Early Childhood Case study

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Case Study: Marco Munos

Your interdisciplinary consultant team has been contacted by the director of the Good Start preschool, Mrs. Lopez. Good Start has just accepted a new child into its 4-5 year old classroom who has autism. The preschool director would like your team to provide a 90-minute in-service workshop to help them meet the needs of their new student, Marco Munos and his family.
During your in-depth discussion with the preschool director you gather information about Marco and the perceived needs of the child and the preschool staff. Following is a summary of that conversation.
Note: Marco’s parents had given the school permission to share this background information with your team.
Marco and his Family
According to Mrs. Munos, ever since Marco was an infant, he has been difficult to figure out and to know what to do. Marco was difficult to feed and he never really enjoyed just sitting and snuggling. He began walking at 11 months and was able to do all the things his siblings did until he reached about two- years- old.
At that time, Marco stopped using the words he had learned for things and didn’t seem to be able to communicate what he wanted or how he was feeling. He stopped making eye contact with adults and he didn’t like to be hugged and became very agitated if he was kissed. His parents and other family members began to question if something was wrong with Marco, although Mr. Munos continued to believe that Marco would grow out of it.
Over the next two years it slowly became apparent to Marco ‘s parents that he was not growing out of it and that his behavior was becoming more and more atypical. At the time of this referral, Marco is described as a loner and often twirls endlessly in circles. He has become afraid of loud sounds and repeats words he hears on the TV although he doesn’t understand what they mean.
Because Marco is supposed to start kindergarten when he turns five in eight months, Mrs. Munos recently called the school district with their concerns. Marco was evaluated and it was determined that he has autism and significant delays, particularly in communication and social interaction skills.

Although Marco qualified for the Pre-K disability program through the public school system, Mrs. Munos would like Marco to go to Good Start, the preschool where his two older brothers went to school.
Preschool Staff
The staff, family, and school district evaluators feel the most important goal for Marco is to learn prerequisite behaviors, such as paying attention during conversations and using language to initiate social exchanges, waiting, sharing, and turn taking. It is very important for him to reduce atypical behaviors and increase appropriate interactive and play behaviors. The staff would like your team to help them with strategies to address how to:
Answer Questions:
• maintain Marco’s attention, motivation and performance on tasks, given his impulsivity and distractibility
• increase Marco’s ability to express perceptual/fine motor skills in tasks such as drawing, puzzles, block building and other coordinated activities
• increase Marco’ typical social interactions through appropriate social and language modeling
• arrange the environment to maximize developmentally appropriate learning opportunities
• make appropriate modifications and accommodations to the classroom curriculum 


• Additionally, Mr. and Mrs. Munos would like to know how to explain their child’s disability to their family members. No one in the family knows of any other children in their community with autism and it is frightening to them. They would also like to know what to expect in the future, what they should do for kindergarten and how to help Marco make friends.
• Lastly, Marco’s parents are requesting suggestions of what further assessments should be conducted to measure Marco’s goals listed in his IEP.