The Bottom Line
Pros
- Includes a downloadable "pointing" manual
- Offers parents an opportunity to upload video to share
- Encourages parents to critique and learn from one another
- An interesting, low cost, risk-free possibility for non-verbal children
Cons
- Pointing is an unproven treatment for autism
- Videos are often of poor quality and hard to "read"
- New community is small so far
Description
- Portia Iversen's website linked to the book "Strange Son"
- Offers free PDF manual on "pointing" technique
- Invites parents to upload and comment on videos
- Includes an online community for sharing ideas
Guide Review - Autism Resource: Strangeson.com Website
Portia Iversen, author of the book Strange Son, is an advocate of a communication technique called "pointing." At the end of her book, she made a promise to readers to create a manual and a website to help others discover their children's inner voices.In November 2007, Portia came through on her promise with flying colors. Her website includes a 75-page PDF document (free to all), which incorporates a very detailed description of exactly how to start your child pointing. She says this manual is a work-in-progress, but it is certainly an impressive start.
Perhaps even more significant, she has developed a very unusual type of community. She's invited visitors to upload video of "baseline," "starting up," "ongoing" and "how-to" pointing sessions with their children. These videos are comment-enabled, so other parents (and Portia) can chime in with support, ideas and critiques. It's like a virtual workshop and promises to help parents who think pointing might be a promising approach for communication with their child on the autism spectrum.
