Silver Linings Playbook

In August 2020, Learning for Life held a virtual discussion session for our L4Life parents, revolving around strategies to positively engage with their child/children during ‘lockdown’ and beyond. There was a short presentation by L4Life consultants of the Lovaas Institute, Scott and Linda Wright, followed by a live Q&A.

Every year, Learning for Life has consultant Scott Wright, CEO of the Lovaas Institute in the USA, come out for staff training and consultations with our L4Life families. Last year he even participated at Run Melbourne with our Village on Team L4Life.

With travel across the globe impossible this year, we decided to run a virtual event and to take advantage of online connection during these current times when families are spending more time together; working, playing and learning. And we got double the experts by having Linda Wright also join us with Scott in a presentation “Silver Linings Playbook”, to share some of their insights that could be helpful for our L4Life parents. Linda, who has also consulted with L4Life in the past, is the Clinical Director at the New Jersey/Philadelphia office, is a speech pathologist and also a Board-certified behaviour analyst (BCBA).

Clockwise from top left: Pam Roy, L4Life Executive Officer; Mary Muirhead, L4Life Chair; Scott and Linda Wright, Lovaas Institute; and Emma Miller, L4Life Clinical Director.

Our parents enjoyed Scott and Linda sharing their experiences of lockdown in America and the positives that have come out of being forced to do a lot of therapy/consultations online. The feedback we got from parents was that they realised how lucky they were still being able to get one-to-one early intervention at home, as our services are essential and L4Life has worked hard to maintain them in an adapted form all through this tumultuous year.

Here is some lovely feedback from one of our L4Life parents who joined us: “Thank you and the team for all your support during this COVID period. We feel very fortunate to still be receiving face-to-face support for the kids!”

Thank you to Scott and Linda for their time, for sharing their insights with our parents and answering questions they have. We also thank our L4Life parents who tuned into the session and who joined in the discussion.