MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  Choice and Structure for Children with Autism  (McNeil) -  Chapter 1 Some Simple Strategies Some Simple Strategies I would like to offer some simple strategies that could be helpful. Don’t worry! I am not going to attempt to teach you how to make your home a strict Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) program. I simply hope to offer some ideas to organize your day and offer a better outcome than the dismal portrait described above. These strategies will assist parents in developing simple and safe routines and choices that will make long days at home more engaging, cooperative, and positively stimulating for children with autism, their parents and siblings.   Ideas that will help decrease boredom, protesting, and isolation, while increasing, engagement, interaction, and cooperation will be shared throughout this book. The chapters will have relatable life stories included. These stories will demonstrate the chapter topic and provide a foundation for a discussion of the inf

  Excerpt from  Anxiety Anonymous  by  Dr. Dennis Ortman  --  Introduction (continued from earlier post)  A Personal Note  Many strands of my life tie together in writing this book.  I have been working as a psychologist in private practice for over twenty years. Each day I sit and listen to my patients tell me stories of their suffering and their efforts to find happiness. Their stories are always unique, heart-breaking and heart-warming. Over the years, I observed how many of my patients suffer a variety of addictions, some acknowledged and others overlooked. Most come for relief from emotional and mental pain and hardly recognize the many ways they self-medicate with drugs and activities. I also noticed the increasing number of patients who complain of being in the grip of intolerable anxiety. Since 9/11 it seems fear has taken hold of our society and found residence in many of my patients. That fear possesses many like an addiction.  Before becoming a psychologist, I served

  excerpt from  Anger Anonymous  -  CHAPTER ONE ANGER STYLES: TENDING THE FIRE “Anger’s my meat. I sup upon myself and so shall starve with feeding.” —William Shakespeare   Everybody gets angry. “But not me,” I told myself.  In my father’s drunken rages, I witnessed the devastating effects of uncontrolled anger. I saw dealing with anger as playing with fire. I could easily get burned. I decided at a young age, without really mak bing a conscious choice, to smother any smoking tinders of irritation I felt. In remaining calm and controlled, I found safety and, I believed, acceptance and admiration from others. It was only many years later that I began to recognize the awful price I paid for my pseudo-tranquility. ANGER, A POWERFUL ENERGY Anger is a natural energy, like fire. Our earliest ancestors witnessed the power of fire in lightning storms and raging forest fires. They also enjoyed the light and warmth it provided in their cold, dark world. It was like a god to them. They feared and