and other essentials they require to live their best lives. Early intervention is key to helping those with autism be successful in life. Therefore, as a parent or caregiver, it is imperative that you help your child through advocacy. In addition, teaching your autistic child or teen how to be a self-advocate and build their life skills is equally important. “Advocating for Your Autistic Child” gives you the strategies and know-how to help you be the most effective advocate for your child and provides you with the steps to help your teen become a self-advocate as well as build their independent skills.
“Advocating for Your Autistic Child” is available on Amazon Kindle (affiliate link)
Be an effective advocate for your autistic child
First, what is “advocacy”? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal.” The dictionary then defines advocate as “to support or argue for” or “to plead in favor of.”
As a parent of an autistic child, that is exactly what you do when you take steps to ensure your child is getting what they need. Being an advocate for your autistic child means being proactive and not reactive. Our children usually cannot advocate for themselves, so they need us to step in for them.
Whether your child is verbal or non-verbal, they still need you to represent them and be their voice. Once they are a teenager, they should be included in case conferences and other meetings, and then they can help self-advocate. Until then, they completely rely on you to speak on their behalf.
“Advocating for Your Autistic Child” (affiliate link) will provide you with the strategies and practical steps to help you be your child’s most effective advocate.
Teach your autistic child to become a self-advocate
As a parent or caregiver, one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to teach them to be a self-advocate. That is especially important for our children with autism. They have a special set of needs and preferences, and they need to be able to speak up for themselves.
As our children grow into teenagers and then into young adults, being able to self-advocate is so important. Yet, it doesn’t happen overnight. As parents and caregivers, it is important that we encourage self-advocacy and teach them the skills they need. Part of it is developing independence overall, but another part is learning specific skills needed for advocating for themselves. Those skills include speaking up, knowing their rights, negotiating and problem solving.
“Advocating for Your Autistic Child” provides you with the know-how to teach your autistic teen self-advocacy skills.
Help your autistic teen build independent skills
The third pillar of helping our autistic children and teenagers with advocacy is teaching them life skills to become independent.
We do this gradually over time, starting when our kids are very young with how to clean up their toys, dress themselves, brush their teeth and more. But when our children become teenagers, it seems like there is so much more to teach and suddenly we feel like we have so little time.
“Advocating for Your Autistic Child” gives you information and resources to help teach your autistic teen and identifies the most important life skills to focus on first. Once they’ve mastered the essentials, you can teach them even more!
Download Your Copy of “Advocating for Your Autistic Child”
“Advocating for Your Autistic Child” (affiliate link) showcases research on advocacy along with strategies and steps that I’ve taken and have worked for my son J.
You can download your copy from Amazon Kindle. Don’t have a Kindle Reader? No problem! You can download the free Kindle App and read it from any device – your phone, tablet or computer!
Available on Amazon Kindle (affiliate link)
I hope you find this e-book full of information and ideas that you can use to effectively advocate for your autistic child and ensure they are receiving the care and services they need to live their best life.
