Welcome!

Gift of Gab™

Let's enhance your conversation skills
for confidence and success!

---see schedule below---

One-time-only workshops offered Summer 2008

• Techies Group: Whether your area is software, engineering, science, math, inventing, or another technical field, this is your opportunity to share ideas with others of like mind. Even if you’ve put away a talent that you didn’t think you had, here’s your chance.
• Art and comics. Let’s do a project together—Asperger style!
• Drama/Improv. Are you ready to set your feet on a stage? Maybe even a little improv.
• Entrepreneurship for Aspies: Self Employment Nuts ‘n Bolts. Want to start a business but don’t know where to start? Learn the basics, discover your hidden strengths, and gain confidence and a sense of freedom in work. Let’s put your conversation skills to work!
• Relationships, Flirting, and Advanced Empathy. Hidden meanings, subtle nonverbal language, relationship dynamics. For those ready to go a step deeper and move ahead.
• Aviation Group: This group is for aspies who love aviation, whether it’s how aerodynamics works, history, trivia, piloting, or whatever. Let’s get together and share ideas, brainstorm, and just have fun discussing aviation, and maybe even do a project.
• Employment Conversations I: Interviews, Job Search, Self Promotion.
• Employment Conversations: Bullying in the workplace. Survival in employment when others try to taunt you, cheat you, or compete unfairly.
• Video Games Discussion: Chat about the games and maybe even design one!

Regular Groups

• Adult Group: Enhance your conversation skills, and learn new ones while developing new friendships in a calm, safe, setting. Intensive structured lessons. Monday evenings.
• Teen Girls: Make friends, chitchat, learn social graces, and have fun. Mondays.
• Teen Groups: Use your imagination and logic to enhance your conversation skills while developing new friendships in an active, relaxing setting. Tuesdays.
• Just for AS Women: Group I, Teens (Two age groups.) Adults, Group II. Small weekly groups of 4 to 6 women discuss AS issues unique to women, and learn specific conversation skills and have fun discussions. Mondays/Tuesdays.
• Kids: Socializing together, active gameplay, and brainstorming with shared imagination. Groups for kids ages 7-9 and 10-12.

How to Enroll

• Can’t think of what to say? You can learn fun ways to come up with great ideas easily.
• Do you get lost in a conversation and miss things that were said, or have difficulty understanding them? We’ll offer solutions that have helped many people.
• Do you often listen to conversations that you didn’t want to but didn’t know how to politely change the subject or end the conversation?
• Do you have too much to say and can’t seem to get it all said?

Perhaps you would like practice in:

• Smooth ways to interrupt
• Heading off bullying
• Stating things clearly
• Saying “No”
• Advanced listening techniques
• How to recover after making a blunder

Following are a few questions and answers.

1. Who will be facilitating? Karen Roe, B.A, is an AS/ADD personal support coach with over five years experience, teacher, writer, group organizer and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Autism Society of Washington. Karen leads a family support group for AS/HFA that she started over six years ago and previously led an AS adult socializing group. Karen is a graduate of the University of Washington, the Optimal Functioning Institute (a rigorous program that trains ADD Coaches) and Coach University. Both programs total over 460 hours of instruction, lab work, and practicum experience.
2. Why do the groups work so well? They are set up to get conversation flowing, using a variety of techniques to meet the needs of each member. Structured exercises are mixed with open conversation to allow for unique contribution, expression of personal interests, and spontaneity.

   Karen’s unique understanding and compassion for how AS, AD/HD and related conditions work, her teaching experience, and her love of all aspects of language, set the stage for Gift of Gab groups to be the springboard for the development of many Aspies’ conversation skills. Karen enjoys giving most of her time to her 15 y/o son, who has AS. It is vital to Karen that all people who have AD/HD or AS can live happily, confidently, and comfortably in this world, in the way of their own choosing, and as successfully as they can, in education, work, family, and relationships.

3. DVR funding is now available for those who qualify!
4. What theories is the program based on? The program uses a combination of theories from coach’s training and teaching English as a Second Language, as well as Relationship Development Intervention (RDI), DIR, which is a concept for Functional Development of Individual Differences in Relationships, and prior study of Speech and Language Therapy. My book about AS will be published soon.

Summer Schedule for 2008

The workshops will run continuously, one hour per week, near Green Lake in Seattle. Cost is $125 for each four weeks. You will need to send a $25 deposit to reserve a space.

Please call for location or schedule changes.

We will skip all national holidays.

• Mondays 8-9 p.m. Continuous Adult group
• Mondays 8-9 p.m. Continuous Adult group
• Tuesdays 6-7 p.m. 6/24 – 7/22 Aviation project/discussion group
• Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. 6/24 – 7/22 Empathy, relationships, flirting—Advanced
• Tuesdays 8-9 p.m. 6/24 – 7/22 Women’s Group --Adult
• Tuesdays 6-7 p.m. 7/29 – 8/19 Art/Comics Project Group
• Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. 7/29 – 8/19 Drama/Improv
• Tuesdays 8-9 p.m. 7/29 – 8/19 Women’s Group --Adult

We’ll skip the week of June 30 – July 4

• Wednesday 1-2 pm 6/25 – 7/23 Women’s group—Teens ages 12-14 Wednesday 2-3 pm 6/25 – 7/23 Women’s group—Teens ages 15-16 Wednesday 3-4 pm 6/25 – 7/23 Adults--The basics--Women Wednesday 1-2 pm 7/30 – 8/20 Kids ages 10-12 Wednesday 2-3 pm 7/30 – 8/20 Women’s group—Teens ages 16-18 Wednesday 3-4 pm 7/30 – 8/20 Adults the basics--Women

• Thursdays 1-2 pm 6/26 – 7/24 Teens ages 12-15
• Thursdays 2-3 pm 6/26 – 7/24 Teens ages 16-18
• Thursdays 3-4 pm 6/26 – 7/24 Women’s group—Teens ages 17-19
• Thursdays 1-2 pm 7/31 – 8/21 Kids ages 7-9
• Thursdays 2-3 pm 7/31 – 8/21 Employment I
• Thursdays 3-4 pm 7/31 – 8/21 Adults with ADHD

• Thursdays 6-7 p.m. 6/26 – 7/24 Video Games Discussion group
• Thursdays 7-8 p.m. 6/26 – 7/24 Techies Group
• Thursdays 6-7 p.m. 7/31 – 8/21 Employment Conversations—Bullying in the Workplace and other Coworker Conversations
• Thursdays 7-8 p.m. 7/31 – 8/21 Entrepreneurship for AS

Monthly Groups (free)

• Adult AS Socializing Group—4th Wednesdays, 7-9 pm.
• Family Support Group—2nd Wednesdays, 6:30-8:30 pm.

“I want to thank you for what you have done for our 26-year-old son with your Gift of Gab classes. He has Asperger’s Syndrome and has experienced depression because of his difficulty meeting people, conversing, and making friends. I am amazed at the difference I see in him after eight weeks of your classes. He is much more outgoing now and in conversation with my wife and me, as well as with others, he does much better at conversing about interesting subjects and responding appropriately to what other people say. He is so determined to continue improving that now, for the first time, he regularly watches the evening news so he can converse intelligently about what is happening. We are looking forward to his continued improvement as he takes more Gift of Gab classes.”

T.B., Ph.D.