Dental Hygiene Life Skill & Social Story
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Dental Hygiene Life Skill & Social Story

I decided the next life skill that I wanted to work on with my daughter was brushing teeth and just oral hygiene in general. My daughter seems to be struggling with that at the moment, even though she hasn't in the past so I knew it was something that I wanted to work on. I know that she's not the only autistic to have trouble with it, so I wanted to do a social story to go along with it. I already have a going to the dentist social story, but I wanted to make a dental hygiene at home specific social story.

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Ferry Boat Trip Social Story
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Ferry Boat Trip Social Story

When we went to Uruguay in August, we took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. Since my seven year old autistic daughter has been on dozens of planes to this point, I thought that she would be fine with the process of getting on/off a boat and boat travel. Unfortunately, I was wrong. So, because of this experience and how difficult it was for her, I decided to create a social story about taking a ferry boat and what that entails.

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Introducing Life Skill Downloads - Bathing
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Introducing Life Skill Downloads - Bathing

I've talked recently about our life skills list. This is a list of life skills that we've come up with of things that my daughter, a seven year old autistic girl, is able to do with or without accommodations to help her to succeed. The first thing that we did was bathing. Up until this point my husband or I were helping her with washing her hair, but I felt like this was something that she really could do on her own with some guidance. So I wrote all the steps out and put them on the wall in the bathroom here in Argentina. After doing this, I thought about all of the other things that would be helpful to her and other people as well and decided to make a whole life skills download and make it accessible for other people!

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Going Shopping Social Story
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Going Shopping Social Story

Since coming to Buenos Aires, I have had to take the kids shopping on my own a lot more. This is a new experience for us because, in Tennessee, my daughter goes to school and my son naps at home where my husband works, or I can take my son to my parents house or I have the luxury of ordering groceries. In Argentina, though, it's really hard for us to get stuff delivered to us for a large variety of reasons and I don't have the added support, but I still have to get things done so I've had to take the kids out more. We're been going to the grocery store, clothes and toy shops, bakeries, and anywhere else that we need to. Sometimes it's just to give us something to do, but either way they're just in stores more. I noticed that it was really hard for my daughter, and despite thinking that I had sufficiently prepared my seven year old autistic daughter to go shopping, she was still having a difficult time. So I wrote a social story especially for her about going shopping.

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How We are Prepping Our Daughter for 6 Months Out of the Country
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

How We are Prepping Our Daughter for 6 Months Out of the Country

My family is going to Argentina for six months. We are leaving in the beginning of June and coming back in the middle of December. We are going for my husband's job and we're pretty excited about it! The question I've been getting a lot, though, is how are we preparing our daughter for this big change and this trip? For context, our daughter is seven. She is autistic and change is hard for her. So I wanted to share a couple of things that we are doing to help her with those transitions.

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Putting Together The Autism Binder
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Putting Together The Autism Binder

So my seven year old is autistic, and when she was going through the process of being diagnosed, a family member recommended that I start putting everything together in a file. The file included her evaluation, anything I was concerned about, her IEP, etc. and that turned into this binder. Each year I add to the binder, and it's time to do that now. I need to add the stuff from this year into the binder, also get a new binder. So while I'm reworking the whole thing I figured that I could show you everything that goes into this as well as all of the supplies that you need, including the $5 download that I created that makes putting it together a breeze.

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What We Are Doing During Our Daughter’s Break From Occupational Therapy
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

What We Are Doing During Our Daughter’s Break From Occupational Therapy

So as you all know by now we are moving to Argentina for six months. Conveniently our move happened to also coincide with Jackie's occupational therapist of 2 years going on maternity leave. She's been in occupational therapy every week for almost three years, but we decided that it would just be a good time to have a natural break instead establishing a relationship with a whole new therapist. However, occupational therapy has been really great for Jackie and it's also been great for me because when I'm struggling to help her work through something, I can run it past her therapist and she helps me brainstorm ideas. I knew that we needed to figure out something to do while we are having our break from OT, so let's talk about it!

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Snack Boards and ARFID
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Snack Boards and ARFID

I know every single content creator out there has some version of a snack board they make for their kids, but since my daughter has ARFID I wanted to share ours because it is actually a really big deal for our family.

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