February Meeting
Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020
NFAR MEN'S GROUP
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
**Filippi's Pizza Grotto
5353 Kearny Villa Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
Directions
Dinner: Pizza, Salad.
Dinner is provided
The Men’s Group is for dads, step dads, and granddads helping to raise a child with autism. We offer dinner, guest speakers and a chance to network with other men in a relaxed setting.
February Topic: "Effective Communication - Changing Your Trajectory One Keystroke at a Time"
How finding the right "type" of communication can change your world.
Guest Speaker: Otto Lana
Otto Lana is now fifteen years old. He lost his ability to speak at age two and was diagnosed with Autism at two and a half. By age six intellectual disability was added to the list. At seven he was no longer on a diploma bound academic track and landed in a life skills program. No one wanted to teach him the alphabet or numbers. No one wanted to discuss world events beyond the weather and the days of the week in circle time. History was confined to a "first this / then that" choice board and a visual schedule of daily events. This was his life because an IEP team in 2011 decided he did not have the capacity to learn. They decided he had no receptive language therefore anything other than a laminated card with a drawing, an icon representing an action or item, was beyond his reach, beyond his intellectual capacity. The list of diagnoses continued to grow and by the time he was twelve included Anxiety, Apraxia, and Seizure Disorder. But this list no longer defines his future, it simply assigns codes for medical billing purposes.
In 2014 Otto met Darlene Hanson SLP and his life changed. He, for the first time, had access to a mode of effective communication. Darlene taught Otto how to type. Now Otto is a freshman in high school. He can tell you the rest at the NFAR Men's Group!