I love opening my email and finding messages from The Parent Bloggers Network. I always get a wide variety of fun, funky, and practical products offered to me and this product is no different. Actually, allow me to correct myself, it's very different.
You may have noticed me occasionally yammering on about my kids over at Finding Yourself Despite Yourself and might just recall that my oldest (now 6!) is on the autistic spectrum. Mira is officially diagnosed as PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified). What this means is that across the board she is affected by autism- speech, motor skills, social skills. I'm always on the prowl for affordable therapeutic items that can help her along the way so when The Parent Blogger Network asked me to check out some new autism DVDs I jumped right on board.
Kibbles Rockin' Clubhouse, Expressing Yourself by NoteAbilities is a 40 minute trip into the world of Handy Sam and friends- including Kibble the dog. The show is full of songs from learning how to say hello to learning how to use your mouth to ask for what you need. Each lesson covered is something that ASD kids typically struggle with and while some of it seems SO SIMPLISTIC you have to remind yourself that what comes so easily to you is an enigma to these children. A straight forward and fun delivery allowed my daughter to easily absorb the meat of the matter and have fun acting it out with me.
I also noticed the DVDs are quite popular with my other two children and that they too were benefiting from the show. Sometimes I forget that having a sibling on the spectrum deprives them of regular interaction, that their relationship is based on a different sort of understanding and that it occasionally can cause confusion when dealing with other neurotypical kids. I've noticed this most with my 4 year old. She is a bad habit of rarely offering eye contact, something she's never needed to do with her sister. Kibbles made it fun for her to practice making eye contact and after a few weeks of watching it, her preschool teacher even commented that Tessa had been doing better with eye contact.
Kibbles Rockin' Clubhouse impresses me, so much so that all of my friends with ASD kids have been hearing about it and my daughter's autism classroom will soon have their very own copy to enjoy.
