Sequencing can be a surprisingly difficult skill. We might look at a familiar activity like making a pizza and automatically understand what needs to happen first, what comes next, and what would happen if we attempted to add cheese before spreading the sauce. Young children do not always see those connections yet. For autistic children and other early learners, simply remembering all the steps can be difficult. The child may also understand the individual actions—spread, sprinkle, cut, and...

When you begin homeschooling an autistic child, it is surprisingly easy to end up with far too many goals. You may have academic standards from your state, recommendations from therapists, unfinished IEP goals, skills listed in an assessment, and a growing stack of workbooks and printables. Before long, your homeschool day can become filled with disconnected activities without a clear sense of which skills matter most. The goal is not to work on everything your child cannot do yet. The goal...

Family using play-based Early Start Denver Model strategies with a young child. Before I had children of my own, I worked at a university using the Early Start Denver Model, often shortened to ESDM, with autistic children between 1 and 4 years old. Of all the early autism intervention models I have worked with, it remains one of the approaches I found most appealing. What I liked was the way it blended some of the foundational components of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and other behavioral...