ANNA HASN'T BEEN UNDERSTANDING OR RETAINING DEFINITIONS OF ABSTRACT/ SOPHISTICATED CONCEPTS FOR A LONG TIME, WE ONLY NOW REALIZED IT
I’m a Practioner of the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) Neuromovement. I realized having Anna be told what more abstract concepts and words was failing to stick because she didn’t understand words being used to explain them, and the words to explain those words, and so on. She didn’t understand how what a word 'means' is how it can be expressed in other words, which requires spontaneous speech to phrase the meaning in other abstract nouns, like a car being "a way people get around" or a "conveyance", which can only be defined this way by someone who knows what a "way" or "conveyance" is, for example, or knows synonyms for a word - our child still doesn't know or remember what 'synonym' even means, or it doesn't "stick" because she doesn't really get it, despite hearing the words she can't like them to an experience that she has felt, yet. Even in this, we see she obviously get what a synonym is because she sometimes can give another word like 'angry' as an another way to say 'mad', she just isn't aware it's a concept and to attach that word to it; she doesn't realize that all human experiences, feelings, thoughts have a specific word or words to describe them. She's been so used to not understanding most of what's doing on or knowing enough language to label and share them, or not thinking there is a word for them, or just not realizing she can ask and find out, and may enjoy expressing herself more completely.
She often can understand and demonstrate meaning by acting out the meaning, such as if you say "what does it mean to 'sit down'?" and she'll show she will sit down and even say "like this" or "to do this", but can't explain it in other words due to reduced availability of alternative pathways/ interconnection in her autistic brain, where those who have several ways to say the same thing including those who are multilingual have a branched tree of options to use to say the same behavior or experience. The point of language begins with noticing and labeling our experience to share it, whether it was seeing a predator and feeling fear and alarm, or feel dizzy and want someone to know and help us, or that we feel happy and thankful and then share that, too.
But she can't explain most words we're using and likewise is not understanding the words in sentences being used to explain those words when she looks them us, and as well as the words used to explain those, and so on. In the ambient environment from which she might naturally pick up new words, she needs the habit of scanning other people’s speech - including song lyrics and speech in videos she watches such as the Simpsons - and identifying words you didn’t understand and either asking about then or looking them up, or even just starting to remember them in association and context, which is how speech is naturally acquired by babies even absent dictionaries or the ability to ask. Since Anna does none of the above systematically I have set my goal to having her work through defining things she does understand such as how to define "apple" and to notice and ask about if look how words she doesn’t understand, and have her construct definitions by creating novel speech by attention to her own movement (includes cognition and feelings) as she holds a concrete noun before her, such as an apple, or describing what she's doing when she sits down.
Words describe and label mini movies in your head of someone doing something whether they are nouns or verbs or adjectives, adverbs etc. Even if you talk about an apple, you picture it in your mind as an apple, and can say the approximate weight by piecing together past experiences you've had holding one and observing your arm's level of exertion compared to holding something you do know the weight of, like a pound of ground beef you pick up at the supermarket, which you'd do simple math based on your arm's relative exertion to know it's a fraction of a pound, or you'd remember buying a pound of apples before and remember how many it took approximately to make a pound, which is usually 3-4. When you say running, you remember how it feels to run and know you have to go fast to run, compared with normal, which is walking, and have an image of a person and perhaps other creatures such as dogs running in that file under 'run'.
Anna, like other autistic person struggling to have speech, need to know how to describe what they're seeing and feeling in these concrete nouns and verb they totally see and experience, from things they do like talking, to things she can see/ hear/ feel such as exploding like fireworks, or boiling like water, before she can learn an abstract or higher level term from a dictionary. Similarly she needs to link all new terms to words representing actual experiences she understood - can model herself of in other things - otherwise the word and definition are memorized not understanding either. I had a second cousin who was an opera singer at the Met, and I asked him how he sang in other languages, whether or not understanding the language, which he said he didn't have to totally understand to memorize and perform as long as he got the gist of the emotion. She's like an opera singer in that she can memorize scripts without understanding, sometimes getting the emotional gist right but sometimes being way off or getting it backwards, and sometime she's more like a parrot in that she memorizes without understanding, moreover without expressing that she isn't understanding nor asking for any help to understand, as if that's normal. It probably was for her for years before the son-rise program and it's a habit she needs to shift.
So I now give her consequences for using language she doesn't understand with me, or agreeing in conversations to things she doesn't even understand what she's agreeing to. She loses her phone for 15 min or has to so 10-15 pushups for this each time, so she's now required to start noticing and pointing out what she doesn't understand, and it's working, and we're no longer wasting her and our time defining anything from the dictionary that she can't define without other abstract words; I'm focusing on finding words that are more concrete and visible and demonstrable and having her learn what those "mean" an start heightening the importance of distinguishing what she understands from what she doesn't, and deciding understanding is her new normal, and taking efforts to get and stay in understanding people and what's going on is an unending goal. I've stopped her brother from trying to describe scientific phenomena with other terms she doesn't understand either. He was describing something about centrifugal force and I asked her what she meant and she said she didn't know, so I tell him he - and others in our son-rise program - must pause and question her if she understands words they are using if they have ANY doubts she understands. If she doesn't they have to back up and explain building block words, and stop giving her the experience that speech is about someone pouring incomprehensible jargon on another people and them having to listen having no idea what's going on and not taking efforts to figure that out, which is the current UNhelpful lesson that's giving her.
This is today’s story of doing this twice...
Another Hellen Keller moment trying to get my daughter to understand what high level abstract words mean, such as 'courage', from discussing lyrics from Cindy Lauper's 'True Colors' song which Anna brought up and told me she didn't like. I asked her what "true colors" meant and what "courage" or "take courage" meant and she didn't know either. I came up with actual examples from Annas life when I knew she had lived through getting up enough courage to do something and doing it, despite how small a level, such as being scared to pick up grocery items some distance from me. She has many times resisted and said she was afraid to get our shopping cart from across the produce section of our store (safe, in view of me), then at my insistence, overcome that fear and gotten it. Thus she understood that that time she was using courage. Courage is about directing your willpower to overcome fear because you want to or believe you really need to do the thing, despite the fear. She could memorize that sentence and still not know or identify courage in herself or others if she didn't have help with someone creating the movie - the 'get the shopping cart despite fear' and hooking it up to the word 'courage' for her, something she can't do at present because it's abstract. She "got" that completely because she can model it emotionally internally from those experiences. I mentioned a few shows where someone else did the same thing, such as the character Francine defending Arthur from the whole lunch room bullying him in the cartoon series, Arthur. The point was I think I found the problem and the way 'in'.
This evening again I mentioned 'I was making a prototype' (of a product I'm making) and she pretended she understood, so I called her out for that - what does 'prototype' mean? She didn't know. it’s not only bad for learning, but also dishonest to pretend you understand when you don’t, and not ask for clarification. She looked up 'prototype' and didn’t understand the words used to describe that either, grossly mispronuncing two if them, indicating she didn’t know them at all. That led to another round of lookup(s) leading to get more words at least some of of which, when asked, she says she didn’t understand. Eventually as we continued the habit at my direction for now - to keep looking up until we understand the terms describing the terms describing the terms - we landed on the word 'indicate', which included “to show” in the definition. I knew to pause here because I knew this was the first word that she knew but didn't know how to describe, so that if I ask her to "show me X", like "show me your foot", she'd act as you'd expect, holding it forward towards me and likewise I knew she knew if I asked her to direct me to show her my hand and I held it in the opposite direction, that meant I was NOT showing it to her. I chose to get Anna to understand that word as a building block if the others because it's concrete and demonstrable.
We spent the last 30 min - a full ABM lesson length - asking her to describe what she was doing as she did it in other words other than the word "show". When she said incomplete things like “I put it out” like showing you her hand, I demonstrate that something is missing or wrong with the definition by doing what she said and it doesn't direct me to do what she's doing. So she says her definition "put your hand out" and I extend my hand away from her, then asking “Did I snow you my hand?” And she knows that I didn’t because something was missing. She eventually realized she needed you say something about directionality toward me. She did this after I pushed her by asking her to show me a bunch of things, what “to show” somebody means in general, so the definition could cover all cases from showing me her cheek to showing me her hand (you don't hold you cheek out toward someone, you point it toward them), so her definition ultimately was to show means to point something toward someone and hold it towards them, which is really good understanding because it means she can model it and get another person to do it by using the language, whether she uses the word "show" or other words. I think this is what people mean when they say "mean".
Over and over I had to stop her from saying the word “show”. I did this immediately, as Anat Baniel does when she tells you to lift your leg without letting your pelvis leave the floor, for example, and you violate the "constraint" in the lesson, she stops you immediately. In a sense this was an ABM lesson in words, but still involved body awareness, like "what am I doing when I 'show' something to someone?" Many times I had to stop her from saying self and success-undermining things like “I can’t say even one word”, a direct quote I pointed out was a lie, besides being negative and demanding an apology (and getting one).
She finally - after many iterations - started getting how to describe what she’s doing in detail that was essentially moving slowly and describing the movement. This reminded me of another similar Hellen Keller experience about a week ago when I tried to teach her by helping her realize and teach herself what “open” and “close” - the verbs - “mean”, in terms of describing the movements. I wrote this experience up but didn't post it yet.
ANNA IS MAKING A DICTIONARY OF TERMS & SAMPLE USES AS SHE LEARNS THEM
In the larger attempt to address the shocking recently discovered reality in the last month that she doesn’t understand most words in shows or conversation other than literal concrete nouns like “chair” or visually demonstrable verbs such as “run”, I've created a dictionary - 3-ring binder with alphabetical dividers - and started training my son-rise participants to explain words based on happenings in shows she clearly understands, such as "true colors" - which I put in there now - an example is how in the Simpsons, their carnie guests turn on them and kick the out of their (Simpson's) own house, showing their "true colors" at not friends but foes, a suggestion from my current participants after this morning's training. This basis in felt/lived experiences and shows she totally recognizes and understands is the basis of her creating her dictionary, until she's more comfortable with this kind of defining/ looking up process.
ASKING 'WHAT ARE THE CHOICES?'
While Anna was trying to demonstrate what it meant to "open" or "close" something, I was giving her instructions in the kitchen as we were talking, and at one point said to open the cabinet near the sink, and meant the top one. As mentioned earlier, she acted like she understood despite here being many cupboards doors that would fit that description in the kitchen and not conceiving she could narrow it down - it's not a habit for her - not yet anyway. I said it was the wrong one intentionally not specifying it for her so she would have the incentive to fill that in, but she just went to the next cupboard without asking which one I was had meant or even making eye contact, she just pretended to understand which one I had asked her to open and set out opening it, only to find it was also wrong - she was opening bottom cabinet after bottom cabinet rather than asking I meant a top or bottom cabinet, which she clearly knew were both cabinet options but didn't think to ask. When I finally asked her what her choices or options were, she couldn't say. I asked her what "options" meant and she didn't know, then asked her what choices meant, and she vaguely understood that. I asked her "who knows which is the cabinet I meant? Who has your answer?" She said that I did. Then I asked her why didn't she tell me if she didn't understand or ask for clarification, or look to me for help.
She asked a vague question that was basically "tell me the answer", and I told her she needed to ask multiple choice question with options. Since she was totally stumped - which is strange because she's had this in her workbooks and when she was first learning to speak basic words like "Can I have a pretzel?", when I'd present her with options. Yet is never called them choices or options so she never learned what they were, nor adopted the habit or typical way to offer them as mutually exclusive options.
I coached her to say distinctions, like "is it a top cupboard or one of the ones under the counter?" "Is it one of the cabinets on the center island or the ones on the same side as the sink?" Is it the one above the drying rack or the one next to the refrigerator with the dishes in it?" She couldn't say these things. So now I've coached our son-rise participants to ask for choices and have been remembering to do this, such as this morning when I asked her to give us choices for passing around a large puddle - to walk up on the curb on one side or cross to the other side of the street.
HOPELESSNESS IS NOT AN OPTION - NOT A USEFUL ONE, ANYWAY
Normal kids in disadvantaged situations, such as those who are totally illiterate, learn to speak without anyone teaching them grammar and without dictionaries, but Anna needs help on parts of speech, esp adverbs. It's demoralizing to see profound deficits like this - an 18 year old that doesn't know what the options are, can't phrase multiple choice options, and doesn't even cross her mind to ask for clarification. Those normal kids are asking for words they don't understand to be explained and asking for clarification OFTEN, so we are going to work on this.
She also still doesn’t understand how to use time descriptors or adverbs hardly at all, leaving out important time cues, like "soon", "today", "someday", "yet", etc. that are crucial for a sentence making sense. She is still speaking in rehearsed sentences that she often says so fast she drops a few of the words that make it slightly ungrammatical. She often speaks way too fast to feel and express herself in the present much of the time. Most of her sentences start with the same words such as, “Isn’t it great that ___?” “Isn't is great that I told you I watched the ___[fill in video name] on YouTube?”, "Can I tell you [about] what I just watched on Youtube?", "How are you doing [Mom]?", "I love hanging out with you" and "I love [or I think it's great] that I told you what I watched on youtube [and what I listened to]", make up something 70% of the beginnings of her conversations with every time, and other memorized rehearsed sentences make up much of the remainder, although they vary, and truly novel speech as a general rule is under 20%.
She will often say "How are you doing?" within minute after asking "How are you doing?" the last time, and a few more times during a 15 min period more, I think because she. We know that going slower, she adds missing words and has time to feel and express herself new ways because she's not going too fast for her brain to do new things, a basic ABM principle.
So I have now started adding other constraints to her speech with me, since she's very motivated to connect with and communicate with me - a GREAT core benefit of the Son-Rise program, I have that resource to use to help her improve her speech - such as to tell me what she was going to tell me - start her sentence - without a question. So yesterday she started with "Isn't it great that - " and I cut her off, and asked her to slow down and say something, don't start with a question, and she slowly said, "Isn't it great that - " and I cut her off again. Then she said she didn't want to talk about it, and that's OK, it's more important that she starts acting nonhabitually with me and will be back to try again. This is why I recommend the Son-Rise Program because this gives her and I a superstrong engaging relationship to start with.
It's easy to get hopeless, resentful and giving up, but I remind myself I don't like quitting - don't quit at what you want, it just sets you back and you'll still want it. Wanting her to recover is never going to stop so I might as well move forward. I know she usually progresses more when she does physical Anat Baniel movement lessons, but sometimes we just don’t have time for an hour or more of my day just for that, such as this coming up at 10am before I go running (the conversation about Cindy Lauper's song) or at the end of the night, such as last night at 12:15am before going to bed, the discussion about what "show" meant. I strike while the iron is hot, and it's hot when it's hot. Those aren't good times for physical lessons anyway, and our common area in our building is closed and we don't have enough room to spread out mats in our apartment. I know big shifts happen when I do ABM lessons with her but most people will never be ABM practitioners like me, nor even know about her approach or understand it well enough to even try a lesson as a lay person, and they have autistic kids and need help like I did.
So I am committed about figuring out how to teach a person how to think and talk in normal patterns. We all automate behaviors, even those that don't serve us, if we've done them long enough. This would include speech patterns in autistic kids who progress and understand much more yet are not at all used to observing themselves and describing their movements and feelings. It's not like videos or other people ask you to do that much. Things autistic kids have never habitually done, as for all of us, need a first time and some practice to take root. That “say what you see/hear” approach was an outstanding success - she acts like a normal kid pointing out what she sees when we go running with great delight, but took many directed efforts to get past the initial challenges of doing it, it felt so unnatural to her. When she was autistic she never pointed out what she saw, heard, felt of thought, so that's a habit we need to morph into more normal and growth- and self-serving form - the opposite. If I was very successful with that, I remind myself that another big success if right around the corner and can help everyone else, too!
My life is just hard all the time pretty much! I guess that's just how it's supposed to be and keep moving. So the battle to recover Anna continues.
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