In conversation with Martha Gabler

This week, I’m in conversation with Martha Gabler, who originally joined me on the Thursday Throng in October 2013 with her book about autism titled, Chaos to Calm: discovering solutions to the everyday problems of living with autism. Martha’s son was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3 and as a result she spent many years trying to find a way of managing family life with a severely non-verbal child. She came across the TAG (teaching with acoustical guidance) teach methodology as a positive reinforcement way of dealing a child who has language and other behavioural challenges. It transformed her life, her son’s life and her family life. Martha was inspired to share her experience with other parents who were similarly affected. However, she also talks about the pushback and negative reactions she has had from other people about ‘training’ a child. Over the years she has had remarkable success with decreasing the behaviours that are challenging in social and public situations, whilst increasing the behaviours that help a child to communicate and skills that mean family life is now easier. We talked about the nature of change in human beings and how change happens and one of the things I’ve noticed in my own life and work is that we all learn through some sort of reinforcement – preferably it’s positive, but we also learn by negative reinforcement. It sounds to me that TAG teach challenges assumptions about how we as humans learn...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - Category: OBGYN Authors: Tags: Podcast author interview autism Source Type: news