About Our Blog

Welcome! Our blog will focus on imparting practical strategies for keeping students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) regulated and ready to learn. Our hope is that these concepts will help you prevent and respond to dysregulation with confidence, composure, and compassion. We work in a preschool setting, so our approach centers on that population. However, many of our techniques can be easily adapted for older students and even adults.

As practitioners who work in an inclusive preschool setting with students on the autism spectrum, much of our time is spent employing strategies to keep our students emotionally regulated. Emotional regulation is defined in a number of ways in the literature. The definition we prefer, our working definition, is from the SCERTS model. It defines emotional regulation as the “development of the ability to maintain a well-regulated emotional state to cope with everyday stress, and to be most available for learning and interacting” (Prizant, Wetherby, Rubin, Laurent & Rydell, 2006). It is this availability for learning that we are after! We believe that emotional regulation is the key to opening up learning and communication for children with ASD. We have found that the time and attention we devote to keeping our students emotionally regulated pays dividends in the subsequent learning that takes place. We will share with you the strategies and techniques that we have collected over the years. As you try the strategies in your classrooms, please let us know how it’s going. We want to hear from you!

Leslie & Mo