SWFL Autism Consulting LLC

05/16/2026

Being in community is what it’s all about!

Growing up in an incredibly inclusive community where it was the determination and passion of one of my mentors to ensure that ALL individuals were welcome everywhere has greatly impacted my perspective on inclusivity.

In my opinion, Florida has work to do. But schools like ACCS are working hard to encourage and build community relationships so EVERYONE can flourish. Because what is good for our individuals and students with disabilities is also good for our entire community. It teaches compassion, acceptance, understanding, and breeds more inclusivity!

05/13/2026

Big Announcement!!!
Autism Collier Charter School is opening summer camp enrollment to students outside of our school community.

Our structured, autism-supportive summer camp is open to children ages 5–19 and will run:

June 8 – July 23
Monday–Thursday
8:30 AM – 3:00 PM
$75/day

Location:
3161 Santa Barbara Blvd
Naples, FL 34116

Camp will include weekly themes and engaging activities such as:

Arts & crafts
Music therapy
Art therapy
Academic review & practice
Water play
Sensory play
Outside play
And more

This is a fun, structured, and supportive environment with a 3:1 staff to camper ratio and small group sizes (9 campers per group) designed to help students stay engaged, connected, and active throughout the summer.

Click here to register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdgkOH9yDFE5jbE7Csy6-SHZqWkgFu_CilTquP-apl1ils6ag/viewform?usp=header

Spots are limited and expected to fill quickly.

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all those mamas, grandmas, aunties, sisters and others who’ve stepped up to help support, encourage, and nurture our littles!! 💐

Dads…we see you too!

04/06/2026

Currently 1:31 children are diagnosed with Autism

1:20 to 1:25 Boys
1:100 Girls

04/06/2026

03/31/2026

Oral motor awareness activities have long been part of my practices. Many moons ago, I worked with a few incredibly phenomenal SLPs (and many since too) who taught me and introduced me to various practices that help with oral motor awareness. In a clinic it looks different than in a school setting.

Some things I learned and incorporated into my classrooms and practices, include:
-desensitization activities often start away from the face (shoulders, neck) etc and work towards the mouth.
-oral desensitization is incredibly helpful (Much like what we see Dr Waldo doing here)
-oral motor awareness activities build from the desensitization activities
-breath work is also important. I the past I used an old program called Horn Therapy which encompasses a number of different toys that require blowing various amounts of air. It’s a tiered approach!

Once you have helped the child developed some foundation skills like the above, you can then move into the communication develop phases which include:
-babbling
-sound pairing (I make a sound, child makes a sound-not necessarily the same sound)
-sound imitation (I make a sound, child imitates same sound)
-word approximation (I say a word, child attempts word/approximates word)
-word imitation (I say a word, child imitates word)
-phrase approximation (I say phrase, child approximates phrase)
-phrase imitation (I saw a phrase, child imitates phrase)
-from here you can begin incorporating additional vocabulary and expanding phrases to more than 2-3 words
-spontaneous language begins to develop

It is incredibly fun to start hearing students or clients engage new sounds, imitate phrases and begin engaging in more spontaneous, appropriate communication.

Communication helps increase independence and indolence opens so many more doors for our friends with Autism (and other disabilities too!!).

03/30/2026

I was so excited to recently partner with Erik Hoffer and Dale Reitz with SWFLGSD-Rescue to provide training and awareness about dogs-specifically about German Shepherds-to students at Blue Horizon Academy in Ft Myers where they empower K–5 learners with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, and diverse abilities through individualized instruction, integrated therapies, and an unbreakable partnership with families—preparing each child for academic achievement, confident self-expression, and compassionate individuals.

It was so awesome to get to bring together two of my greatest passions-teaching students with disabilities AND talking about German Shepherds. I personally own two GSDs that I enjoy training and have also helped rescue 20 dogs (and counting)
for SWFLGSD-Rescue over the last 18 months!

I look forward to doing more of these
fun events to bring awareness not only about German Shepherds and the rescue, but to teach our vulnerable kiddos how to appropriately engage and interact with all dogs!

If you are interested in a training please reach out to myself or Erik at SWFLGSD-Rescue!

📸 Credits: Blue Horizon Academy

03/11/2026

Here is a great visual resource for parents that can be applied to numerous different skills.

Reach out if you’d like in-home consultation on how to increase opportunities for language and communication development, social-communication interactions like requesting and greetings and closings, attending skills, following directions, incorporating routines and structure into your child’s day, and a host of other child-specific needs!

03/10/2026

Thoughts?

Not to date myself, but when I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I don’t recall a single peer of mine having anxiety disorder in elementary school. I don’t recall anyone having eczema. I had ONE friend who had asthma. I maybe had A (as in one) kid at my school that had some sort of nut allergy. I recall students with special needs, but Autism was still considered a low-incidence disability. The disabilities we saw were things like Down Syndrome, Intellectual Disability and significant motor related disabilities like Cerebral Palsy. I can probably name majority of those kids, there were so few.

Today-research has shown that nearly all children born today either have: allergy (usually a nut allergy), asthma, and/or eczema. Consider this: these three things are not typically things that go undiagnosed. So why the increase? What’s the correlation? What’s the pattern?

As an Autism Specialist who once served multiple counties and had a caseload of 55+ students whom I completed initial and three-year reevaluations, and provided consultative services to both educators and parents, as well as other community members, I started to see some interesting patterns with some of those on my caseload. I began focusing my research on comorbid conditions that I was beginning to see diagnosed.

The kids with Autism who had more than just perseverations, but actual obsessive compulsive behaviors: PANS/PANDAS

The kids with Autism whom the strategies didn’t quite fit; were considered higher functioning; had some negotiating skills; and whom often were deemed oppositional: Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome.

One medical, often undiagnosed; one a commonly unknown disorder that formerly was under the umbrella of ASD, that is beginning to gain some traction in the US. Both with implications towards Autism and likely impacted on some level by inflammation in the body at some point in time or ongoing.

Medical conditions can be prevented or alleviated. Mitigated in some way which can often, as I saw, reduce symptoms of Autism. Brain inflammation is a key factor.

Why, 15-20 years ago did we start hearing about the gluten and dairy free diets? I recall being spoon fed, through my educational agency at the time, that this was a fallacy. The parents who were absorbed by this diet were “crazy”.

Fast forward 20 years. Met a doctor who helped me truly understand the gut brain connection. Our gut dictates our brain health. These diets did help. They do help. They help by allowing the gut to heal, become less permeable, and stop the flow of proteins that we don’t want passing the blood-brain barrier that cause inflammation in our brains.

Inflammation decreases. Symptoms decrease. I witnessed this both as an educator and as a parent.

Yet we continue to feed our kids food containing food dyes, inflammatory foods like sugary cereal, dairy, and foods high in mold content, as well as highly processed or GMO’d foods that now correlate to behavioral issues (ie corn, bananas).

I found with my own child, when he was 4, when we removed corn products, it took a few weeks for the initial removal. Everything he ate had corn in it. Everything. Bread, cereal, chicken nuggets, taquitos, cheese…the list was endless. Once off for a period of time, if he got corn in something that we were unaware had corn in it (as I quickly learned there is about 409 names for corn), it would be a three day cycle.

Day 1: Ate the product containing corn
Day 2-3: Jonesing for more corn; Rage episode (best way to describe was an addict wanting next fix)
Day 4: Back to my normal kiddo.

He got to a point when he could tell his body had corn. We knew what to expect and could mange it better; and so could he. He didn’t want to eat corn. He’d make me check things to be sure. He knew his body felt yucky.

The point. My point. We need to rule out medical things first. We need to do root cause medicine. We need to look at familial history. We need to look at history and the implementations of medicine and therapies and truly analyze what could be leading to these increases in Autism and other previously uncommon childhood ailments. It’s not rocket science. It’s patterns of behavior.

High Inflammation Day = More significant behaviors or less cognitive functioning;
Low Inflammation Day = Greater cognitive functioning and decreased behaviors

Stop blaming the moms. Stop blaming the dads. Start looking for root cause. Start alleviating symptoms. See how the behaviors change. Connect the dots. Find the patterns.

Recent studies raise a provocative question that was once almost taboo: could some cases of autism actually be preventable?