I received this book several days ago and I can't endorse it enough. Your book is full of wisdom and terrific rationale.

I have a 2 year-old daughter with Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (aka 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome).

I have a M.S. in speech pathology from a top-rated university. However, I did not get any training in my graduate studies in working with children with autism. So, for the past year, I have been a self-taught therapist incorporating a number of teaching styles that work great as an integrated approach to help my daughter learn. Children with autism learn differently, but they are smart kiddos! They just need approaches that take into account their needs and their learning styles. I have been teaching my daughter with what I have learned using concepts of ABA, Verbal Behavior, RDI (self-implemented, NOT paying a consultant), TEACCH, sign language, pictures, etc. My daughter did not engage at all at 11 months of age, but is a different child today because of this integrated approach. She is smiling, making appropriate eye contact, learning, using sign language, and beginning to verbalize. She is socially loving and engaging on her very own. I truly believe that Verbal Behavior has been a key to giving her a WAY to interact, and appropriate reinforcement to maintain and foster further interaction. It has given her a way to communicate and although she is only just starting to say single words, communication is about MUCH MORE than "talking". At the very earlist, when children learn that they can interact with others to have their needs met, they are learning the FIRST steps in understanding that communication has a PURPOSE. This may occur months or years before they are able to talk. But this purposeful engagement is what drives interaction, further learning, and cooperation, and what reduces frustration.

"Educate Towards Recovery" is the best I have read and the best on my shelf for PARENTS to read (professionals, too, but especially parents). It is an easy-to-understand text, and the chapter on RDI and ABA explains a rationale for how the two approaches can co-exist. It explains, once and for all, historically why there tends to be such a "negative" outlook on ABA from the RDI "camp". It also gives parents a perspective that helps them answer the question "Is RDI enough? Should I use BOTH ABA and RDI? How much time should I spend with different approaches, and how can I make that decision best for MY child?" It made me realize that I intuitively chose to use BOTH types of learning approaches with my daughter and that both approaches have their strengths... very validating for me.

This book summarizes in an easy read much of what has taken me a whole year to synthesize from other sources and LOTS of research, workshops, and learning on my own. It is also VERY supportive of parents being their child's teacher. I can't thank you enough for your book.

:)Meredith Sterns Parker

mom to Finley, 2, with VCFS and ASD

M.S. in speech-language pathology

sternsmk@hotmail.com

Parents can find many useful resources to learn about how Applied Behavior Analysis using Verbal Behavior (ABA/VB) can help teach their children with autism. But many of these resources are written by professionals for professionals. Often a layer of unfamiliar terminology stands between parents and the practical information they seek. A plain language book intended for parents about ABA/VB has been needed for some time. Now Robert Schramm, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who heads a leading autism intervention program in Germany, has met the need.

His title certainly catches attention. “Recovery” can be a controversial term, stirring up powerful feelings both of hope and of skepticism. Schramm speaks of recovery in the most common sense way I have found. He notes that autism is a descriptive, external label and so recovery

“does not mean that this child is somehow a better or more complete person than he was before the label was removed. It also does not mean that the cause of the autism has been mysteriously eradicated. It merely means that as a team of caring supporters, we have found a way to educate this child to the point that the doctors have stopped calling him names.”

Other terms in Schramm’s title suggest more practical ways of thinking about how to help our kids. The idea of education toward recovery is very useful. The focus throughout the book is the idea that anything that moves the learner toward interaction also moves them toward recovery long term. Schramm uses this idea to explain why good ABA in general, and ABA/VB in particular, chooses certain techniques.

Delivering lots of positive reinforcement (delivering rewards) and when necessary using response cost (taking away desired items) and extinction (planned ignoring of behavior) are the techniques of choice because they keep the child focused toward interaction with us – keeps them wanting more of what we have to give. Similarly, this explains why negative reinforcement (rewarding with escape from interaction) or punishments must be avoided – they propel the child to run away from us and from recovery in turn. This is an insight that helps me think about our daily choices in our ABA/VB home program.

The idea of turning the tables is also powerful. Schramm points to ways we can use characteristics of autism itself to promote the education process. Kids with autism may tend to echo – so he explains how echoic transfer procedures can be the doorway into teaching functional communication. Kids with autism often stim – so he shows how we can use the powerful reinforcing value of those stim behaviors as motivation to perform learning tasks. In seeing opportunities where it would be easy to see just deficits, this book provides both a hopeful outlook and, more importantly, concrete advice toward realizing the hope through ABA/VB interventions.

This book is no replacement for Sundberg and Partington’s 1998 Teaching Language to Children with Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities – the original sourcebook of ABA/VB. It is a useful companion to it. It is good to now have a parent-friendly book on the subject available.

"As a primary Montessori teacher, I am committed to serving as a guide who helps young children construct themselves. Dr. Montessori believed that young children would choose to grow and develop if given developmentally appropriate lessons and a prepared environment rich in materials that would teach children abstract concepts in concrete ways.

Over the 15 years I have been a Montessori teacher, almost every young child with whom I have had the privilege of working was most definitely capable of making appropriate choices aimed at helping said child grow intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually and physically. Notice I said 'almost' every child. The children I worked with who had no idea how to make appropriate choices both in school and at home were children challenged by autism. Because of these children's pervasive developmental delays, maladaptive behaviors and communication difficulties, I really had no idea how to reach a child on the autism spectrum, even as a Montessori teacher.

And then autism specialists like Robert Schramm entered my life and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, between my training and experience as a Montessori teacher and my training and experience with Verbal Behavior Applied Behavior Analysis, I could indeed reach and teach any young child whose family came to me for help.

Robert Schramm's book, Educate Toward Recovery, revolutionized my work with children both young and old. I gratefully and highly recommend this book to all Montessori teachers whose hearts ache for every student they have had to send away from their classrooms, due to behavior problems and academic, communicative and social challenges these teachers did not understand. Thanks to the practices and procedures so aptly described in Educate Toward Recovery, Montessori educators can now both reach and teach students challenged by autism and students challenged by autism can grow and develop alongside other Montessori classmates in the inclusive Montessori environments students with autism so desperately need. Mr. Schramm has accomplished a remarkable feat in writing and publishing this manual. Like so many professionals committed to children with autism and their families, this author and professional truly walks on the side of angels." Mary Childerston, Montessori teacher and autism instructor

5 stars! This is the best overall book not only for therapists and professionals but for parents. Dr. Schramm lays out the basics of verbal behavior in such an approachable manner that I was able to learn what I needed to know to begin working with my 3 year old daughter right away. I was able to pinpoint what I was capable of doing in the home and what I needed outside help with. And in looking for outside therapists, I was able to determine how effective they would be by measuring them against Dr. Schramm's techniques. Dr. Schramm really "gets" our kids and what motivates them. He is an excellent teacher, and I recommend this book to every parent who's just received a diagnosis and doesn't know where to begin.

I can just say that Robert's book has, so far, been a God send for me. I happened to purchase and read it about the time that I began working with a new child. This child at first meeting seemed to be rather severe, the apraxic type who has no language, but some babbling, tons of self stim and very avoidant. The first month (before ETR) of course I did my typical pairing, then moved into increased demand and seatwork . This child had had some aba previously and had developed aversions to the chair (what a surprise!) and to acquisition tasks. Fortunately we only went through two sessions of really fighting through escape extinction before I read ETR. What an incredible change! Now, not earth shattering so much in terms of acquisition rate or skill development. But it has been about three weeks of working the way Robert recommends. Now the child will come sit down and do a puzzle with few prompts, will play appropriately with some simple toys - shape sorters and such. She is beginning to be able to match sounds in verbal imitation and even has a couple reliable prompted mands. Well, not to say I had accomplished nothing before , she had learned one mand but was using that sound for everything so we dropped the manding to work on a more varied and reliable echoic. Now I am hopeful that we are over a hump. Today I had the child in my playroom - I normally work at the child's home, and she looked so different ! Looking around the shelves for desired items, playing appropriately when given the items after being prompted to make a choice, even at one time came and got me and pulled me to the shelf. Absolutely huge! And what I am seeing is that compulsive need for control falling off, allowing her to show her abilities, a child who has good problem solving , a desire to engage, and some rudimentary playskills. She is starting to make the good choices - I don't know if she would have ever let down her guard if I continued to force my will I went that route with my own child, now 13. It makes me so sad , to think if we had worked this way. What a better relationship we'd have now. Not that it's bad , but that control issue still does raise it's ugly head with her , especially as we get into adolescence. I am in the process of trying to figure out how to apply Robert's strategies in our everyday lives with my daughter who no longer has actual therapy sessions and leads a relatively normal life. And I am working out some rough spots with the other child I see, older and much more controlling , much more difficult - still I trust the techniques now. Believe me, I am not an easy sell when it comes to deviating from traditional methods. I just never found a way that could show results . I am so much happier in session now. I want to work a forty hour week. And last month I contemplated pushing coffee at Starbucks. I was so tired of trying to convince parents that they had to endure screaming tantrums to get to instructional control. The stress was immense. I for one , am sold 100%

This is the best presentation of the Verbal Behavior approach to ABA that I have seen (and I know a lot about the treatment of young children with autism). If I was going to recommend only one book to either the parents of a child with autism or to anyone who is trying to help a child with autism, this is the book that I would recommend. It has a lot of important information that I wouldn't expect to find anywhere else. I would give it five stars out of five.