Davis Autism Approach

An information session will be held in Calgary on the evening of Tuesday, September 14th for parents interested in the Davis Autism Approach.

www.calgaryautism.com

www.davisautism.com

6:30 – 8:00 pm

Deerfoot Inn and Casino

$5/ person

Hosted by Rocky Point Academy

*From Rocky Point Academy*

It is estimated that autism now affects 1 in a 100 chil-dren and its prevalence is growing rapidly.

Get breaking National news

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won't miss a trending story.

Sign up for breaking National newsletter Get Started

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

New to Calgary and spreading internationally is the Davis Autism Ap-proach.

It is a program designed by an autistic– for autistics.

Ron Davis was born a se-vere autistic in 1942. At school they labeled him uneducatably retarded and his mother was told he had the intelligence of a chim-panzee.

Around the age of nine, Davis began to emerge from his autism. At the age of 17 he took an IQ test and scored quite high. It was decided to place him in speech therapy so that he could begin to speak.

In 1981, he performed ex-periments and made a breakthrough discovery in correcting dyslexia. This lead to him establishing the Reading Research Council in Burlingame, CA. Since then Davis has published two best- selling books The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning. His learning programs are now being offered in over 40 nations and 30 different languages. Rocky Point Academy has been provid-ing these dyslexia pro-grams successfully for over a decade here in Calgary.

Davis’ work with address-ing autism started in 1982 . Among those who came for help in reading were chil-dren and adults on the au-tism spectrum. The suc-

cesses these individuals experienced using the Davis methods began his quest to develop a stan-dardized program for ad-dressing autism.

Davis said, "If I could find my own way through the chaos and

if I could pro-vide a ‘map’ for others of my kind to follow, there would be value in my ex-istence." This program, is that map.

In 2009, Larry and Stacey Smith, directors of Rocky Point Academy, were the

first Canadians to be per-sonally trained and li-censed by Davis

in the delivery of the autism pro-gram. There are currently only three licensed facilita-tors in Canada.

Smith, who is also on the autism spectrum himself, and has an autistic daugh-ter, says," The purpose of providing this program is to enable the autistic indi-vidual to participate more fully in life. It clearly is doing just that."