ButterflyEffects.com

Much like good generals, smart parents understand that no challenge should be taken on unless victory is assured. To gamble otherwise, leads to unneeded casualties and greatly lessens your child's ability to achieve both short term and long-term goals.

If you are raising a child with Autism or developmental behavior issues, you can't allow that first day of school to become your Waterloo. Granted, the first day of school is tough on every child, but for a child whose life is already full of uninvited challenges, entering school without adequate preparation is an absolute recipe for disaster.

With our highly popular and proven School Readiness Program, Butterfly Effects can assure that your child is equal to the biggest challenge of his or her young life.

Through our School Readiness Program, your child will have the opportunity to rehearse the skills and behaviors needed to achieve success in the least restrictive school environment. Practice begins in the familiar home environment, and then, when the child is ready, progresses to the classroom.

During Readiness Program sessions, we will observe and work to improve your child's ability to:

• Follow basic directions including two and three-step instructions
• Interact with and take instructions from newly met teachers
• Express him or herself well enough to answer simple questions
• Be confident, engaged, and aware enough to ask simple questions and seek out and obtain information from adults and peers
• Retain information
• Recall and talk about experiences
• Appropriately express emotions without excessive tantrums, panic, withdrawal, or aggressiveness
• Demonstrate the skills and discipline required to complete grade level curriculum
• Engage in simple exchanges of conversation with peers and teachers
• Participate in and initiate peer play activities
• Limit disruptive behavior

Throughout the program, your child will have the support of Butterfly Effects developmental and behavioral experts. During each session, we will apply Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) techniques to modify difficult behaviors and teach new ones. We will work with those behaviors that are the most problematic and teach parents and instructors how to support ABA.

During the School Readiness Program, The Butterfly Effects team will:

• Continually assess your child's readiness
• Develop and implement ABA behavioral training
• Develop recommendations for your child's IEP, including needed accommodations and behavioral intervention protocols
• Address your concerns and answer your questions
• Make referrals as needed to speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists
• Provide you with 24 / 7 web access to progress notes via an online platform designed specifically for our clients and therapists
  

For children with physical limitations, we will bring in occupational therapists to determine what adjustments the child can make and what accommodations the school must make so that the child experiences as little frustration as possible during those first crucial weeks.

Graduating from Readiness Training
No timelines are used to determine when your child is ready to move forward. Some children adjust very quickly; others take a slower path. There are no social promotions from our readiness program. Real milestones much be achieved and needed modifications must be realized. Graduation to the next step occurs only when the entire team  - including staff and parents - is convinced that attending school will not endanger the safety of your child and other children, and that your child possesses the awareness, the communication skills, and the readiness to learn and succeed.

Well in advance of the school term, the team will work with you to identify which local school program, public or private, is right for your child.

The Next Step; Testing the Waters
Once parents and therapists determine the child is ready for school, we will then create opportunities for your child to visit the actual school and teacher when no other children are present. We will encourage the child to interact with the teacher and play in the school environment, so that on that first day of school he or she is not completely overwhelmed with the newness and strangeness of everything.

At Butterfly Effects, we work off of the principle that good choices and proper actions today will have a widening ripple effect on tomorrow and all the tomorrows thereafter. Making certain that a child steps into that classroom only when he or she is ready will positively impact that child's success right through high school.

We design all of our services to provide the uninterrupted support that children need from the time they are born until they take their place in the adult world.

What that means for you and your child, is that there is no better time to talk to us than now.