Mapping Transitions

It has been a long time since I wrote anything for my blog. It is time to get back to it. I have a new tool, which I want to talk about. First, some background.

I have known several years about a mother in my community who has an autistic son and a neuro-typical son. She has collaborated with them to make a couple of movies. They speak all over the world on autism and on being the sibling of an autistic individual. Several years ago, this woman ran a social skills group my son was in. I lost track of her as the film- making began.

In the intervening years, one of the things my son and I did was develop a talk my son gave to his Sunday School group. One of the adults in the group remembered him mentioning this film and I apparently also spoke to this man about the film, the mom and the son. Much later, he had an opportunity to bring in a speaker to a community forum and invited the woman, who also brought her sons that night, to speak. They came as a favor to the community. That night, I re-met Keri Bowers. She is writing a book called Mapping Transitions to Your Child's Future. This Saturday, she gave a workshop using the latest draft of her workbook. This book is intended for families of people with disabilities to figure out together, with the person and the family, as well as trusted others, what next steps will be taken. It gives a shape to ideas and plans. It keeps in one place all the process steps needed to move forward.

I think the most valuable thing I learned from Keri Bowers was the ten minutes a day rule. She wrote a contract with herself and produced her first book that way. Hers was to spend 10 minutes every single day doing some work on her book. The caveat was that if she got wrapped up in her work and spent five hours one day, that did not spill over to the next day, and she had to spend the next day's ten minutes worth on the book.

Today, I went to an office supply store and bought a binder for our family's workbook. I need to separate the pages, photo-copy some of them, with her permission, and then introduce the book to my husband, my son and my daughters. It will be me that will spend 10 minutes every weekday doing some kind of work to move our plans along. I reserve the right to have some time for other things on weekend days since I also homeschool our son. As well, my husband and I do RDI with our son, which also takes planning and execution.

While at the store, bought a proper book to journal for RDI with our son. Our consultant says that regular journaling is extremely important, especially with a teen, so now I have one place to record our observations. I will use the ten minutes a day plan for it, too.

And, I will also buy Keri Bowers's book, Mapping Transitions to Your Child's Future, when it is completed and published in 2009. You can learn more at the web site www.normalfilms.com.