Using Anat Baniel Method (ABM) Neuromovement to teach time / position / angles to an autistic person

I'm an Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® practitioner with an autistic teenager.  I also so the Son-Rise Program with my daughter as a team leader, but was never certified in that.  I've been writing these blog posts often without posting because I don't have time or prioritize making them pretty with pictures, include both my child and my own growth and development (I have high-functioning autism most likely - never diagnosed) and more brief and elegant, but decided I'm now just going to post so you can see a lot of the data points I'm saving by drafting posts, in the nearly original form - this is one of those.  

 

USING ABM NEUROMOVEMENT "DESK TRAINER" / "NEUROMOVEMENT FOR YOUR BUSY LIFE" 

For the last several weeks I have been use anatbanielmethod.com's "NeuroMovement for Your Busy Life" (formerly known as the "Desk Trainer") series with my daughter -sitting on couches in our family room - more consistently - like every other night (than sporadically, like a few times a month, as I have in the past).  These are short lessons (around 10min) with an animated cartoon character sitting in a chair with pelvis sitting at or above knee level (knees bend at 90 degree angle, or more extended), feet flat on the floor.  

I've been using these lessons as a jumping off point and create variations as we're doing it (and am now offering iPad/ video lesson / coaching, too), and today was trying to clear up the pelvic clock by having her point out with her straight arm in space what direction each of the clock numbers are  using the desk, doing lessons that last something like 10 min) to create lessons for my daughter that help her brain differentiate through the attempt to make certain movements.  Anat is charging something like $40 for access to this series - or was when I got the subscription - because what's great is that's for life and you can keep cycling through the something like 30 lessons, most with both left and right versions (so actually like 60 lessons), and your child may, like mine, be more able to learning because her brain is more awake and prepared to differentiate - aka "learn".  

[FYI - See my next few posts that may be backdated and appear before this one or after (I haven't decided yet) about big leaps in my understanding of how learning IS differentiation and my child isn't (or wasn't) generally open to learning / differentiation (of course, isn't autism defined by aversion to novelty - i.e. avoiding, not taking in or storing new things - i.e. have innate mental resistance to learning due to the condition?)]

 

TEACHING LEFT AND RIGHT POSITIONING TO AN AUTISTIC PERSON USING ABM

I have worked a lot on right vs. left issue in the past.  I tried to find asymmetries on her hand, such as I had a mole on my right hand and that's how I kept them straight at first in primary school, and did find two small moles on her left hand, but that never caught on because you have to point out left then translate that to which is right; it's easier if the right hand has a mark on it, and she doesn't have that (although as I write this, I'm inspired to go back and look again, given its importance).  

So I rely instead lately on her knowing which hand to write with based on her preference plus her experience and practice.  If you ask her "which is your right hand?" she raises her hand half the time (i.e., cannot sense within herself which is which, at least at the speed she's making herself choose - she could probably choose correctly if she paused a minute to decide though - something Ill also try when we do our next lesson, now that I think of that, too).  Whenever she raises the left hand, I ask her to pick up a pencil or marker that's on a table near here, with that hand, and write her name on a piece of paper in a notebook, an before she even starts to write, she now knows it's the wrong hand (she sometimes starts to write, then realizes it's not easy - she can feel the distinction).  

So to help her know and groove in sensing the asymmetry of her right hand is easier to write with due to preference + practice (not that the left couldn't write if necessary, too).  I keep saying, "Right is what you write with", and asking her to write with it, so she hooks up her cognitive concept - left vs. right - with the feeling of relative ease with her right hand vs. her left.

 

TEACHING DIRECTIONS IN SPACE AND HOW TO TELL TIME, BASED ON CLOCK HAND DIRECTIONS 

I am working on her doing the pelvic clock - pretend you're sitting on a clock face and rolling your pelvis toward the front, trying to roll your belly out as distended and loose as possible (12 o'clock), back to touch as much of your tail bone flat to the chair as possible as much to the chair (6 o'clock), and tipping the right side of your pelvis while rolling the left side as far onto it's side on the chair toward 9 o'clock and vice versa for 3 o'clock.  

She was making progress but her rolling forward wasn't that far or clear (meaning there were a lot of extraneous movements), and her side-to-sides seemed to involve more leaning that true tipping the pelvis while remaining centered over your pelvis, which requires the pelvis and shoulder approaching each other on the side you're tipping up (opposite the side you're rolling farther onto and putting more weight onto).  So I started asking her to point to 12, to 3, to 9, to 1, 2 etc and realized she didn't have the clock directions mapped clearly, so how could she roll her pelvis in the correct directions clearly?  

So I had her point to 12, then to 3, then asked her to fill in by pointing to 12 again, then 1, then 2.  She didn't move them enough to be in the right position for 3, which was more like at 1 since her steps were way too small. She also kept bending at the elbow or wrist rather than keeping her arm straight - a constraint of the activity that helps her arm and the torso move together when straight but break apart and lose bearings when bent, so I had to keep reminding her to point with a straight arm.

I had introduced the idea of visualizing you're sitting on a giant clock with 12 noon pointed straight ahead when your head and torso both are pointed straight ahead before in one of our car sessions I did with her years ago, and again when driving in the car on many occasions - especially long-distance drives - when she would say "Look at that cow!" or something else, and I helped her give me clock-inspired directions to get me to look in the right direction briefly so I wouldn't crash my car, such as "Look there's a squirrel at 10 o'clock!"

Today this seemed right to reintroduce, merging it into the pelvic clock part of the lesson I was beefing up and adding to the desk trainer segment, that couldn't go into as much detail as I could as an ABM practitioner.  I pause the video on my laptop and add steps that help build up and deepen the concepts in the videos, which in this case was adding the pointing directions and visualization of the clock on top of the video directions, which assumed the individual actually could visualize and tip the pelvis in the correct directions, which was NOT the case in our developmentally delayed autistic child.  

What I wanted to say was, she was smiling and seemed really happy when we were doing this - I think she was hooking up those past experiences with the present context, and it for sure was making positioning directions relative to her body, clearer.  

The points I wanted to make in this post were:

1. It's really useful to make the body participate in cognitive concepts.  Similar to my teaching my daughter to understand counting through stepping, regular counting on fingers but involving movement of the arm at the elbow (finger movements alone were poorly differentiated if pumping at the elbow wasn't included in the movements, then became differentiated after we did count this way), directions relative to the body is our first sense of direction and orientation, so why not learn any positional concept through body movement, such as arms being the clock arms?
2. the Anat Baniel Desk trainer series at anatbanielmethod.com is a really handy source of sitting lessons you can do with your kids and yourself, esp your autistic or otherwise developmentally delayed kids. It's pretty self-explanatory for new people and is designed for the general public.
3. I realized I can teach these lessons by internet conference call with a phone, tablet or laptop open!  If I can observe you and you can observe me, I can do the lesson with you and pause the video and add intermediate movements you may need when you're not getting something, or make comments addressing what people are doing at home.  While I cannot actually do hands-on work unless you're in Milwaukee WI or in one of the select cities I visit, such as Cleveland OH, Chicago IL, or a few others, I can see what you're doing and offer customized movement suggestions and comment, feedback, demonstrate, etc., and can do this with your autistic child and you both there as I'm doing for myself and my child, or just for individuals, couples or groups. 
4. You get smarter while helping your child connect and get smarter too!  ABM helps all levels of people, and all participants, whether you're the child or the person leading the child through the movement lesson.  I have had a variety of insights and ideas of how to do what I have done for years one way, better and move efficiently, just pop out effortlessly, within 1-10 days after doing lessons, and I have to keep asking myself why I didn't think of that before.  (I'm also following the Medical Medium's celery juice every morning, reducing fat, eating more vegetables and fruits, eliminating chemical contaminants and "frankenfoods", and eliminating foods that stimulate chronic viruses - dairy, eggs, gluten - so ti be fair it may be either or both that cause the improvement - see another post to follow about this).  

Contact me if you want more information about how to start incorporating Anat Baniel Method into your autistic child's recovery plan, to help with your child's cognitive development at any level of ability, or to increase your own cognitive abilities, reduce risk of injury and improve your athletic and other movements, and youthfulness as I am, too, while helping your autistic child.