This book is intended to give a voice to Avery and others like her who have something to say, but are unable to verbally say it. Young children all over the world are at an impressionable age and with answers to their questions about others who are different they could learn to become kindhearted, understanding, and accepting children. This book is about a real child named Avery with Down syndrome and real experiences she's gone through. If this book is understood by a school aged student, then we will be creating a world full of compassionate children. This is the first of five books to help demystify special needs to lower elementary aged students.
About the Author: Nicole has integrated her education from Kaplan University with extensive and varied experience to make her an ideal adviser to families and organizations struggling with how to support children with special needs. She starting working with a little boy named Sammy with special needs at the age of thirteen. She turned her passion into a career as a Trained Senior Behavioral Therapist where she realized the important role that Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) had in modifying behaviors and teaching self-help skills. She also provided Private Parent Consultation wherein she tutored children in a one-on-one setting, teaching functional social skills, community skills and self-help skills as well as designing behavior intervention plans. Nicole had the opportunity to utilize all these skills as the Assistant Director for a social skills inclusion based program where it became obvious that peer models and training sessions for parents were a vital component in the success of the children, and was thus folded into a rapidly growing multi-pronged approach. Realizing that there was no program that integrated all these varying components that she had come to believe were so vital in providing support, Nicole created STAR: Social Training and Resources. Nicole strongly believed that there was a need for a company that a parent or organization could turn to that understood the 360° approach to supporting children with special needs. Nicole lives in Northern California with her husband, two daughters and various farm animals.