Autism. What is it? How much do you understand it? Do your kids know anything about it? Your answer, of course, will depend on personal experience and/or how much you have researched the topic. What if that wasn’t the case? What if everyone had a basic understanding of autism and how they could support their friends or people in their community? How wonderful that would be for everyone.
A few weeks ago I was really excited to find out about the A-Team book series and social skills curriculum so my kids (and I!) could learn more about autism and how it affects people every day. Not only do the books make it easier to understand and identify with how autism can affect an individual’s life, but they also present lots of situations and language for kids to use when interacting with other people in general.
Each of the characters in the A-Team has a unique personality and specific challenge that the kids can learn from. Kids may relate to the challenge or they may know someone who faces it, so it’s great for them to learn from each scenario.
Reading a book about a problem that a child faces in their own life can open up space for some amazing conversations and insights. It’s great how each book offers strategies to work through struggles, and shows ways to deal with the challenging behaviour in a healthy and kind manner.
At the time of this post, the series is currently made up of 7 books (but more are on the way!):
As you can see, there’s an introduction book which introduces you to the A-Team and talks about Autism, and then there are six other story books that each deal with a specific issue. To read an overview about each of them visit this page.
In case you are wondering where the books came from, they were written by Courtney Butorac based on her own experience creating an A-Team friendship group to tackle common social challenges facing children she was working with. Courtney is an experienced elementary school special education teacher, preschool teacher, camp counselor and behavioural therapist who has a Master’s Degree in early childhood special education and a Board Certification in Behaviour Analysis. Her passion for supporting children and educating others about how to support them really shines through in this series and I’m so grateful she created it for all of us to benefit from.
I highly recommend reading these books with your kids – they would be an excellent addition to a home, school or city library so please spread the word and request them to be available in your town! The more we understand and care for each other, the better our communities will be.
Read more on the Social Learning Group website and follow on Facebook for news and related articles.
You may also enjoy…
I received several books to review for this post. All opinions are my own. To find out more about advertisement and reviews on my website please click here.
Leave a Reply