Patty Laushman, director and head coach at Thrive Autism Coaching, shares advice on supporting and raising autistic teens and young adults. She discusses how to communicate in engaging ways, support in ways that can deepen parent/child relationships, and set boundaries that support your own quality of life.

Do you love or work with someone on the autism spectrum who makes sounds but does not (reliably) use spoken words to communicate? Kate will show you, step by step, how to ignite language lift-off - without pushing or pressuring. If you want help turning sounds into words and single words into two-word phrases, this is for you.

In this session Kara Darling, the clinical administrator for Lighthouse Complex Care, shares her simple and easy to understand roadmap for diagnosing and treating the various medical comorbidities that often occur alongside the autism spectrum.

This session is designed to empower both parents and professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to nutritionally support children on the autism spectrum. This presentation focuses on the intersection of nutrition and sensory needs, providing actionable strategies for improving dietary variety and nutritional intake in a way that respects and accommodates unique sensory preferences.

Continuing into its second season, this Approaches to Autism session features Dr. Stephen Shore and Rob Bernstein in an interview with Dr. Winnie Dunn on the topic of Occupational Therapy. Dr. Dunn is a Distinguished Professor of Occupational Therapy Education and an internationally recognized expert for her studies about sensory processing in everyday life.

When families receive the diagnosis of Autism, they often become engulfed in a sea of unknown variables with no clear guidelines or tangible map. They ask what the future will look like for their family, the parents, the child with autism, the siblings. Relationship based Dynamic Intelligence Program (RDI (TM)) looks at this dilemma from a perspective that families are designed to live their lives together, where they find support for the emotional hills and valleys that are specific to the lives they lead.

This presentation will focus on the challenges facing the Special Rights community within the context of the currently predominant educational paradigm. Particular attention will be paid to ways consumers could tell when a program will lead to developmental growth, and meaningful competitive employment and higher education after graduation.

This session will equip parents, legal professionals, educators, and support networks with a comprehensive legal toolkit for navigating divorce with a focus on the well-being of children with ASD.

In this session, the founder of Exceptional Needs Today Magazine, Amy Tobik shares her story and highlights her mission to bring awareness, acceptance, and inclusion through the distribution of the Exceptional Needs Today Magazine.

Self-advocate, speaker, and autism teaching assistant Andrew Arboe discusses his personal journey through loss of a job and towards how he recreated himself to find success in something new. With valuable insights for all young adults, Andrew reminds us that we have to build on our strengths and keep going, even when things don't work out the way we want them to.

What do you think about when you ponder accessibility? We spend 1/3 or more of our adult lives doing paid work. In this interview, Occupational Therapist Jeanne Eichler talks about aspects of accessibility that are often not considered in workplace environments.

In this session of Voices Across the Spectrum, Dr. Stephen Shore, Robert J. Bernstein, and Dr. Marlo Payne Thurman will have the pleasure of hosting Carter Bonas, a delightful 12 year old competitive golfer, entrepreneur, and advocate. With incredible prowess both in golf and in his corporate ventures, Carter credits his autism as the superpower behind his success.