In this short course I'd like to go over three things no one ever told you about how to communicate with your child with autism. Certainly these were things that no one told me, that if I'd known would have saved my family years of struggle and frustration.

My name is Martha Gabler and I am the mother of a non-verbal child with severe autism. Many of us autism parents have children with severe, difficult behaviors. We would like to help our children and our families. We would like to sleep, go to the grocery store and have some peaceful moments in our homes. We get a lot of generic advice and platitudes. We don’t get the facts we need to help our children with the daily routines. We certainly don’t get a realistic, low cost way to apply them.

Here are three things that no one ever told me about the “how” that I desperately needed: how I could deal with my son’s extreme behaviors, how I could help him, how I could teach him, how I could create a more livable family situation. I eventually discovered them, but lost many years in the process. Here are the three things:

1. How to observe your child’s behavior
2. How to apply the principles of behavior science in your own home
3. How to reinforce your child effectively so he or she learns quickly and happily

Parents do a great job of helping their children with autism when they have the right information. These lessons will teach you these three crucial how-to skills, along with a scientifically-based, effective and almost no-cost way to apply them.

My son was diagnosed at age three with severe autism, plus he was profoundly nonverbal. He had many severe, difficult behaviors including bolting, aggression and self-injury. We had many years of exhaustion, despair and heartache. Now he is a cheerful, happy teen who loves to go out and have a good time. We could have been there a lot sooner.