Category Archives: Parenting

“It’s Good to Be Heard”

Posted on November 7, 2013 by | 30 comments

“It’s good to be heard”

These are the words my daughter spelled out yesterday during an RPM session.  She wrote some other wonderful things too, but I don’t have her permission to print them here.

“It’s good to be heard”

Imagine a life where it was not a given that what you said would be listened to, or even understood.  Imagine if you said things you didn’t mean or that people couldn’t follow the meaning and so you were dismissed.  Imagine being treated “like a three-year old” (this was something else my daughter wrote last week) by people who do not understand, cannot understand, are incapable of understanding because it flies directly in the face of all they’ve been taught and know.  My daughter does not have the mind of a three-year old, despite what anyone else may think or assume.

“It’s good to be heard”

Thanks to a number of dedicated people who have devoted their lives to figuring out alternate ways for people to communicate who cannot or do not reliably speak, my daughter is communicating with us.  Much to our surprise she has managed to learn an enormous amount despite the fact that she has spent years of her life in little more than holding tanks, i.e. special education schools where “life skills” classes are lauded as progressive, where verbal speech is seen as the only true barometer by which intelligence can be gauged.

“It’s good to be heard”

RPM copy

30 Comments

Posted in Autism, Parenting, Rapid Prompting Method

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Controversy and Commenting

Posted on November 6, 2013 by | 67 comments

Yesterday I quoted Ido Kedar, whose book, Ido in Autismland is his account of what it’s like for him as a non-speaking, Autistic, teenager.  The quotes I used were specifically about his experience with ABA, the acronym for Applied Behavior Analysis.  (Ido also has a blog of the same name.)   A couple of people accused me of “falsehoods” and spreading “inaccurate information”.  One person wrote, “I have never read so falsehoods in one post in my life.  You clearly have zero understanding of ABA or the methods used in its approach.”  Except that the bulk of the post he was objecting to was made up of quotations from Ido’s book about his experiences as an autistic person.

I asked for clarification and was told, “Falsehoods being projected do not need to come as a quote from you directly. This is your blog and you are the one responsible for providing accurate information. If you are going to show a quote from a student, then maybe you should also factor in that the particular therapist the student had was not a very skilled one or a qualified one at that.”  Except to make such a claim that “this particular therapist was not skilled or qualified” would be inaccurate and something I cannot possibly know as I’ve never met the therapist being referred to.  Evidently telling a lie is acceptable if it’s done so in favor of another’s opinion, however quoting someone’s firsthand experience is reason to be accused of creating falsehoods.

Another commenter wrote, ” The posts regarding ABA on this blog are grossly inaccurate. Unfortunately, the author of this post (and subsequent commentary) are so misinformed on the topic that they are not able to recognize exactly how inaccurate the information is. For those of us who understand the field, this can certainly be frustrating.”  Except that so many being referred to and who were commenting are Autistic.  In fact a couple of those who commented yesterday are teachers and work directly with Autistic children, one is a professor and teaches disability studies to special education educators at the university level.  These are a few of the people this commenter believes to be “misinformed” and even went so far as to scold, “I urge you to become better informed on the topic.”  It would have been comical had it not been so upsetting to read the condescending tone and level of rage this one post and comments inspired.

I’d like to clarify a few things…  Let’s take ABA out of this, I do not care what the “therapy” is being called, if it is not respectful of the person it is meant to help, if it uses dehumanizing techniques such as electric shock, restraints, isolation rooms, repetitive testing requiring the person to master an action before being allowed to move on, it is not a therapy I will ever support.  If a therapy is meant to teach compliance, teach someone whose neurology and sensory issues do not make sitting still simple or easy, who cannot listen, attend and make eye contact all at the same time, I question it’s objectives.  If a therapy is looking to “fix” another’s neurology, make that person “indistinguishable from their same age neurologically different peers” I will continue to speak out against it and will encourage others to do the same. If the therapy in question does not presume competence at its core and does not take into account the person’s specific neurology and sensory issues, it is flawed.  If these ideas are threatening to some, so be it.

So let’s stop talking about ABA specifically, because it seems to me the conversation continues to get derailed about what ABA is or isn’t, how some practice it or do not, how it has or has not evolved, instead, let’s discuss these other concepts.  And if you believe something that goes against what I’ve just said, fine, quote me in the comments section, tell me why you disagree, back up your ideas with examples, preferably with words from Autistic people and I will happily listen.  Accusing me of “falsehoods”, “inaccuracy”, being condescending, lashing out and making personal attacks are not comments I will allow through moderation.

Colin sent me this graphic, something I think we can all relate to…

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67 Comments

Posted in ABA, Autism, Parenting

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More On ABA

Posted on November 5, 2013 by | 160 comments

I finally did something I’ve never done before.  I’ve closed down any further comments on a post I wrote about the ethics of ABA.  I continue to get up to thirty views on that post daily, now over a year later.  Most of the comments are coming from ABA therapists who write in defense of ABA, which is fine, except most of them are saying the same thing and my response is also to repeat what I’ve said before, but I’m also getting comments from people who are furious that I dare suggest ABA is anything but wonderful, so instead of endlessly repeating myself, I have shut comments down, just on that post.

If you are an ABA therapist, it is your obligation to, at the very least, read what those who are autistic and were given ABA as children are saying about it.  If nothing else, please read Ido Kedar’s book Ido in Autismland where he describes what it was like to be a non-speaking autistic child, with a body that does not do as he would like, and who was given hours of ABA therapy every day for years.

Ido writes:

“It frustrates me to look back at how my ABA teachers drilled me endlessly in basic skills only to say it wasn’t mastered because I had inaccurate pointing.  I knew everything so easily.  I was bored to tears but my apraxic hands would go to the wrong card so they thought I didn’t know “book” or “tree”.  I did it over and over.  It was the worst.  The assumption that people don’t understand if they reply incorrectly is a huge misconception.  ABA is built on this erroneous premise.”

Again from Ido in Autismland:

“My ABA teachers would talk baby talk and tickle me to reward me.  I cared that they see me as smart, so I tried, but I think it was pointless.  I often felt that they couldn’t see my potential, just the drills.  I feel it’s time autistic people finally say what it’s like to be drilled in flashcards over and over when your hands don’t move to your thoughts, or to have your teacher say in front of you that you can’t count because your stupid hands refuse the right number you’ve counted in your head.  I remember standing miserable and embarrassed, holding the wrong number of straws and hearing my teacher say, “It’s clear he has no number sense,” as if I couldn’t understand or had no emotions either.  When I think of these frustrating experiences I am grateful I am not in that situation anymore.  But many of my friends still are.  That’s why I cry for them.”

Regarding eye contact, Ido writes:

“I can listen better if I don’t look at the person.  I can look, but it’s not pleasant.  In ABA I had to look in people’s eyes with a timer.  It was so torturous I did it, but with terrible anxiety.”

Anyone reading this, I hope will be asking themselves what the objective is to insist someone “look at my eyes”.  Would we prefer someone looks at us and pretends to listen to what we’re saying or that they listen?  If someone is not able to do both, is there any point in insisting they do so anyway?

Again in Ido in Autismland:

“In ABA supervision I had to do drills in front of a supervisor with all my teachers.  Then they’d talk about me in front of me to decide how to improve my performance.  It’s miserable to be an object of study especially because they never realized I understood what they were saying.  The consequence of testing me in front of people is that I grew embarrassed and ashamed inside.  By analyzing me in front of me, usually wrong, I grew resentful.  It was so frustrating I don’t like remembering it to tell it now. It’s over for me, thank God, but not for other kids so I have to share this to help them too.”

Rather than continue to quote Ido’s book, I urge you to read it.  This is one person’s experience, but it is also an experience that a great many have said they understand and had as well.  For those who believe in ABA’s benefits, I just ask that you consider Ido’s words, echoed by so many.  There is no “winning” this argument.  All of us have, I believe, similar goals, and that is to do what proves most helpful for our children.

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160 Comments

Posted in ABA, Autism, Parenting

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Autism is Not Like Cancer

Posted on October 31, 2013 by | 32 comments

I’m traveling and haven’t had time to blog.  But a couple of comments came in on the last post about How We Discuss Our Children that made me think a bit more about all of this.

When my daughter was first diagnosed we were told a great many things that frightened us as well as some things that were very encouraging, but when those, seemingly “good” things did not come to pass, we became even more frightened. In part because it became clear no one actually knew what they were talking about and coupled with that realization was the idea that if they didn’t know what they were talking about, how were we going to help our child?  Add to that our expectations, no one talked with us about any “positive” aspects of the diagnosis, nor did anyone suggest anything that sounded remotely “good”.  All of this was done with good intentions, lots of well-meaning advice, but all of it came from non autistic people who were operating under the assumption that our neurology was the gold standard and one that everyone should aspire to, as if that were possible.

Autism was framed in the “disease” model with people alluding to cancer as an appropriate analogy. As I have family who have both died and survived cancer, and have witnessed what chemotherapy does to a person, both when it works and does not, this was particularly awful as I took it literally and began to see any and all “treatments” as a kind of “chemotherapy”.  I even consoled myself with the idea that this “risky” treatment would all be worth it, if it “saved my child’s life”.  I spoke of it in this way and thought of autism as “life threatening” because I could not imagine a life without language, friendships, empathy, etc and this was what we were being told autism was.  This is an incredibly dangerous idea for any of us to engage in and is why I find it incredibly unethical for organizations and public figures to talk about autism and Autistic people in this way.

Now add to this the financial toll of all those unverified “treatments”, the appointments, dealing with schools and the general anxieties that come with parenting on too little sleep and too much caffeine, along with a parent who has expectations that something she does will “save her child’s life”, and that’s a pretty great recipe for discontent, depression, anxiety and upset.  Particularly when it becomes increasingly clear that there is little available that will actually prove helpful to our kids.

Think of how different it would be if our pediatrician was a non-speaking Autistic person and our non autistic older child had a couple of Autistic teachers and another kid’s parent was Autistic and one of our closest friends happened to be Autistic and Autistic kids were not segregated out of schools and work places accommodated their neurology and made it easier for Autistic people to be among us.  Part of that initial fear we parents often have is because we have never met anyone who is Autistic.  All the information we then receive is taken as fact and not questioned immediately.

So yeah, there are things that really do need to be addressed and changed because the stress of parenting is massively exacerbated by society’s use of the medical model and because of the way we have segregated those who are Autistic. It isn’t that a child who has all kinds of medical issues and co-occurring diagnoses will not be cause for concern, it is that to add to these concerns the – oh-and-by-the-way, autism-is-an-epidemic-that-is-analogous-to-cancer-try-anything-and-everything-to-erradicate-it, is increasing everyone’s pain and suffering, including our children’s.

32 Comments

Posted in Autism, inclusion, Parenting

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How We Discuss Our Children

Posted on October 28, 2013 by | 73 comments

Some people say that parents like me are dismissive of how difficult it is to parent an Autistic child.  They say that we are choosing not to dwell on the negative and that it’s important that the other side be shown.  They suggest that by NOT discussing how very challenging it is, we are doing harm, that it is in the stories of horror and devastation that services are gotten.  They say that pathologizing autism is necessary because without talking about it as a pathology, funding would be diminished or cut off.  Many people assume that those of us who write about the positive aspects, the joys, the triumphs that we experience as parents of Autistic children, we must have “high functioning” children and that we cannot possibly know what it is like to have a child who is “severe”.   We are accused of diminishing or dismissing the suffering other parents experience.

When I was fairly new to all of this, not so long ago, I thought nothing of writing about my child’s latest upset in graphic detail.  Not so long ago, I wrote about my child, believing she did not and could not understand what was being written, that she would never read my words, that she could not and did not understand what I said to others, what I wrote.  I posted photos of her, never once considering whether she wanted such a photo posted on the internet for all to see.  It did not occur to me to ask her.  Literally, it did not occur to me.  These are things I now am aware of.  Posts have been deleted, photos have been removed, but had I continued to listen to what I was being told, had I not seen and met non-speaking Autistic children, teenagers and adults who wrote how it felt to be spoken of, written about, and treated as though they weren’t there, I don’t know that I would have thought to stop.

It isn’t that parenting is never challenging, hell, life is challenging, it’s that in talking about parenting it too often sounds like we are blaming our child for our suffering.  It’s like when my husband and I fight and I think to myself, if he didn’t do x, y and z, I wouldn’t get so angry and while there may be some truth to that, it also isn’t owning up to my part in the fight.  So many people write about parenting but they don’t seem to connect it to how they respond to this situation with their child, is how they respond to stress, not getting what we want, impatience, dealing with upheaval, etc.  It seems to me, the less common conversation is the one that talks about personal responsibility and honoring another person, instead of blaming them for what ails us.

In all of this, the Autistic person, whether they are a child, teenager or an adult, are being “treated as though they weren’t there.”  This was the thing that changed everything for me.  Realizing that there is a person there.  Right there.  Right here.  Right in front of me.  And this person has feelings and thoughts and her opinions about herself are affected by what I’m doing and saying about her.  She is just like any other child, who would feel tremendously sad and even traumatized knowing that her parent blames her for their pain and upset.  

This post is being interrupted by more pressing matters, so I will have to come back to this when I have more time…

Em on her pogo stick copy

73 Comments

Posted in Autism, communication, Parenting

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To Educators, Therapists & Doctors

Posted on October 25, 2013 by | 61 comments

You are the first people most parents meet after getting our child’s diagnosis.  Therefore you have tremendous influence on how we view autism, what that means or doesn’t mean, what services we seek, and how we then view and treat our child.

That’s a huge responsibility.

The onus is not entirely on you, of course, but don’t kid yourself, you have the power to change the course of a child’s life and their family’s with your knowledge and what you tell their parents.  If you don’t know the answer to a question, do not pretend you do.  Do not rely solely on whatever university you went to, or the medical journals you may subscribe to, the most recent statistic, medical study or your colleagues for information.

If you’ve been taught a particular therapy or  teaching method is the only scientifically proven method to “treat” or teach Autistic children, find Autistic people who were given that therapy or method as children and learn what they have to say about it.  If you find a number of Autistic people are speaking out about a specific treatment or method, saying they have post traumatic stress as a direct result, reconsider your position.  If you still feel this therapy is important to pursue, ask yourself why and at the very least, inform the parents who are considering this method that there are Autistic people who believe it was damaging to them.  It doesn’t matter whether non autistic people and professionals agree, you have an ethical obligation to tell parents that this treatment or method has caused damage to a great many.

If you think you know, if you are convinced you are right about some aspect related to autism, do more research and make sure what you think you know, is in fact true, if it isn’t or if it isn’t clear, then do not present it as though it is the “truth”.  I don’t care how well known or famous you are in the field of autism, if you are not engaged in reading and talking to Autistic people outside of a clinical setting, you have more to learn.  And do not be afraid to admit when you don’t know something or if you find you are wrong about something you previously thought to be true.  Most of us would prefer being told by a professional that you don’t know something or thought you knew something, but now realize you were wrong than to be given incorrect information.  There’s massive amounts of incorrect information out there.  Please.  Don’t add to it.

You have a responsibility, not just to Autistic people, but to those of us who are their parents and to your profession to read everything you can about autism and what it means to be autistic.  If you’ve never read anything written by an autistic person, now’s the time to do so.  If you cannot bear the idea of doing so, if you believe your various degrees are enough, if you feel annoyed, believe I’m being presumptuous by suggesting you do more, then find another profession.  You aren’t doing anyone any favors by continuing to pursue a career in a field that has so few concrete answers but that you are convinced you know all there is to know.

Even if you’ve read one or two books, maybe seen the latest documentary featuring one or two autistic people, it’s not enough.  You need to read blogs and books written by non-speaking Autistic people, there are more and more of them being published every year.  You need to read the writing of people who speak, can sometimes access language, access language all the time, but do not say what they intend, people who have intense sensory sensitivities, those who are hypo sensitive as well as those who are hyper sensitive and those who have a mixture of the two.

Examine your beliefs:  Do you believe that non speaking Autistic people cannot speak because they aren’t trying hard enough or because they do not have anything to say?  If someone’s facial expressions are hard to read, do you believe that means they do not feel emotion?  Do you think Autistic children lack empathy?  Are you convinced that Autistic people are unreachable?  Do you believe Autistic people have no desire for friendship, lack the ability to love, cannot understand what is being said and written about them?  Do you think that if an Autistic person acts more like a non autistic person they have “recovered”?  Do you believe this is a worthy goal?

Please.  Do all of us a tremendous favor.  If you are entering the field of autism or are an educator, therapist, doctor or professional in the field, in whatever capacity that may be, question everything, read, ask questions, examine your beliefs.  Learn what so many have gone through at the hands of well-meaning professionals.  Remain curious, stay open to new ideas and continue to adjust what you believe.

I was terrified when we received my daughter’s diagnosis.  I knew very little about autism and I looked to all of you for answers.  The answers I was given I’ve since learned were mostly incorrect.  Because of those answers, we made a great many mistakes.  Mistakes that hurt our daughter.  Other parents do not have to go through what we went through.  There is so much great information out there, but often finding it can feel overwhelming and impossible for parents.  You have a great deal of power to affect how families think about and respond to their child and their child’s diagnosis.  You can help so many families help their children in ways that are respectful, by honoring them and their neurology and not making them feel they are broken or are to blame for how society misunderstands and treats them.

To those non autistics who this letter does not apply, you who have dedicated your lives to helping children like mine, I thank you.

Rosemary Crossley, Soma Mukhopadhyay, Christine Ashby, Anne Donnallan, Douglas Biklen, Mary Schuh, Leah Kelley, Pascal Cheng, Harvey Lavoy, H. Markram, K. Markram, *Marge Blanc, Susan Marks,  Paula Kluth, Char Brandl, Cecilia Breinbauer, Phil Smith, Barry Prizant *do not have photos* and so many others, thank you.

Rosie Crossley

Soma Mukhopadhyay

Christy AshbyAnne DonnallanDouglas Biklen

Mary ShuhLeah

PascalHarvey LavoyH. MarkramK.Markram

61 Comments

Posted in Autism, Blogs By Autistics, Parenting

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My Resistance to Practice

Posted on October 24, 2013 by | 24 comments

I’ve been struggling, feeling very emotional in a “bad” sort of way.  You know how when you’re weepy all the time for seemingly no good reason?  Those times when you keep crying every time you hear sad music, and all music strikes you as sad, even really upbeat music, or when someone looks at you with a stern face, or uses a harsh tone, or if you read something sad, and everything you read seems really sad, and you keep having to wipe tears from your face and hope you remembered to bring tissues with you, but you never do?  Yeah, sort of like that.

*Sigh*  It’s been a tough few weeks.  I have felt off-balance because I have been expecting myself to be able to do what I’ve seen a number of people do with my daughter, but that I have not been able to do.  I returned from our trip to Texas and thought, after only a couple of sessions with my daughter, I’d be able to start asking her open-ended questions, just as I’d seen Soma Mukhopadhyay do.  (Despite the fact that Soma advised me NOT to ask any open-ended questions in the beginning.)  *Define beginning, I kept thinking.  I HAVE begun.  Surely now after the second or third day home I am beyond “beginning”!  This thinking is akin to seeing a master jeweler create a beautiful ring and expecting that I should be able to create that same ring without having spent years practicing the craft as a bench jeweler, or hearing a Rachmaninoff piano concerto played at Carnegie Hall and then going home and thinking after a couple of piano lessons that I would be able to replicate that piano concerto.  The point is, Soma is a master at RPM (rapid prompting method).  She’s been doing RPM for close to two decades, first with her son Tito and later with hundreds of Autistic people.

But I so wanted to have the kind of conversations with my daughter that I saw her having with Soma.  It was like catching a little glimpse of paradise, but not being able to find the bridge to actually get there.  I kept trying to leap.  I kept trying to find a short cut.  And as I did this, each day, my distress grew.  I felt frustrated and then angry and then beaten down.  All because I was expecting myself to be able to do something without any practice.  So when my suffering reached an all time high, when the occasional weeping, became more than occasional and my son, upon seeing me asked, “why are you always crying?” I realized I had to get help.  I did what years of recovery from addiction has taught me – I reached out to another human being.  I contacted someone I only know through the internet, but who has been working with her son for a number of years now.

She gave me wonderful tips.  She sent me videos to watch.  She listened to my distress.  She told me it took months of practice and as I read everything she sent me, I kept thinking both how grateful I was to her for being so kind and generous in sharing her experience with me, but also was reminded that I need to practice and I need to start at the beginning.  Everything takes practice.  My expectations of myself were causing me tremendous pain.  They were unrealistic.  It isn’t that I can’t do this method with my child, it’s that I can, but I need to practice.  And as I realized this, as I thought more about this, I saw the parallels to presuming competence in my child.  I have written about what “presume competence” means, but in all the posts I’ve written on the topic there is one piece of this that I have neglected to mention and that is, presuming that we can and will be able to learn with appropriate accommodations and enough practice.  I forgot to include myself in presuming competence.  I need that presumption too.  I need to remember that I can and do learn if I’m given instruction and give myself the opportunity and time to practice.

I had the proper instruction, but I haven’t been practicing long enough to get the results I wanted.  So last night I wrote up a lesson plan, just as Soma had instructed during a previous four-day intensive workshop I took last spring.  I made sure I followed her format of how to create a lesson plan.  I made sure I began with choices and spelling key words.  I even tried to embody her lovely, sing-song, calm, kind voice.  I laid aside any expectations of what would or should happen.  And you know what?  It was a great session.  I made a couple of mistakes, I had to refer to my notes often.  I had to make some adjustments.  I forgot a couple of key things, but I jotted down some comments to myself so I can remember to revise accordingly for our next session this afternoon and more importantly, we were both more relaxed than we have been since we returned home.

Practice.  I hate the idea of having to practice.  I want to go from never having done something, to immediate fluency.  But once I begin practicing and let go of that desire and those expectations for immediate fluency, practicing can be incredibly enjoyable.

To Sue:  This post is for you.  Thank you.

Em practices jumping on her pogo stick.  New all time record?   127.

Joy copy

24 Comments

Posted in Autism, Parenting, presume competence

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The Joy of Being Wrong

Posted on October 23, 2013 by | 40 comments

When my daughter was eight I was so envious of my friends who had daughters the same age, because they were going out together, having mother/daughter outings, getting pedicures, doing girlie things and I despaired that I would never have these kinds of outings with my child.  I know how selfish this sounds.  I know this statement is all about me and has nothing to do with my child or her interests or her feelings.  I always dislike hearing parents talk about their children as though they were some sort of glorified extension of themselves, like a conduit for all the parent’s failings, as though this child was a metaphoric phoenix rising from the parent’s DNA, destined to be all that the parent hopes for, but has failed to do and be themselves.  But at the time I did feel envy and also, was aware enough to also feel badly for having those feelings.

Flash forward to this summer.

A friend of ours returned home one Saturday afternoon with Emma, who ecstatically showed off her newly painted RED toenails.  I was astonished. “You guys went and had a pedicure?” I asked.  “Red toenails!” Emma exclaimed with glee, while positioning her foot next to our friend’s, who had the same color red on her toenails.  “They match!”  Since then Emma and I have gone every other weekend for our “pedicure spa” where we sit side by side and have our toenails painted.  Emma picks out the color, which she insists we both have so that we “match.”  Both of us look forward to these outings.

There are other examples of times I’ve despaired, thinking that whatever our current situation is, it will remain so forever.  This is not specific to my daughter, but is something I am aware that I have a tendency to do in life and always have.  The idea that things are fluid and constantly change, is a tough concept for me.  I tend towards extreme thinking.  When things seem bleak, I am convinced they will always be.  When things are good I am suspicious and await the inevitable.

It is as though I believe I will have to pay for those good times, like an invisible law that shows no mercy.  The good times are tempered with the “knowing” that they will be fleeting and won’t last.  Over the decades I’ve gotten better at this, I am aware this is my tendency.  I catch my thoughts quicker and am able to remind myself that I do not know what will happen next.  But still I find myself easily sliding back into that old way of thinking.  It’s not the reality of someone else’s life, it is the idea of someone else’s life that I compare myself to and that idea is never true.

These days I try to head off comparing the minute I become aware of it.  It does not serve me.  It does nothing to help me.  I am not a better person because of it.  It makes me sad and miserable and has nothing to do with either of my children or my life.  In fact that thinking hurts my children.  Both are highly sensitive to other people’s moods, they easily pick up on emotions and take them on.

At the moment, Emma and I are sporting pink toenails and every time I see our toes, I smile. They remind me of all those years when everything seemed grim and hopeless.  When despair surrounded my every breath, when desperation hung in the air I breathed, when I believed I knew what we were up against, when I believed this was going to be our life, when I thought I knew and no one could convince me otherwise.  That toenail polish, that gorgeous pink toenail polish that Emma insisted we both wear is proof of just how wrong I was.  About everything.  About everything.

40 Comments

Posted in Autism, mother/daughter, Parenting

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Humanity

Posted on October 21, 2013 by | 12 comments

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.” ~ James Baldwin from The Fire Next Time

If there is one thing I want my Autistic child to know, it is this idea written by James Baldwin.  He was writing about race, but his words apply to any who have been on the receiving end of prejudice.

I think about my father a great deal.  A proud, athletic man who broke his back in a horse back riding accident which eventually forced him to rely on a wheelchair to get around.  My father used to call me every Sunday.  We would chat about things that interested him, the weather, his garden, his cat, the dogs, the horses.  He would ask me about what I was working on.  He was tremendously supportive of my career.  I was battling my own demons, demons of my own making, but demons never-the-less that I rarely discussed.  I would ask him how he was, but he would always answer, “I’m still here.”  I knew that I would have to call my mother to learn about his physical well-being  if I wanted anything more in depth.  He never complained.

One day I told him I was tired of him always saying he was fine, I really wanted to know how he was.  I wanted him to tell me the truth.  He said, “You want me to tell you about the constant pain I’m in?  You want me to tell you about how my bodily functions are slowing down and what that’s like?  Is that what you really want to know?”  I remember pausing for a second and feeling confused.  And then felt terrible for my hesitation.  What I really wanted was for him to be fine.  I wanted him to be happy and energetic and well.  I wanted him to feel good and he did not.  He did not feel happy and energetic.  He was in pain.  Physical and emotional pain and a lot of it.  At the time I wanted to be the one who would change his circumstances.  I wanted to be able to make him better.  I wanted to save him from his pain.  But I couldn’t.  I couldn’t.

When my daughter tells me she wishes there was a cure for autism, I feel that same stab of pain.  This is the price of our inhumanity.  I think how society and my past actions have done this to her.  All those people, the media, the articles, the doctors, the therapists who spoke of her neurology as a terrible thing, a neurology that is not understood, that most see as inferior.  And I blame myself for having bought into this belief for so many years.  The idea that if I could just find the right pill, the right bio-medical intervention, the right therapy, we would successfully alter her brain and make it so she could talk and have conversations with us, so she could learn to “pass” if she wanted to, so that she’d at least have that option if she chose it, despite the devastating price she would have to pay to achieve this.  So that she’d have a chance.

But she couldn’t achieve this goal and I learned to stop asking her to.  I found other methods, not therapies, not treatments, but rather ways to teach her, ways to work with her specific neurology, and I keep practicing these methods because I have seen how others who created them and have trained in using them are able to converse with her through writing.   While I do all that, I keep telling her and showing her that she is loved and of value.  She is worthy and perfectly imperfect and deserves to be treated kindly and as the intelligent, sensitive, talented human being that she is.  She has as much right to be in this world as anyone else.  She is equal to her peers not less.  Being indistinguishable is not a goal.

My daughter’s neurology is not inferior.  Those who believe this are wrong.  My daughter is no more inferior than I am.  She has challenges, they may feel at times insurmountable to her, but we as a society can make her challenges easier.  It is our inability to lessen her challenges that is at fault, not her neurology.  It is our responsibility to challenge our views, to call each other out when we see injustices being done, to treat each other with the same respect and care we would have others treat us.  We must never give up.  We must never allow ourselves to fall into lethargy or the false believe that we are better than anyone else.  We are not.  We are human.  Imperfect.  We need each other.  We need to push each other to do better.  We can do better.  We must do better for our children, for this world, for all humanity.

Jen at Down Wit Dat is doing a blog hop.  It is open to all blogs in the disability and special needs communities: self-advocates, allies, parent advocates, and others are encouraged to share posts. 

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Posted in Autism, human rights, Parenting

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The Trouble with Treating “Behaviors”

Posted on October 16, 2013 by | 54 comments

A child throws a chair or their shoes at school and the parents are told of their child’s “problematic behavior”.  A child pokes another child repeatedly and when told not to, laughs and does it again.  The teacher tells the child they will not be able to go out to the playground at recess as punishment.  A child runs from the classroom, causing the teacher to stop her lesson and pursue the child.  The child is given a time out for displaying “challenging behavior”.  A child does not respond to the teacher, does the opposite of what is asked and the parent is informed that their child is “out of control” or “refuses to listen” or “is being disruptive” or any number of other comments that so many parents routinely receive from the various teachers and schools that our kids attend.

Each time it is the child’s behavior that is highlighted, documented, and charted.  Reward systems are put into place, time outs are given, the child is told there are consequences to their actions and things they love are taken away to demonstrate this point.  The thinking goes that behaviors must be treated.  But I question all of this because I’ve read too many stories that beautifully explained these so called behaviors by many people who spent a great deal of their childhood being misunderstood and told their behaviors were “out of control” or “challenging” or they needed to understand there are consequences when they were responding to other things in their environment.

Imagine you are on the school bus and another kid is seated directly behind you.  They scratch the back of your seat with their fingernails.  The sound of their scratching, coupled with the vibration caused by it, makes you feel as though your entire body was covered in crawling ants and the vibration makes you feel physically ill.  You do not have much spoke language that you can easily access and the language you do have is thought of as echolalia so it is often ignored.  Never-the-less you do the only thing you know to do, you shout, “No!  Stop doing that.  You cannot hit, you cannot punch, you cannot bite!”

The other kid thinks this hilarious and realizing you are directing this at them, continues to scratch the back of your seat, except now they are doing it with renewed vigor.  The bus matron comes over and tells you to stop yelling, that you are being disruptive and need to be quiet.  The kid behind you continues to scratch your chair, and despite your protests, despite your attempts to make him stop, he will not.  Eventually you turn around and spit at the kid.  The matron comes over, now furious and tells you that you must apologize and that she intends to tell your parents how badly you’ve been behaving.  So you spit at her too.

When the matron tells you that you will not be allowed back on the bus, something you love riding, you begin to cry and bite yourself.  Again you are yelled at, told to stop it immediately….  When you get home your parents tell you this kind of behavior is unacceptable and on it goes.  No one says a word about the boy who was making your bus ride miserable.  No one talks about his behavior or that there are consequences, in fact there appear to be no consequences to some people’s behavior, only yours.  The message you learn is that terrible things will happen to you, seemingly without reason, without any explanation and that you must be hyper vigilant and avoid sitting near any other kids.  The next time you board the bus you attempt to sit in the very last seat, but are told you cannot and are seated in front of the boy who delights in scratching your seat.

(The above story happened to someone I know well and it was only when I was able to type with this person that the whole story came out.)

A few months ago I read about a boy whose older brother would punch his friends on the shoulder upon seeing them.  They all smiled and laughed.  After much observation, the younger brother decided that this was a good thing to do, especially to someone you liked and wanted to be friends with.  So the next day when recess rolled around this boy went up to another kid and punched him in the shoulder.  Only the kid didn’t laugh or playfully punch him back.  Instead he yelled at him to stop hitting him, called a teacher over and the other boy was sent to the principal’s office.  The boy was told if he continued “picking fights” he would be expelled.

These examples are but two of dozens about so called “behaviors” that are seen as problematic and in need of various interventions to deal with them.  And yet, when one listens and asks non-scolding questions from a place of curiosity without threat of admonishment there is almost always a reason for these so-called “behaviors” and the reasons may illuminate why the various interventions to treat them will not work, or will work to make the person learn to camouflage or quell their behaviors, but will not help the person learn how to cope or deal with the things causing the “behaviors”.  Treating actions that are seen as problematic as though they occur in a vacuum is like applying a band-aid on a rash caused by allergies.  The band-aid might cover the rash from view, but it will do nothing to treat the cause.

It is interesting to note that there are people who consistently work with those who are known as having “problematic or challenging behaviors” and yet, all of those so-called behaviors disappear when they are treated with respect, presumed competent and they are not treated as though their actions are intentionally disruptive.

Soma Mukhopadhyay and Emma ~ September, 2013

Soma & Em copy

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Posted in Autism, communication, Parenting

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Having to Prove Competence

Posted on October 15, 2013 by | 30 comments

I have always feared being put somewhere against my will.  Sequestered, hospitalized, institutionalized, these are abject fears I have had since I was very young.  The idea that others would have control over what I did, where I went, what I ate, who I saw…  these are more than just fears, they are like nightmares, too horrible to contemplate.  My greatest fear when I went to see a therapist in my early twenties was that I would be put away somewhere, so sure was I that if my secrets were revealed I would be thought too damaged to live among my peers.  I made my therapist promise that if I told him what was on my mind he would never allow me to be admitted to a mental hospital.  It was after he assured me, swore he would honor my requests that I was able to finally begin telling the truth.

On Homeland (the Showtime series beginning its second season) there is a scene with the main character being committed to a mental institution, forced to take medication, her speech garbled and slowed, her facial expressions a slow motion blur of terror, rage and pain, her eyes wild, like a caged animal, while her intelligence burns bright.  The well-meaning staff speak to her as though she were a child, incapable of reason, they tell her to calm down.  They tell her to take deep breaths and count to ten.  They doubt her ability to make decisions, they speak to her in voices cloaked in a calm-like veneer, their irritation still bleeds out, their condescension is palpable, their dislike for this person who is inconveniencing them is still vividly apparent.

And I thought of all the people we have met who are like those well-meaning nurses and staff.  They do not view those who are neurologically different as equals, not really.  They believe they have proof of this.  They do not believe, even though they may say otherwise, that people who cannot speak or who do so intermittently  are competent, capable of insightful thoughts, or have anything of importance to say.  They alternate between ignoring the person, to speaking to them as though they were still a toddler.  They are visibly uncomfortable.  These are the people who have concluded that because someone cannot verbalize what they think candidly and with ease, they must not have anything of importance to say.  Thankfully most of the people we meet who are like this have not devoted their lives to working with this population.

But now and then I meet someone who has.  They believe they are doing a good thing, a noble thing.  They believe they are helping.  They believe that the people they are trying to help are living happier lives as a result.  They believe this with all their heart.  They give words, as though gifts, in grammatically correct sentences, believing people can be trained to say things and do things that will be understood by the majority of the population.  They think that if they can force someone to stop moving their hands or legs or twirling bits of string that the person will be better for it.  They do not consider that this may be detrimental, that these actions are necessary to their concentration, that they will actually learn more and be able to concentrate better if they are allowed to do these things that are seen as unusual.

As I watched Claire Danes in the role of Carrie Mathison, I felt that old familiar terror  I used to feel when I imagined if people knew me they would believe I needed to be put away somewhere and locked up.  I was reminded of all my old fears that who and what I was, was broken and needed to be fixed and that I was not like others who seemed so pulled together, so calm and happy.  On the show, Homeland, the more Carrie tries to convince the staff that she is fine and calm, the more out of control she appears.  Having to prove oneself as competent is a difficult, if not impossible thing to accomplish, if those you are trying to prove to, already have made up their minds to disbelieve.

Em types with Pascal

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Posted in Autism, Parenting, presume competence

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Can One Be Too Sensitive?

Posted on October 11, 2013 by | 29 comments

When I was young I was told I was too sensitive.  I was told this by many, many people.  I cried easily and often.  I didn’t take criticism well.  When scolded I felt awful about myself, took all the words said, mulled them over and concluded I was a terrible child.  I remember wondering how it was that I could be so awful?  Why did I make so many dreadful mistakes and so often?  I believed that I was unusual in this way.  I thought there was something very wrong with me, confirmed by all the things I did that caused me to get into trouble so much of the time.

This thinking caused me a great deal of pain and suffering later in life.  I was not able to step back from what people said to me in annoyance or anger.  Even when they would later compliment me about something I’d done that they approved of, it was tempered by the last admonishment.  I didn’t know how to hold two opposing ideas about me at once and make sense of them.  It never occurred to me that it was my behavior that was being objected to.  It didn’t dawn on me that teachers and adults were talking about things I’d done and that my actions were separate from who I fundamentally was.

This morning I awoke and my child bounded out of their room in an exuberant flourish of happy energy and good cheer.  I urged them to lower their voice as I busied myself with preparing their breakfast and my coffee.  Over the course of the next hour I admonished my happy child to not pound the floor by jumping in gleeful abandon for fear of waking the downstairs neighbors and again to lower their voice for fear of waking their sibling and reminded this joyous child to not slam the door to our apartment (which slams on its own without anyone’s help) and while waiting for the elevator to lower their voice yet again.  And by the time the bus had come to take my wonderful child to school I had tried (I am hoping, unsuccessfully) to tamp down their enthusiasm a dozen times.  As I made my way to the subway I realized I had not shared in their joy for all that was joyful and wondrous.  I had not joined them in greeting this beautiful day with such untethered optimism.  And that old crushing feeling came down upon me like an avalanche.  I felt terrible.  I reflected on all those days when I was a child and how it felt to be hushed and told to lower my voice and how I would try with all my might and yet never could lower my voice enough.

As awful as I felt, as sad as it made me to reflect on all of this, by the time the subway came to my stop I saw how being overly sensitive is highly under-rated.  How can one be “overly” sensitive, anyway?  And what’s the alternative?  Even now in my mid-fifties I still am extremely sensitive, too sensitive, or so people tell me.  I no longer believe I will be able to develop a thick skin as so many predicted I would at some point obtain.  And honestly I no longer strive to.  Besides, if I weren’t too sensitive would I have noticed how I was shushing my child more than was necessary.  Without being overly sensitive I might not have made a mental note to be extra playful and bouncey when I see them this afternoon.  Without being far too sensitive for my own good, I would not have connected my child’s awesomeness with my younger, often exuberant and very sensitive, self.

Joy

Joy copy

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Posted in Gratitude, Happiness, Parenting

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I Will Not Model Compliance For My Child

Posted on October 10, 2013 by | 47 comments

“Look! Motorcycle bubbles!”  This was a phrase Emma used to say often.  It was an all-encompassing phrase that was both a metaphor for rain and the Fourth of July and New Years Eve fireworks, as well as a descriptive phrase of what both are like sensorily for her. (Emma has verified this is true.)  “Motorcycle bubbles” meant rain and fireworks, but there was so much more to those two words than simply pointing out the window and saying, “Look!  It’s raining!”  or “Look at the fireworks!”

When I went back through this blog to find the post I’d written about motorcycle bubbles, I found these, “Sorry Bubbles” and Em & The 4-Wheeler  written more than two years ago, that I’d completely forgotten about.  “Motorcycle bubbles” and her related phrase, “Sorry bubbles” are nothing short of poetic.  Poetry is all about using words in unusual, unexpected ways, “Sorry bubbles”  Great art evokes an emotional response within us.  While, a few years ago, I was appreciative of the beauty of phrases such as “sorry bubbles”, I was even aware of the emotional tug I felt when I heard her say those words, that appreciation was tempered by worry and concern about what I believed the larger issues were for my child who said such fascinating, yet cryptic, words.

I no longer feel the strain of worry and concern, but rather delight in my daughter’s obvious brilliance and poetic gifts.   I am grateful to have gotten to this place of appreciation and joy.  So many autism specialists and so-called treatments did not and do not appreciate the beauty of those word combinations.  So many believed they were aberrant, meaningless words that must be righted through rote learning and repetition of more “appropriate” words.  Which was code for “use these conventional words, so that we can understand you more easily.   Make our lives easier.  Behave in ways that do not draw attention to you.  Be like everyone else.”  And all of this was done under the guise of “helping”.  Meanwhile “motorcycle bubbles” and the like would be bulldozed, covered with the dirt of more conventional language.

People argue that our children need to learn to “fit in” that it is our job to teach them these skills and to not do so is to be negligent or (at the very least) unrealistic about life and the world.  But for those like my daughter, asking her to spend so much of her energy and time to try to change the way she moves (were that even in the realm of possibilities), forcing her to give up her string (which marks her as different), trying to get her to substitute her string for a more “socially acceptable” object, teaching her to swallow her verbal utterances that to others seem nonsensical, forcing her, every time she said anything, to repeat a more conventional way of speaking, even if all of this were remotely possible, I ask WHY?

Why would we do this?  Why is all of that more important than giving her the freedom, support and encouragement to be her unique and beautiful self?  Why is quelling her natural tendencies so desirable?  Why is tamping down her poetic phrases, replacing them with more standard, “accepted” speech preferable?  Why is all of this considered desirable given the massive toll all of that takes on her?  Even if she could do any of these things, even if all of it were obtainable goals, how exhausting, how bone-numbingly frightening, how terrifyingly isolating it would be to grow up believing that everything about you was fundamentally wrong.

I’m not interested in grooming my child to be something she is not, demanding that she be someone, that even if it were possible for her to attempt, would make her feel awful about herself, just so society could feel better about its own mediocrity.  I’m not willing to do that.  The only thing I care about, the only thing I’m interested in, is changing society’s views and the only way that’s going to happen is by countering what is considered the “norm” and saying, NO!  I’m not going along with it.  NO!  I am not going to raise my child to be compliant or train her to say what you want to hear or try to force her to move in ways that society has deemed acceptable.  I will not model compliance for my child to imitate.  I do not condone censorship that would bury “motorcycle bubbles” and “sorry bubbles” forever.

(Chou Chou – This photo’s for you!)
Love copy

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Internalizing What Others Believe

Posted on October 8, 2013 by | 36 comments

When I was growing up my sister was the “athletic one” and as a result for a very long time I believed I was not athletic.  It wasn’t until I started dating a man who had almost no athletic abilities at all that I began to suspect this version of myself was false.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t athletic, but more that in comparison to my sister, I wasn’t.  These kinds of internalized beliefs about ourselves begin young.  I have yet to meet anyone who did not take on some belief about themselves that had nothing to do with who they actually are, but instead was what others said or believed about them when they were young.

With autism there is a whole population of children who are growing up with assumptions about their neurology that will be very difficult for them to reject.  When a two-year old is diagnosed and overhears their family, doctors, therapists, and friends speak about them as neurologically inferior it will be difficult for them to not take that on as fact.  If they act out in frustration, because what they know and what they are able to say do not match, their frustration is labeled as “challenging behavior”, they are thought to be manipulative or difficult or misbehaving.  If they are then punished for these behaviors, the actions they take because their bodies do not do what their minds are telling them to do, or because they are bored out of their minds from being asked to do the same thing over and over, as they grow older and continue to have picture books given to them when they are intellectually capable of far more, I imagine it must only make this perceived belief about themselves all the more painful.

Society has adopted the medical model for autism.  It is a neurology seen as deficient when compared to non autistic neurology.  It is pathologized because to not do so would mean insurance companies would refuse to help pay for certain therapies that can be very helpful.  Things like OT and PT, and  in some cases, speech therapy etc would all be deemed unnecessary.  But I have to wonder whether there isn’t a better way.  After all the cost our children and the Autistic population is having to pay is pretty steep.  Their self-esteem is often battered, their internalized view of themselves is negatively affected, ask just about any Autistic adult about their childhood and what they believed about themselves as a direct result of what was said to/about them, even if not in their family of origin, but at school, by other kids, or the doctors they were taken to.

Many talk about how autistic children are trapped and imprisoned by their autism.  A few Autistic people have written about how they lived in their own world until they were given the support to communicate.  Some have even said they felt imprisoned and trapped by their autism.  The image of autism as a prison, is a strong visual image, one that a number of autism organizations have used with great success in drumming up donations and funding.  When I read things like that, written by Autistics, it is painful to read.  Understandable, but painful.  The internalized view of themselves as imprisoned by autism is what others and society has said.  But if autism was better understood, if all children were immediately given the help they need to communicate in ways the non autistic population could understand, much of these views would disappear.  For a long time I bought into these beliefs, too.  But I have come to understand that it is not autism that imprisons my daughter, but society’s beliefs and inability to accommodate her that does.

Em’s new guitar

Guitar copy

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Posted in Autism, disability, Parenting

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Patience

Posted on October 7, 2013 by | 22 comments

The strangest experience I’ve encountered with my daughter is seeing her work with someone like Soma Mukhopadhyay or Rosemary Crossley or Pascal Cheng or Harvey Lavoy.  I don’t know that one can ever really be prepared for the flurry of emotions that threaten to overwhelm as you sit and watch your non fluent speaking child write profoundly insightful things, show their vast intelligence and knowledge despite having had almost no formal education and what little they’ve had it was most definitely not anywhere near what they are capable of or even at age level.

To watch them so easily converse through writing, or what looks so easy as I sit witnessing…  it is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.  The only thing I can liken it to was when I was eight years old and my older brother told me that the universe was infinite.  I remember saying that couldn’t be true, that it must end somewhere, and he looked at me and smiled.  Then he asked, “if it ends, then what’s on the other side of the “end”?  And I sat there mesmerized by this idea of infinity, trying over and over to imagine what that looked like, and my mind coming up against the impossibility of this concept, so conditioned, already at the age of eight to think of things as being limited.

So inevitably, after we return home from seeing these various people, or after they pack up their things and leave, I am filled with optimism.  After all what we’ve just witnessed  fills us with hope and the future, our child’s future is limitless.  Every time, without fail,  I am filled with astonishment that my daughter isn’t enthusiastically and cheerfully typing or writing her opinions and thoughts about things with me.  I’ve discussed this with my husband, I’ve spoken to close friends, I’ve talked to other parents and always it is variations on this story.  The incredulous parent with the child who does not seem overjoyed with the idea of continuing to do this all the time, or even any of the time.

At first I spoke of it as resistance, but that puts the onus on my child and I’ve learned to be very careful with words like that, they are far too close to the whole, “you just have to try harder” idea, which I know both for myself and for her is detrimental.  This isn’t about trying harder, this is about how difficult communication is for someone like my daughter.  Just because she can communicate through typing or pointing to words on a stencil board, does not mean it is easy or simple for her.  Just because I am filled with enthusiasm does not mean it isn’t hard work for her.  And so I have to acknowledge how hard this is.

I’ve thought of it as akin to the difficulty I have in learning a foreign language, but I’m not sure that’s really a great analogy.  To me, the idea that she can communicate in any form is just fantastic news and to my thinking why wouldn’t my child want to grab that and run with it?  And then I thought about meditation or exercise or eating foods I know are good for me and how I know my day will go better if I do these things and yet days will go by and I don’t.  Perhaps it is more like that.  Perhaps the importance I place is not the same or maybe importance isn’t even part of the equation for her.

What I’ve noticed is that I feel tremendous fear trying to replicate what I’ve witnessed.  I worry that I will do it wrong, that I will inadvertently hurt her or make a mistake that will cause her upset.  I worry that I will make what is already difficult even more so.  I am also aware of how I do not want to be disappointed.  I do not want to feel those feelings of hope and expectation dashed and the inevitable feelings that then follow, which are often doubt.  Was it all a dream?  Did it really happen?  Could it be it was just that one time?  A kind of burst of brilliance, never to be seen again?

I have had dozens of these moments over the last year.  Dozens of times when I have doubted what I just witnessed.  Dozens of times when I’ve thought – I won’t be able to do this.  I’m too invested, I’m putting too much pressure, I can’t do it, I won’t be able to, I’m not cut out for this kind of work, I don’t have the patience.  But what I see over and over is that I do and I can.  I have to go slowly, I cannot expect to get the results that people who’ve been working with non-speaking Autistic people for decades get.  I have to begin with simple options.  In supported typing they have a “ladder” of communication and new supporters must begin at the bottom rung, not because the person they are supporting isn’t capable, but be cause they are not, not yet.  With Soma’s method it is similar.  One begins with choices, and from there fill-ins and slowly, slowly as one becomes more confident, as trust is built, I will move to increasingly open-ended questions.

All of this requires patience.  Patience with myself, patience with the process, patience with my child.  Patience.  Showing up and being in this moment without expectation.  Patience with my limitations.  Patience with my inexperience.  Patience with my limited thinking that is slowly, slowly expanding to embrace the unknown.

Today Emma is sick and so is home from school.  I asked her what she wanted to discuss – poetry, a story, or Buddhism.  She wrote, “buddhism.”  The irony of her choice is not lost on me…

Buddha copy

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Posted in Autism, Parenting, Rapid Prompting Method

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