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Families of children with autism now have a closer option for getting therapy. Last month, Lighthouse Autism Center opened a new location in Plymouth, and on September 24, it will have an open house from 5:00-6:30 p.m.
Co-founder Sandy Maggioli says the Plymouth location was needed, “Several of our families were driving from the Plymouth area to our Warsaw or our Mishawaka location and asked us if we would look into opening a center. And what we ended up doing, we went and met with a lot of local people, advocates, families, doctors, and held a community outreach meeting and found that Plymouth was definitely in need of our services, and that was how we ended up there.”
She says they’re starting with six kids who had been going to their other locations, “Then once we get the six, we have a wait list of about nine to 10 other children that are wanting to enroll in Plymouth, and so slowly, throughout the balance of 2015 and then into 2016, we plan on bringing in another six to nine children. Plymouth could hold, in total, about 18 children.”
Lighthouse Autism Center specializes in Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, which can be described as a scientific way of teaching children how to learn. Kids with autism typically have trouble mimicking what other people are doing, and Maggioli says that can make learning hard, “Our therapy takes something that they’re trying to learn and breaks it down into very small pieces and teaches it slowly. For example, if you’re trying to teach somebody how to tie their shoe, we would start with just folding the shoelace and then we would show them how to tie it around and then pull the bow, and we would break it down into very small steps to teach them how to do it.”
For more information, visit www.lighthouseautismcenter.com or call 574-387-4313.
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