Curing Autism Together

Anna's saying more new words while watching Logan's Run - DuoLingo Chinese for 2+ yrs paying off

We're watching the movie Logan's Run movie from 1976 with our autistic daughter Anna near the final scene, where Logan is talking to an old man in the capitol in Washington DC, whose partly senile and talking to his cats.  The cats meow and he meows back, at a certain point, and Anna said, "He's mimicking his cats meowing", a spontaneous sentence with a newly used word.  When I pointed out that was a spontaneous sentence that moreover used a word I had never heard her use, to "mimick", she repeated the sentence substituting the word "imitate", to which we said "No, they're both right!" 

Anna's been picking up words spontaneously with some frequency during the last approx two years of leaning chinese together using DuoLingo.  I do a lot more that just that to enhance the experience, such as:

• having her close her eyes and not look at any word translations because she was rearranging characters and words and not listening enough, so I would have us close our eyes and listen, beginning with the light off so she could avoid distractions and using the something like 30-40% of the brain being occupied processing speech, so instead she's have the benefit of focusing all her attention to sound.  I had to also help her parse what she heard, such as having her repeat the last word she heard, then ask what was the word before the last word and have her repeat that upon the next pass, then the one before it, etc., and/or making a pass from first to last words in a similar way, then listen for what followed the word(s) she identified, etc. 
• I also had her repeat words and their translations in both directions five or ten times, like "ni - you", "ni-you", etc. counting out iterations on her fingers whenever she had trouble learning a word in either direction,
• we spent a lot of time doing the time-race/ competition part of DuoLingo early on, eventually coming up in the top three in the country in points,
• I make up stories about how the chinese characters display a cartoon that resembles the meaning of the word, to help and me her remember them,
• I look up and have her look up words we use often but don't know the Chinese expression for yet, using google and/or yabla chinese dictionary, so she gets in the habit of looking up and learning new words along with me and practicing incorporating them.  For example, I recently realized we didn't know the words for the colors of a rainbow, and looked them up and rehearsed and practice them with her during out evening walk (since I'm trying to do 10,000 steps a day, and she sometimes walks with me at night in our apartment building hallways), etc.

Anna enjoys the musical sounds, the repetition, the cartoonish software, etc. like she enjoys all software, so I thought, why not do a software experience that gets us somewhere, and by the way, it causes neuroplasticity and increased IQ to learn a new language, so why not learn a language together?  I figured it'd be useful for business relating to supplement purchases, since I hope to start a supplement business in the near future, or other equipment related to that or any other businesses in the future, given so many centers of manufacturing in China.  Duolingo is around $70 a year, I think.

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.

"Flying Trapeze" song, Anna does amazing walking on trapeze straight, heel-to-toe on the lines in the floor, despite having legs out to the side for the last decade or more!

I've been doing ABMN lessons (Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement®) consistently now for about 2 weeks, after doing lessons only inconsistently before, and getting more progress from the inside out from her, as well as coming up with some really inventive and useful lessons for and with her on-the-fly.  

Our daughter has giant problems putting her legs near each other after years of begging, ordering, coaxing, etc..  It's part of the mental scars of her autism in combination with crippling pain from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that has gotten all screwed up in her brain and we cannot convince her otherwise.  When she used to cross her legs for years when she wouldn't poop more often than once every 7-10 days and it was just torture to see her suffer but resist pooping that would end it (when she eventually did, she felt great and we were always al relieved, and then the horrible descent into madness of her fighting pooping and us fighting her began again...)  Now that I've cured her IBD (I need to finish writing the book, I know, about it, or make a video anyway - contact me if you want me to do so - i.e. if you'd actually buy it if I do, at [email protected]), there is no reason she couldn't walk normally, but she's saying now that she's afraid if she doesn't have them widely spaced apart, she is going to have trouble pooping and potentially have it all get super painful and backed up again.  It's crazy, and I go crazy trying to get her to change about it and she won't.  she has injured her feet and toes banging them on corners and walls all over our house and has gotten her feet kicked and stepped on in the kitchen because they stick out so far its hard not to hit or impact them, yet no willingness on her part to change.  I have some video I'll post at how oddly she walks - swinging her pelvis circularly around her body rather than a true swinging gate, with her legs frozen out to the side of her hips. 

I have tried many exercises that include crossing the midline and she absolutely won't do it, but today I was measuring the width an length of a variety of spaces in our apartment gym area, and tried to encourage her to do so - autistic people love repetition with some slight point to it.  and shockingly, she joined in, putting heel to toe, measuring by feet (my feet and hers are about a foot long with the shoes on).  This was like the police making you walk a straight line to tell if you're drunk - walking on the seam in the flooring in the athletic are of our gym in both directions, then we measured the large deck the same way, having her put heel to toe - one foot in line with the prior one, and counting.  I have NEVER been able to convince her to walk in a straight line, even close to it, and today she was walking in a focused and diligent way for hundreds of steps!  

I also noticed some cognitive improvements, such as she said "recently" in a sentence unprompted, and a few super subtle but clear as a bell spontaneous modifications to her thinking today.  We've mostly been doing Anat's "Desk Trainer" series of 5-10 minute lessons designed to be doable while in a chair at work, and have modified and adjusted the timing and content since I - being an ABMNM practitioner, can see opportunities and areas she may need to slow down and work on, such as pausing the video (at anatbaniel method.com) and having her work on rounding and arching on the "pelvic clock", picturing the 12 a the front and 6 at the back.  

I finally REALLY ACCEPTED Anat's statement, "if she would, she could" and stopped trying to get her to do more differentiated speech if she was not progressing, and going back to basics of the brain managing the body's larger areas better, and only then being able to refine already refined movements such as cognition around language, when she can't manage her pelvis and ordinary gross movements well at all.  Knowing that if I don't help her brain get more differentiated, all the arguments around how her having her get hip problems later, hurting herself, etc. - I might as well be telling an infant how to drive - it just has nowhere to land.

So today as we were walking variously holding hands on those lines as I sang "He moves through the air, with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze, his actions are graceful all the girls he does please, and my love he has stolen away!" and Anna was happily walking around on a straight line all over the deck it was like a miracle!

I then led her to the high-edged planter boxes and we leaned on it and lifted our legs in space, and I directed her into variations with straight and bent lifted leg, then folded leg trying the reach around us behind us, then holding to the side and listing the opposite leg and seeing how close each hand vs. lifted leg met up, noticing differences between sides, all variations and distinctions that feel the brain and give it choices. 

I'm really embracing and integrating ABMNM lessons with her and hope to bring those who follow my posts videos of us doing lessons at home that you can try at home!  

Plus it's making me more mentally focused and organized!  Thats for another post...

(Contact me at bar[email protected] if you want to try ABMNM lessons remotely!)

Consequences for "autistic lying" and ushering in novelty by identifying stories & questions we've already discussed & asking for new ones

CAREER vs AUTISM RECOVERY 

My daughter recently turned 18 and while this is wonderful that she made it here, given I was often afraid she wouldn't survive til adulthood between her debilitating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and self-endangering behaviors her autism caused, such as her often running in the street as a child to see my reaction, climbing onto and walking on our windowsills and elevated deck railing, and trying to cover her head with covers despite multiple attempts I made to help her not suffocate, it's still bittersweet.  I had hoped she'd be further along in her autism recovery and feel torn between completing my autism recovery by creating a career for myself that I didn't do when younger, which is time consuming and must take place away from her, since she loves to interact continuously with me when I'm around her and I can't get anything done.  It's obvious that she changes and learns a lot when around me but it's a lot of work as I'm innovating and leading her into learning each time, and it's a lot of work, and comes directly out of my own recovery time.  I've decided to train people more lately so I have to leave time for that so her time with them is of any value, but that also comes out of my recovery time.  Then I feel guilty because I see her isming with these other trainees a whole lot, whereas with me she's at her peak performance and ready to learn and work hard, but it sure takes a while for people to get anything close to my level.  I've been meaning to put my training online to reduce my own training time and allow others to use the videos and that time approaches, but isn't here yet because you guessed it - it takes time away from her reading my book on Premiere Pro - the video editing software I'm learning that would enable me to create the videos.  It's a balancing act and feels like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.  

So here I am with the school year starting and I need to spend many hours with Anna because our summer student employee went back to school, leaving multiple openings (contact us if you're in the Milwaukee, WI area and want to participate!) which I had not filled because - you guessed it - a lot of work goes into rewriting and posting ads in craigslist, the college job boards, care.com, interviewing people, selecting and training people, which I put off because it comes again, at the expense of time to get my career going,  But here I am with noone scheduled til 3:30 and she woke up at 8:30 ish with her ankle so sore she can hardly stand and we're going to have a 7 hour session prior to their arrival.  This is fantastic for her - she WILL improve and I WILL invent - and already am - the next approach to help her (by the way, progress just happened moments ago - she started doing something I talked about on the Turing Test for autism post a few weeks or months ago!  Very encouraging!).  I will be redoing her son-rise playroom schedule to adapt to the person leaving, realigning session start and stop times to maximize her sessions with support staff happening during her brother's college classes so I am not trapped here whenever he leaves unless they're out, and doing those college posts at Marquette, UWM (UW Milwaukee), care.com, and craigslist.

The hard thing is I know I can completely cure her if I only did that and did nothing for my own life, needs and recovery, but that is just unacceptable to me as a human being, so I have to straddle the twin discomforts over dragging out recovery time (it's like she only moves developmentally when I work with her) and my discomfort at not having a life at all if I tried to eliminate the other discomfort. It's balancing discomforts, like in The Simpsons show, how Homer Simpson put his pet lobster (needs saltwater) in a fish tank with his goldfish (needs "fresh" water - not salt), and the lobster rotated upside down and rose to the top of the tank, indicating it was going to do, so Homer added salt, and it came back to the floor of the talk, rightside up, but the fish rotated upside down and floated to the top of the tank at the same time, so he kept adjusting by adding more salt, then more water alternately until they were both halfway up in the tank and on their side, like noone's doing well but noone's totally screwed.  My tradeoffs feel like that - two not-wins in the short term hoping two wins will happen down the road if we can both keep moving and invent new solutions as we go, not to mention my career gets going.

 

 

"AUTISTIC LYING" - LEARNING / SPEAKING THE TRUTH DOES MATTER

What I'm inventing today is the concept of "autistic lying", which is not like ordinary lying where a person knows something and answers a question or otherwise speaks in a way they know is counter to reality.  Autistic lying is more the result of a combination of:

• the desire to interact and people pleasing by speaking, believing it's not that important that the content be real or relevant +
• autistic person's brain's lack of ability to form new concepts and language, as evidenced by limited, patterned and repetitive speaking habits (esp familiar phrases as filler) +
• autistic person's not realizing the primary role of speech is to convey useful information (entertaining, informative, useful) and/or questions are to ask about what you don't already know but would be useful to know +
• lack of practice attending to the laying down of retrievable short term memory, meaning it's not been so when you ask about what just happened, or even what happened the day before, they aren't used to putting in memories and finding it important - ie if they don't there will be consequences they want to avoid or benefits they'll get - to store and draw on them +
• not have experienced consequences tied to confidently saying things that aren't true as a consequence of all the above factors 

I remembered I was working intensively on time during the last week and was asking my daughter about today, vs. the day before, where I asked where we were the day before (we spent most of the day driving home from Cleveland) and she didn't remember at all.  Even when she could remember we were visiting Cleveland, then I asked where we were now, and she knew we were home, it's like the hours of packing plus 8 hours in a car totally left her brain, almost like amnesia, but I disagree - I think it was in there if I had prompted, it just wasn't retrievable TO HER absent my reminding her, that's the problem to be rectified.  Similarly, my daughter will often say something that's totally untrue but I've glossed over it or not responded, because she meant well and wanted to fit in and be socially agreeable, such as when I say "Hey, look at this big helicopter" and she says "I see it" before she gets close enough to the window to see it or has her eyes in the right direction.  She will often fill in possible answers but that aren't true, and I think, "Well, at least she's answering me, getting an acceptable answer if it were correct, and trying to get along".  But it's time to go to the next level!  Our nonjudgmental approach in the son-rise playroom needs to shift once the child is communicating this way and/ or starting math, both of which the concept of correct and incorrect matter.  She needs to learn the belief, rather than talking however you do it great and all you need to do it fill the conversation with words (even if they're not accurate and are repetitive).  When she asks me the same questions and I answer them, or she says the same comments or stories, her brain registers 'success' interacting and stops learning/ changing - after all, her goal is to go along to get along, and what she's doing seems to work with her mom, who seems happy to hear untruths and old recycled material.  I don't know how other son-rise parents got over this, but here's my attempt:

I want to now instead teach:

• Distinctions between lying and telling the truth MATTER to people:  it matters to people and people value you to store and retrieve accurately recent and current information, and call the other stuff as it is: "lying".  Lying is mentioned in her cartoons a bunch and she's never connected her inaccurate answers and this usually negative and intentional behavior, which I am doing not.  Lying will NOT be an appreciated or useful way to interact with people, it will get them bored, confused, upset, and may make them stop interacting which is NOT good for her, esp. since she is not doing it intentionally but it may be interpreted that way by others, since they don't know it's autistic lying, they see it as regular lying or the person has memory problems or dimentia.  Note that I'm not judging her
• The normal use of speech is based on new stuff almost exclusively - NOT to repeat things we and others already know:  much if not most useful speech if made up of these recently stored and remembered data to be useful to onesself and others.  Anat Baniel I says most of the brain's directions to our muscles is inhibition, and I'm trying to get her brain to inhibit repeated older info / memories / communications as a way to clear the deck for new ones
• Help her practice storage and retrieval of current information with stakes she cares about, such as mentioned in the Turing Test for autism article - practice writing an recalling happened earlier that day or recently by asking her to recall, not by telling her.  
• Having her sense and ask for help when she needs help with needing and learning new language to express herself accurately as well as discovering, embracing, taking charge overcoming her current short-term memory deficit through practice - a big stop toward being her own teacher and embracing self studentship as an adult.  (See a prior post on my theory that autism includes a serious short term memory deficit that leads to problems introducing, storing and retrieving novel data from the brain.)   This 

I'm teaching this by:

• Self-awareness by noticing when statements/questions are new vs. she already knows the answer:  I'm helping my daughter distinguish (making distinctions is how the brain learns, from my perspective as an Anat Baniel Method practitioner) between questions and comments she already knows the answer to - ie we've already had that conversation, vs things that are new, such as how she's feeling right now, and naming it "old stuff" vs. "new and useful" and stopping the conversation and pointing out "old stuff" when it occurs, and asking for something else she wants to understand or I don't already know. I just say, "We already talked about that" or "Didn't we already talk about that?" then she remembers and agrees based on my intuition of how people look when they do vs. don't for sure know.  I say, "What did I say?" Then she says what she or I already said, confirming my intuition that she did actually remember (I don't want her to be asked to remember something she doesn't, but each time she DOES actually remember the familiar question, statement, etc.  Then I say, "Say something else about that" or "notice something" or other comment types I listed in my Autism Turing Test conversation teaching list, and we go from there.  

 

• Short-term & Long-term memory boosting: I'm preparing memory exercises such as famous quotes, the golden rule, family middle names she never learned remembered, colors of the rainbow, etc.  To see if she can learn something useful every day with WAY more repetition than is normally given in school, where all day we repeat and practice it.  I will Additionally

 

• Using consequences (losing your iphone for a period) for changing conversational patterns to reflect more common conversations by encouraging new and accurate (ie not an autism lie) information, no matter how trivial: Until she's had enough Anat Baniel Method lessons and/or Son-Rise facilitation from my, I'm doubling down on my Turing Test for Autism list of how to make typical conversation to practice to create new conversational patterns of new stuff even if it's the most trivial thing in the world.  I plan to ask her what she just did, what she had from breakfast, what she's feeling or thinking in the moment, whether she pooped or urinated in the bathroom when she came out - it's all present or at least new and will form a new habit to disrupt our existing one that seems stuck. I announced consequences (having her lose her iphone 15-30 min) as a consequence of being untruthful.  This will motivate her to ask for help to participate in the conversations she really wants to and start the engine or her self-observation and asking for instruction when she can't say what she wants, rather than resorting to phrases she already knows.  Additionally I never take away her iphone without providing an activity that's useful and in most cases ends up being even more high quality time to make use of her motivated and focused mind, that wants the iphone back.  The Son-Rise Program teachers teach us NOT to give kids electronics at all for a variety of reasons but I do this for reasons of novelty for her and also to help her do something safe, so I know it's all to her benefit either way.

 

• Reminding her about the normalcy of mistakes so she really really gets when not to attack people for them - most of this morning's rancor started when she was lashing out about putting an ice pack on the swollen top of her foot, the result of hitting it by accident when he was jumping up and down the night before (see story below).  

 

THE EXAMPLE EVENT THAT TRIGGERED MUCH OF TODAY'S LEARNING

For example, last night Anna said she was jumping up and down and hit the top of her left her foot against a chair leg and/or a wooden laptop lap desk that were against each other, and it was swollen last night but she could still walk on it to shower and get ready for bed. This morning, however, she was unable to put weight on it to get up and use the bathroom so I had to go downstairs and get crutches, and later got her a cold pack from the fridge to soothe it.  She was acting frustrated / angry with me and lashing out at me when it was obvious I was trying to help and she was upset that she hurt herself and was taking it out on me.  When I put the cold pack against her foot, needing to mold it slightly to wrap the strap to hold it on, it pushed on the swollen bulge on the outer top side of her left foot, and she yelled and lashed out and started calling me "Bad mom" several times.  I told her I made a mistake and how the cold pack is less pliant when just out of the freezer than it is later, so it's understandable I might push it too hard, overestimating the initial flex to bend it to her foot.  This continued for a while, her berating me and me trying to explain how I was the one helping and she's probably taking it out on me - the upset of the hurting foot.  Maybe an hour later after I had gotten a cold pack set up on the foot, elevated her feet, she was sitting in a comfortable reclining chair, after I had helped her dress, adjust crutches, get her deodorant and shirt and all on while still on the toilet because she couldn't get up before I got the crutches, I asked her something about the morning and the ankle  I can't remember just now but it will come back to me in a few hours and I'll add it here - I took her iphone because I wanted her to work on learning something at that moment that was important - I can't remember because what followed it was more significant. In an effort to move away from unhappiness like anger or yelling at their request, I had told both my kids that if I was upset next time I would just take their iphone away for a period (briefly - while making use of that time as teaching time, in most cases, not abandonment).  She screamed when I tried to take it which was unnerving and would have sounded bad to anyone who might be hearing it, so it raises the danger that neighbors might call the police or something - this is something parents of autistic kids live in their whole lives - when she was a little kid she used to scream like someone was trying to kill her over tiny things like her dropping her toy from the shopping cart.  It was back again - the old fear, because these autistic people don't understand the trouble that's possible when acting like that could confuse and mislead people as to the gravity of what was going on.  I was planning to take it away for maybe 10-15 min just to have her focus on and learn something she was missing, with me, said I was going to take the phone away and because of the screaming I took it away for a half hour, because I've tried to teach her this lesson in the past and it obviously wasn't learned.  Then I asked her why I took the phone away, just minutes after taking it away for her screaming and saying it super clearly including why this would endanger her too if police were called due to the screaming, and she said it was because I pushed on her ankle, which I hadn't touched.  I kept saying "wrong",  what did I just to? what did I just say?  She kept getting it wrong but rather than saying she didn't remember or needed help to express what she knew was the answer, she kept saying what she was saying this morning about being upset about my pushing on her foot, totally irrelevant and in the past.  I finally reenacted the walking toward her and asked, what happened when I did this? and she said how she was screaming and totally knew and remembered, just didn't remember that it mattered to tell the right story not just say something in response.  Then I asked her why she lost her iphone - 2 reasons both clearly delineated prior to asking - (1) shrieking / screaming at the top of her lungs when nothing serious was happening, and that could get us all in trouble and (2) "lying" about it - saying I took the phone away for something unrelated that didn't happen at that time.  She kept answering that she was losing her phone because I pushed on her foot and she got mad at me.  When she finally acknowledged from the reenaction (which really helped) those were the answer, I asked her why she didn't answer that way to start with and she said she didn't know how to say it.  This triggered my awareness that she knew it was wrong and just didn't know how to say the correct answer, so I made the point of pointing out she could ask and practicing ways she could have asked for help saying what she wanted to and how important it was to me and others NOT to say things you know are NOT TRUE, and how this is called lying when you know it's not true, whether or not you intend badly by it. 

Along the way there was the concept of a mistake, that I didn't know that the pressure I applied to the cold pack to get it to "wrap around" her ankle would hurt that much and how not to lash out at those trying to help and those who make well-meaning mistakes.  

Decoding Autistic Kids' Confusing Inner Emotional Conflict - ask questions

INNER EMOTIONAL CONFLICT IN AUTISTIC KIDS IS VERY CONFUSING & REQUIRES DECODING

Yesterday (TU 5/21/19):

I said I would make pasta and sauce.

my daughter said she couldn't eat with sauce because we were out of parmesan cheese and it was too late for us to get it before dinner (implying she didn't want it with sauce if there was no parmesan cheese on it, too).  

I said, maybe you can try another cheese (since we have several in the refrigerator) like feta or cheddar.  

This set off what was about an hour of severe upset and argument from my daughter that nothing I could say about the feta would quell.  

She likes to have it with butter (if there's no parmesan cheese / sauce).  Acknowledging this didn't stop her upset. 

She said she doesn't like feta on pasta. Acknowledging this didn't stop her upset.

Remembering that one time I tried to melt feta and it didn't melt well and now that I recalled that, agreeing with her, didn't stop her upset.

She started telling me this was like the youtube video of the "Paz" cartoon where the penguin, "Paz" and his friends were on an easter egg hunt and one of the "cheated" and how the other one was being a bully.  

I kept asking her how this related and what was going on in the story so I'd have any idea what she was saying.  She couldn't say -

• was I being a bully? was she?  
• Why is she acting out and referencing that cartoon right now?  
• If they're angry and upset, why are you bringing that into our house?  Why not just stop watching it and not acting like them?

t asked her to play the video and noone was being a bully:  

• the rabbit admitted to taking the penguin's easter eggs and apologized.  
• Paz said, "I knew it!" with angry furrowed brows for just a second, then accepted the apology and they were friends again.  

I couldn't see the relevance and why she seemed bent on referencing disagreement among cartoon characters when there was no conflict over her not eating feta.  Her upset kept going.  

• "Why weren't you listening to me when I said I didn't want feta on my pasta?"  but I had and I did and it was already understood.
• "Fine I won't watch cartoons ever again!".  I hadn't said that or asked that (I did say it would be better to watch shows about real stuff, thinking cartoons lack the richness of reality, thought)
• "You cheated.  We're breaking up"  What?  Anna, cheating and breaking up is when people are loving each other, having babies, etc and then decide to leave each other - we're just mom and daughter. we're just having a disagreement, I'm not going to leave you.
• She used words like "inappropriate" about what I had to say about pasta, about bread, etc. as she's confused by the mixture of dietary advice from everyone, often mutually conflicting and came up when I said we could eat this wheat pasta rather than going to whole foods where she was going to get pizza and whole wheat french bread. She was upset saying she couldn't eat it because it had gluten and carbs and sugars in it, and I pointed out that she eats this every day in the form of bread and there's not much difference.  (More on dietary conflict of advice in a future blog.)

My son and I both were trying to prepare dinner while this crazy, confusing conversation over something that should have taken 15 seconds turned into confusing statements relating to that cartoon, my behavior being "inappropriate", that I wasn't listening, restating over and over that she didn't want to eat feta cheese as if I was trying to force it on her and hadn't listened.  I even tried reverse psychology and said twice, I absolutely insist on you eating feta cheese on your pasta!  And it didn't make sense to her and not much came of it.  

She kept calling me a bully and I said, that's not being a bully.  She was confusing the word "bully" with other terms.  I acted out that being a bully in this case would be to grab her shirt and say "You HAVE to eat that feta! I'm forcing you!" and acted it out, then said, that's what bullying would be in this case, and she didn't stop her upset angry diatribe. 

Finally, my son remembered that in the past when Anna's been upset with something someone who works with her said or did, she doesn't tell what's really upsetting her so the conversation goes over and over the same lines and gestures.  I keep asking questions to unravel her pattern and help her and me understand what's going on.  I keep using my Option Process Mentor skills, asking questions like - 

• why are you saying this again, when we've already agreed on ___ (settled this)?  
• Why did you yell when you said that?
• Why are you telling me I'm not listening when I keep looking at you and responding to what you say?  etc.
• Why are you saying the penguin in the cartoon is being a bully when he just was upset and didn't force anyone to do anything?  

Sometimes hours after this circular argument tantrum loop starts - I remember an epic one of these when she was upset and in a circular argument with me for 3-6 hours - I'll as a question like "Is there something else that's bothering you?" "Is there something you're not saying that's upsetting you?" or "What's going on, Anna?" and suddenly will discover it has something else at its heart, about something someone has done, that she's afraid to say.  

My son paused and suggested we do this - ask more directively, like "Are you upset about what someone did in the playroom?" Usually there's just silence or "yes" and we ask more directive questions, like "is it something _[insert person's name]_ did?"  In this case we asked this and she said yes, and then I asked what.  She mentioned that person in the playroom, judging her, not being enthusiastic, not asking any questions, etc.    

I told her how proud I was of her figuring out what was bothering her and this set off multiple rounds of her feeling bad about her attacking me over the feta and apologizing. I kept telling her how it was a challenge but we succeeded and figure it out and to focus on the win in it ("Celebrate all wins!" is a favorite household quote), rather than the upsetting nature of the challenge part.  I explained the "cup half empty vs. cup half full" by physically filling a cup halfway and all, but nothing seemed to stop her negative loop about herself.

Finally I thought, maybe there's another of the same problem.  I asked, was it about someone else in her program?  Then I asked the names of each person.  Was it how _[fill in participant name]_ acted?  Was it _[other participant]_? etc.  I found out there was another person who was a problem as well, but again, needed to make assumptions and ask direct questions about people.  

We were so happy and got along great after that. I was pointing out new words like being "authentic" and "honest" and how it felt good to be that was vs. how crazy and upset it was making her to hold in what she really meant, and how it was hurting our relationship.  

She and perhaps other autistic kids may feel afraid to tell others what they want, feedback on how they're asking, and to ask for what they want from them as far as how whey want to be treated.  I was telling her she need to tell those people what she wants and ask helpful Option Process Dialogue questions such as, "Why aren't you enthusiastic when I say that?  You aren't having fun the way I like while I'm learning - how can we change that so I can enjoy my session more and learn more?" etc. 

We discovered in past instances of these crazy argument loops that there's no resolution until you figure out the problem, and then guide your child how to get to the point next time, pointing out how bad they felt and how bad things went when they suppressed their true experience, issue and feelings.  As much as I'm upset by the craziness of that experience, I'm so thankful for my son being a witness and help to reassure me of my sanity in the face of insanity, and actually help my daughter get to the point of learning positive mental health habits of not being manipulated by fear or taking out upset at one person on another, particularly your biggest cheerleader, coach, supporter and only unpaid best friend, in this case, your mom!  Like her I encourage you like I did myself to focus on the glass half full, not the hour or two spent intermittently distressed.

Finally, note that autistic people may be prone to being abused because of their fear to ask for what they want, fear or suppression to discuss bad experience with others, and dependency on someone else.  I'm aware as her mother that she needs me and often warn her that she needs to learn whatever it is I'm teaching as far as skills or how the world works, to take care of herself otherwise someone could bully her because she'll need their help.  I warn my son about the need for independence so as not to be bullied by anyone, either.  Poll your autistic child often about how people are acting - i've often found out after people leave, how badly they've acted behind my back knowing I wasn't looking.  

Ask your child to rate their performance on a scale of 10 where the people you now they love best are 10s and people they want to leave / worst 0 - you may be surprised how easily they grasp this and what you discover. Use the scale on other things like favorite foods or activities first so they can understand it regarding people, or just put people they didn't like much low on your scale and see if they get it watching you rate people's performance, too.

Best wishes!  Thanks for reading!!  and please share...

 

PS - I have been an Option Process Mentor and can do "Option Process Dialogues", but my certification has lapsed as of this date.  I can help support you as a parent with an autistic child that is going through confusing and upsetting experiences due to my experiences with my child, this training, and also my Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® Practitioner mindset.  Contact me at [email protected] or [email protected] for more info.  Thanks!

More signs of Anna's on-going recovery from autism to "normal" (if there is one)

 Anna's becoming more cognitively and socially sophisticated in little steps.  For example:

Fall 2017 (Sept/ Oct/ Nov) on-going:  Inner Conflict Expressed

Anna started having inner conflict expressed outwardly, like you're listening to the character Hamlet going back and forth whether or not to do something.   It started when she started copying the father in a youtube video telling his daughter she can't get a toy (and is pretty deprecating of her interest in it which I don't like).  After many retellings of this somewhat distasteful video, she starts quoting it when she's deciding not to buy something, like deciding not to buy fritos because she says they it made her sick once.  It's often there's discomfort around the issue, like she's saying it over and over rather than just walking by the thing, she'll bring up not buying something 20 times, asking what I think of it, what she thinks of it, etc. 

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Our 2017 Christmas tree is graced by four Beanie Babies Anna earned through my "Learn to Earn" program, that encourages the cycle of "want, work, get" that productive people have, while motivating her to learn things she otherwise doesn't feel interested in or value, like my "Say What you See" program, which has successfully shifted her mental patterns to be more attentive and mentally present.

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Week of Dec 1-10, 2017:  Long look / Glad to Make Eye Contact

Anna, looks at Maya for a few seconds (a long time, for her). 

Maya: "What are you looking at?"

Anna: "I'm glad I'm making eye contact!"

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12/19/2017 Expressing sympathy/empathy:

S. "I'm not looking forward to visiting my father's house that much for the holidays, I usually get sick there"

A "Sorry."

S"What are you sorry about?"

A "I'm just sorry you have to go through [or deal with] that; it sounds difficult."

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All this last week - Super Flexible for Car-Shopping Marathon:

Super Flexible and reasonable about new environments, demands on her time, and activities: We've been looking at cars - new, used, etc. and dragging Anna and her brother along with me (they're not enthused!) to have them have some real experiences doing something that's hard and takes a while.  She's been going in and out of dealerships and new cars, one after the other, all half an hour from home and/or from each other, for 4-8 hours a day for several days, in temperatures averaging around 5 degrees F, largely in the dark, since it was dark at around 5 here this time of year.  She was flexible, walked at my request into the new dealerships, sat in cars I was looking at, buckled up for test drives, etc. like she was normal.  This is nearly unimaginable in our pre-Son-Rise period.  

(The one exception:  the one day we shopped for 8 hours straight (with about a 15 min dinner break), she got into one of those new "inner conflict, expressed" loops when I asked her if she wanted to eat a snack at a dealership, where they had apples and oranges, ships, juice, candy and granola bars, etc.  She was saying she didn't want to get "fat", something she says my sister had brought up, and she was in conflict because I think she was hungry but felt she shouldn't eat, and we heard many cycles of that before arriving home for dinner.  See above paragraph about how this stage represents progress, as well, despite it being really confusing and taking work for her to express why she keeps repeating it.) 

My "Say what you see" activity is paying off - she sees and says things now without prompting, like normal kids, more often:  As we were on our car-shopping marathon, and all last week, she would call out what she saw to my attention like normal kids, something the nearly never did prior to my introducing "say what you see" (in exchange for money payoff) to my Son-Rise Program. For example, she even initiated "say what you see" for money at the Nissan dealership - she was like, "Can I do 'Say what you see?'" and just started doing it, coming up with 20 things rapidly.  She also would call out things she saw as we were driving, like "I see Walmart!" and "There's a Target!" etc. 

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12/31/17 Uses the word "obsessed" properly - an abstract term compared with usual "like/love"

A: "I'm obsessed with bread on butter".  ["obsessed" is such a sophisticated concept and one I haven't used often or explained, or heard her use before, and moreover applied to her self-identity]

Barb (me): why / what do you mean? 

A: "I like it better than olive oil and coconut oil."

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1/1/18 Today my daughter can finally alphabetize on site, as ABM Neuromovement® awareness and techniques added to my daughter my daughter finally help her "get" cognitive tasks

During "school" where I was having her figure out the alphabetical order of 3 words, I realized she wasn't in an orderly algorithmic way eyeing each letter as she determined which came next, which resulted in mistakes, so I have her touch each word as she went through the alphabet which is how I think we all do it only we forget how because we're so fast and grooved at it.  (Note how here, my Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® comes in handy: realizing she can't alphabetize - a "cognitive" task - because she doesn't make orderly movement, so by doing the movement as an algorithm, she is able to suddenly do this cognitive task). By the end of the page she looked at a list of 3 words and instantly figured out which came first because the algorithm worked consistently!  She didn't have to do it slow and stepwise but the algorithm got her there and made it "automatic".  Every time she needs to alphabetize I have her do it the long, slow way to groove the letter order in as she moves over the letter list, encountering letters in the order as she moved across it, and it's now rapid like those of us who are older and fully capable of alphabetizing without reading each letter.

This is also huge because Anna is creating a linear representation of the alphabet in her mind, something I've identified as a key deficit in autistic people including myself.  We have fragmented minds much like the eyes of a fly - we have many pockets of interest, skill, etc. that don't coordinate and come together as easily as normal people do, into one self with one focus, at least in my opinion.  The extent to which we can grow a mental backbone, like the internet backbone - in our brains that is the way we track time lines in our life, alphabets, counting, etc. along a single linear stream - and which helps unify our minds and gives birth to our sense of who we are as a single powerful force, begins with linearizing anything which the brain can use as a mental construct to linearize other things.  I'm so excited this is paying off with my daughter's ability to linearize and index the alphabet in a myelinated (durable) mental module is exciting!  

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1/1/18 (today) uses the word "obsessed" again, appropriately, in a new sentence

"Hey, Mom, I keep being obsessed with My Little Pony...How do you feel that I'm obsessed with My Little Pony."  

Other recent developments

Water aerobics classes pay off big

All fall/winter Anna and I go to water aerobics at once a week and more if our morning person is out, which has been a lot lately.  Anna is excited to meet and remember people from class to class, who have nearly all been really friendly and welcoming to us both.   She's getting better at introducing herself and looks forward to it as part of our Son-Rise® / Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® ("ABMN") program.  

I do ABMN lessons with her, effectively, in the nearly weightless environment of the pool, as she attempts to but often inaccurately attempts the movements of the class.  I help her move more efficiently and correct movements that instructors do that create unnecessary and non-typical distortions of the body, like not trying to move our arms around underwater with "weights" that we have to tense up to keep underwater, which isn't conducive to subtle movements.

I have also done mini-ABMN lessons on several people in the pool, and one of them reported going all week without falls, compared to her more typical history of falling multiple times each week, so it's been a fun way to introduce people to my ABMN practice here in Milwaukee.  I'm thinking of doing a swim class for autistic or otherwise developmentally kids in the pool. Message me if you're interested in participating.

 

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Our basic logo I created in Adobe Illustrator.  Ah, the power of understanding how to use software to publish your vision.  So glad I did that workbook on Illustrator!  

 

I'm most of the way through to getting my autism recovery reality show "Autism Commandos(™)" ready to go and through the trademark process so I can openly use the name (a big relief).  I'm going to be visiting people's homes with my crew and providing autism therapy and parental/ family/ friend/ care-giver /teacher coaching for free to families who are willing to allow us to use the footage in our show which will be for web and TV.  Unfortunately the TV station I was working with ran out of funds and went out of business, so I now need to buy or rent the professional video camera, which is delaying the start another few weeks while I save up (after holiday expenditures) to buy a great camera and rig for the person holding it.  We'll be able to do sessions within a few hours driving distance of Milwaukee, WI (includes Chicago IL) and further locations more sporadically, such as San Rafael / San Francisco CA area in March, Cleveland OH quarterly, and other locations as long as we have interest in that area.  

Contact us at [email protected] with your story and situation with your autistic child, situation you most want addressed, in a brief single paragraph, half a page long.  Call Autism Power Coaches LLC (the company that owns the show) at 866-MY-COACH (866-692-6224) for more info. 

 

You can book time directly at our booking site at Power of Clarity | Autism Power Coaches & Autism Commandos booking site

 

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I'm upset I'm not further through other projects I'm working on, including creating a booking platform that has 2-way syncing with google calendar for myself and other Option Process® Mentor-Counselors ("Dialogue Mentor").  I wanted to develop the site myself but am making myself use third party software first to know my competition.

Anyone who is a Dialogue Mentor, contact me to be added to the booking site if you'd like.  I'm including a link to book directly for dialogues here, while I'm still working on the actual mentor site.  You can offer hours any time of day and people have to pay to book sessions.  You'd be working as independent contractors for Power of Clarity® LLC, my mentor / movement lesson company, where you'd be doing the mentor part (unless you're here in Milwaukee WI area and want to book movement lessons, too, as an Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® practitioner, which we also offer.  

Book Power of Clarity | Autism Power Coaches & Autism Commandos booking site

Gotto go - best wishes to my readers!  Message me if there are any questions you want me to answer in the blog and good luck to those on their own journeys out of autism and to those helping them. : )