8 Buckland Crescent, London, NW3 5DX
Tel: 07768 610100
Email: walter@auting.org
www.autismandunderstanding.com
Autism and Understanding: The Waldon Approach to Child Development is written for parents and teachers. The approach is low tech and inexpensive and is for the parent to learn to do. It is not a miracle cure or quick fix and in the author’s son’s case involved several years of patient, although rewarding, work that led to a remarkably successful outcome.
Dr Geoffrey Waldon developed a theory of child development based on close observation of children. He understood that ‘meaning comes from movement’ and that children’s early understanding is derived from their early movements. Atypical children often miss developmental steps and consequently have gaps in their understanding. The Waldon Lesson seeks to recreate the conditions encountered by typical infants as their own motivation takes them through the learning process, and they naturally and without external direction develop and apply what Waldon called the learning-how-to-learn-tools. For the developmentally delayed children these steps are introduced in the lesson at the appropriate time and the Waldon Lesson becomes the vehicle for them to encounter and practice any developmental stages that they have missed.
The lesson creates the natural environment of the infant as closely as possible. The student’s motivation is the pleasure derived from the action. There is no success or failure. There is simply doing. The lesson is given once per day for a period of up to one hour, ideally by a parent with support from a Waldon facilitator.
