Anna has autism and I often create curriculum for her out of what I might have or used to do FOR her which I help her do herself; often really mundane work reveals core autistic deficits precisely because they are so unadorned and basic. I find helping my child do the basic elements of work I might do for her, done with my skilled and supportive help and instruction, makes it an interactive, in-context and compelling activity for her since she gets something she wants out of it when she succeeds finally. She earns money learning cognitive skills like counting "backwards" (down) and wants to add money I paid her to a spreadsheet to make sure she has enough, which is handy way to start using graphs, negative numbers, buying on credit (with a loan from me!), budgeting, addition/ subtraction, and spreadsheet skills. She doesn't NEED to do this to get the toy, but I'm making it a condition of getting the toy that she engage in all this learning to get it, since I'm making her know what she has to spend, has left, etc.
---------------------
Youtube video: Mundane, ordinary work algorithms reveal autistic mental architecture and movement-based cognitive challenges, and provide a clean opportunity to work on them.
----------------
Even in this simple activity of transferring written entries to an income vs expenses spreadsheet - the lowly task of data entry - we reveal one of the autism core challenges again: the inability to have a smooth linear representation of the flow of anything, it's all chopped up and erratic / uneven. She doesn't seem to be able to represent a number line and make incremental adjustments to it. In the same way I identified her counting one number plus another on disparate hands and in sometimes opposite directions which reflects no innate concept of a single number line to which things can be reduced, here she cannot read a list without jumping down a few and losing track of where she was, which for those functioning normally we know to not leave gaps in any number line and skipping spaces throws it alll off.
She keeps jumping several levels down because she doesn't hold her place with her finger so she keeps losing her place over and over. This is another example of how movement is underrated in it's involvement in cognitive problems and how ABMN (Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement) techniques. It reminds me of how I taught her to count with the unfolding of a single finger for each number she incremented up.
I also threw in a few impromptu ABMN directions partway through - moving slowly, asking her to do different movements she's not used to doing, in this case with her elbows because she put her elbow out toward me - an atypical movement - and I jumped on it. Leading your child in intentional, slow, atypical movements that require thought and body awareness throughout are at the heart of the ABM Neuromovement toolbox, and can help boost your child's neuroplasticity, which can speed their recovery from autism, as if making them younger again when recovery was easier.
Recent Comments