Curing Autism Together

"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 barb@autismcoaches.com), 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 barb@powerofclarity.com if you want to try ABMNM lessons remotely!)

Anna Progressive on Son-Rise + Plus ABM Lessons once/day & I realize it's better to have fewer trainees and do more myself

I am getting comfortable with a reduced Son-Rise Team thru Firing and Attrition + Anna for the First time Ever Finds Word Mispronunciations Funny, Suggests Adding Punctuation (adding a period) in a Text I was asking her to send.  This following a dramatic drop in my staff after many frustrating months trying to train and and let go people in a timely way, I'm discovering low levels of very intense coaching and teaching by me is more effective than I realized.

 

I find it hard to fire Son-Rise Participants, need to run my Son-Rise Program more like a business from now on

Don't blame the Son-Rise Program!  They tell us if someone isn't performing well it's important to let them go and feel comfortable about it, but I just struggle with that still. It's my belief system or experience holding me back, to have so much trouble firing people or at least reducing their hours, when I realize that would suit us better.  I've felt forced to keep people at higher hours because they say they'll quit if hours go below some number, and if I've spent time training them and they're already pretty good, I don't want to lose ALL their hours, yet failing to reduce their hours means someone else I feel is better with my child and more of a support for me gets screwed and sometimes quit, so this is not a functional way to manage! 

I need to run my autism therapy program like a business.  I admire Jack Welch, the legendary GE CEO who made it company policy to fire the bottom 15% of employees every review period.  I wanted to do the same thing but was frustrated to find something stopped me from doing so, myself.  I was itching to let go of or reduce hours of people who were at the bottom of my program when two people left for other reasons, and was surprised how relieved I was, even though at least one of the two was really pretty good and promising.  I finally fired our most ineffective person too, and was so relieved to have that time and money back at this person's session time.  

Another Son-Rise parent once said years ago (Gaylen) that a small team of highly effective people doing more hours each was her most ideal situation.  I finally get what she meant, this time by accidentally attrition, but I was already getting this earlier but not willing to actually fire to get here:

• The fewer the people doing more hours each, the fewer trainings per week or month. 
• The better these few people are, the more they can do with the training with their initiative, attitude and energy / interest, so you get the most mileage out of each training. 
• Fewer paid Son-Rise training sessions per week/month means more money for biomedical treatments, my business, quality activities and playroom supplies such as books, visits to trampoline parks, sports activities that cost more money such as martial arts, museum visits, shopping to improve and organize our environment, and helping me feel less strung out, stressed out.
• The reduced hours, such as I eliminated evening participants every night except Fridays, means:
  • I have time to read books with my daughter that I mine way more learning and value out of that all of my other participants (plus usually an additional session if noone else comes during a day) and
  • I have time to fit in a movement lesson (Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement) most nights.  I'm an ABM practitioner so I'm using the "Desk Trainer" series that have a cartoon guy (at anatbannielmethod.com) doing movements that are supposed to last under 10 min, but I have to pause them, instruct, add variations, etc. and in so doing they end up lasting 20-30 minutes.  The good news is that they are the kind of lessons I can benefit from as well as I teach them.  

I think back to when I had 13 people at one time during one crowded summer in Dallas.  It was all (or mostly) volunteers at that time.  There was no room for me on the schedule that summer!  I had her in session even during meals which was pretty unproductive.  I was exhausted training people all day, and almost everyone was a novice and not that good.  Many were doing things that undermined the program that I didn't catch because I couldn't watch and train so many beginners effectively, such as people starting to leave the radio on during session for long periods, which pretty much washes out all meaningful interaction and speech by the people in the room.  I had low self esteem and was thinking they, being "normal" and not autistic like me, would be better with her and just by nature of being around nonjudgmental, positive-attitude normal people - even those less trained than me - she'd be learn more and bet somehow better off.  That turned out to be wrong. She didn't "move" developmentally all summer despite throwing so many normal people at her, then started developing quickly as soon as they started leaving in August for break and I chose to work with my daughter more hours because there were now openings, including that she could eat lunch with me since that session was left open first.  Within 2 weeks of working with me again, she suddenly started using prepositions, something I had been working with her on for more than a year - I believe approaching 2 - and which she had not changed at during that most-crowded-ever summer. 

 

Implementing a System to Overcome Difficulty Training / Firing Son-Rise Participant  Trainees 

I've been frustrated at how long it's taking to train people for my Son-Rise Program, winnow and train our way to the best people, how often some of the best people quit, and how slow I've been to fire people who were so-so or even very slow and highly ineffective in the playroom.  I want participants so I'll have time to leave the house and to work on my business, taxes and such, but cringe at the thought of so much time and effort training them, knowing they won't actually help our child move forward until they are trained for 6mo-1yr and keep thinking I can speed this up through video training (some of which is already on youtube) but I'm not handy as video editing and need to spend time on that before I can make a great, edited series of training.   Still, I'm going to start video training for my participants going forward.  Keep your eyes open for that in the future and let me know if you are interested in viewing those videos and if so, which areas of participant training or management you'd like to see me tackle first. 

I was relieved to finally let go a trainee that wouldn't join our daughter, was poor at the work, and fell asleep on multiple occasions and was warned a number of times, who this person was sleeping 15-20 min during their last session, who had unproductively sucked up so many of my hours training because I was never certain when to fire him and for which offense, but having him in our program meant I had to set up a whole series of standards for doing this going forward.  I was determined that noone who was underperforming was going to be taking up space and funds in our lineup, and the extra money could be used to pay effective people more to retain them.  I don't understand why it was hard to let go of this person, given they were poor on every front, but I think it's because I felt like a fraud saying we're all about acceptance, endless patience, nonjudgment etc. for my daughter and modeling it toward them, then drawing a line and saying "it's unacceptable" to them and kicking them out.  I kept remembering feeling uncomfortable and unacceptable when I was more autistic, and don't want to put them through that, but that's their decision to have the discomfort of being fired - they chose to sleep!  Why do I feel like I have to shelter them from their own choice and consequences?  I remember I would never sleep on the job even if I wan't that good at it, and did try hard.  People sleeping when they agreed to work and collecting a paycheck is a form of deception and fraud and theft, after all.  I'd never do that, and they shouldn't do that to anyone either.  Getting in touch with anger and indignation of this also made firing easier, and helped me shake the attitude I use toward my daughter off and replace it with a real-world decision.

I found it would be easier if I let people go very quickly in the future after a single warning and let them know that there would be a timed performance improvement requirement both at initial hiring and after any subsequent "feedback", which I am now recording by both video (using a webcam on my mac) and in writing (I created files for each participant where dated feedback training and initials are entered).  Of course emails to keep written, searchable records of written warnings.  This would keep me from getting to attached to them or feeling like I had sunk too much effort on them to let them go when I really should have. 

I think what's hard is that being formerly autistic and still somewhat autistic, I always learn/ed slowly and felt like I was unacceptable and was always rejected.  This may be why the slower / worse someone learns, the more unacceptable their performance, the more they seem to have few options, don't realize how unacceptable their behavior and progress is for our needs, and the more I feel bad firing them because I keep over-identifying with them as myself.  I have tried to do a "dialogue" with myself (I'm an Option Process Mentor-Counselor and can be reached at barb@powerofclarity.com for those who want phone sessions) about how to reframe the situation, and found that latching onto how good it feels and how rewarding it is when we have a GREAT performing participant is for all of us and how it helps our daughter, and how much of the reason my daughter isn't as far along as I'd like is because I didn't weed out our program, but this still only partially works. 

Discomfort at being weeded out adds on top of difficulty weeding people out, because after all I'm autistic (high functioning compared with my daughter), and it's our brain's literal biomedical problem to have difficulty pruning neurons.  It's excruciatingly difficult to choose paths, which book to write, and which people to remove, just as a few examples. But just as I'm settling on which businesses to pursue, I need to make a decision what kind of life and Son-Rise team I want, and know I need to grow and be a different person to get the team I want going forward.  

My current business coach Grant Cardone, the "Godfather of Sales", says in his ebook "10X" that if you fear something you think you should do (not some crazy or dangerous thing) that it's a sign that you're supposed to do it right away, because time only feeds the fear.  I took his advice right away and moved up my mammogram to today, and that did feel great!  I think I would have been much happier and more productive and my daughter would have progressed better if I had fired or cut hours right away and plan to do so going forward.  Grant Cardone also says if you're not doing things outside your zone of comfort and creating new problems, you're not growing and moving forward, so creating the problem of how to move people out of the program and face uncomfortable firings would be preferable to old problems of being dragged down by underperforming team members and the myriad exhausting and drain this causes me. 

Since I'm deciding to run my program like the business coaches I listen to such as Eric Edmeades, Grant Cardone, Billy Gene from Billy Gene is Marketing, etc, I set time-based quality standards for our participants from here on out.  Billy Gene says "be fast to fire".  Eric Edmeades tells you to remove people who are nice and ineffective by well documented file reviews and warnings. 

In our program going forward, for example, anyone who can't master joining our child's autistic behaviors (a fundamental skill of Son-Rise) in 2 weeks means they must be warned in writing and then let go in less than a month.  They will have no more than 2-4 weeks to repair or adopt any training elements.  This was added to our team policy.  Joining autistic kids vs. refusing to is a litmus test for those who have attitudinal issues about our program, such as who secretly judge it and try to fake us out, wasting our time but never really on-board our approach.  If you can spend 4 sessions - 8 hrs - and can't make a change as instructed, you usually do a dialogue (Option Process Dialogue, which I'm certified to do) to figure out why you're having trouble doing so, and once you change that belief - usually a judgment that doing so is bad in some way - you can join.  If you can't figure out within 8 hours how to do what you're being asked, we are just not a good fit then.  People who judge our approach are unable to figure out their beliefs why they are failing because they don't want to expose the judgments because they want to conceal them, and have no intention of changing and I need to make them leave, since joining, together with the nonjudgmental and enthusiastic attitude that it requires - is the most important element of our program and we can root out those who don't fit and don't want to fit right away.   

I've found that playroom participants who have an issue about joining, it's a litmus test of having an issue with the non-judgmental attitude or unusual philosophy underlying the program, and it for the most part never goes away, people keep faking me out and then going back to not joining.  People who have an issue often will not explain well why they have an issue, won't do a genuine self-searching dialogue for the underlying reason effectively which requires non-judgment of themselves to search and disclose; I find myself teaching and reteaching these people and start resenting them but having to let go of the resentment, yet why do that if I can get a new person who loves our program and doesn't make me act like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill every day only to have to do it again endlessly, just to justify that I'm not judging them and am endlessly patient. 

Can't I not judge participants, but still say they aren't a good fit and try someone else?  Is it judgmental to try many variations of things and then know prefer and it suits me best to frequent a certain gym, eat a certain brand of pita bread, pick one pair of running tights over another, or pick one doctor over another?  Isn't life all about finding your preferences and not having to apologize for them unless they hurt someone - and picking one of these over another does not - in fact, you must pick a winner and the others will lose your business, money, etc and may go out of business, but that's just how life is.  Apparently I'm so scarred from my autistic period I feel like I'm being a bad person to life life the way we were all meant to live it.  Those who embrace, learn quickly and stay a while (those who like it stay longer, so it's correlated) are the only people who actually add to our child's development when sufficiently skilled, and make my training hours multiply and grow through their own initiative and energy - why can't I choose them?  What about all the people I never get to meet who God or the Universe intended to help us that I've never met because of my mental holding pattern that is probably scarring from my autistic years?

At the Son-Rise Program classes I learned the importance of eye contact and the nonjudgment / acceptance enough to enjoy eye contact rather than being nervous and avoiding it, since i was afraid of non-autistic people sniffing me out and rejecting me and seeing it in their eyes - not to mention having them think they had nothing to learn from me and didn't want to learn the program from me.  I was thus afraid of having to sit in the room with "strangers" to coach and interact with them to run our program, which is central to Son-Rise, because it would be so uncomfortable because they'd judge me.  Now I think it's raising the bar to feel I'm on the other side and judging them - or their performance - as not as good as someoe else's and making them uncomfortable, and that's making me too uncomfortable to act.  But those people should go do something they like more and are better at, not ruin our program!  Yet my habits and autistic cringing is still there in this case.  I think I need to grow into a person who can let people go and know it's OK and not personal, and help them see they aren't resonating with or liking the program either, and for sure are not helping me.  I'm trying to keep in mind how different life would be and would have been if I had chosen people who fit better, and am committing myself to letting people go even if they and I are uncomfortable about it.  

I have to let them go before I've sunk too much training into a person to let them go easily, something else I've identified in dialogues I did with myself.  I am prioritizing letting them go right away (2-4 weeks) as a way to have a great program, not merely a good one.  There is a famous saying, "Good is the enemy of great", and I belief this is true in my playroom and broader life (that broader topic is for another day). 

I'm finally and am ready to cut back to just me if necessary, although I feel trapped in the house and feel guilty that I'm not working with my daughter all the time, what I'm finding is I do something super intense and important with her.  Yet I can see increased learning from her and there are funds to use for biomedical treatments again, such as heavy metals chelation and cranial sacral therapy, now, so I'm warning that up as an adjust physical support to her learning.

 

Our Daughter Is Developing Quickly with our reduced Team Including More Hours with Me, but I'm going a little Stir Crazy and Feeling Guilty (for no reason)

Anna's Son-Rise® + Anat Baniel Method® Program is down to a core of me + only a few very skilled Son-Rise trainees of mine, then our current most effective Son-Rise participant went out sick for the past 1-2 weeks, leaving only me plus one session a piece for two others.  I'm going crazy in the house, including Anna in a lot of organizing and cleaning - which is very good for the autistic brain to sort and create groupings - plus 1-2 intensive Son-Rise + academic sessions and one movement lesson a day.  With spectacular speed I was able to teach her several concepts I've been asking others to do for the last year or two, using movement rather than stuff on paper, except to codify what is happening after she understand and can recreate it, which I had to to do with numerical incrementing/ decrementing long ago on "number lines" or "linear numerical backbone". 

In less than a week Anna and I have covered:

• multiplication through finger math representing what's on the page through movement, which also includes factoring larger numbers, reintroducing counting by multiples, etc.;
• division, factoring and fractions, including various ways to represent it (with the a÷b, a/b, and a over b '--";
• addition and translation into division, including communicative properties of multiplication and addition + factoring (yes, all these are wrapped up into the same understanding; you can't understand one without the others - it's like saying you're going to teach walking but teaching swinging a leg forward but not stepping on it).  She was able to recall today when asked what the "communicative property of number addition or multiplication" was.  Asking questions of her "what is the communicative property of multiplication / addition?" she did not answer.  I told her, "You have to answer something!  You have to say 'I don't remember' or 'I didn't understand the question' or guess, or say what you remember, you can't just not answer like a plant or a dog!  You have to answer!  She paused and said, "I see the snow" (outside our car).  Then I said, "No, I asked about the communicative property of addition or multiplication of numbers."  I directed her memory back to the time she was learning this material,  and said "What do you remember when we were in the bathroom writing those numbers on the mirror with soap?" which I had her participate in the prior day.   She paused LONG  what you remember about our discussion the other day, You .  The KEY to asking questions is to remind her 
• introducing statistics, including tallying, creating fractions, geometry of dividing circles evenly into slices, and representing on a pie chart, raising the level of academic challenge and learning in a kids' activity book that's otherwise below her level but which she loves because it's graphical and colorful and fun looking.  For example, she was supposed to just color the circles with the indicated latter in it such as capital or small Q, but then I had her list all the letters appearing on the page, count how many of each, add them all together using a number line so it could do a visual representation or regular counting movement over 10 (limit of finger math), then creating fractions based on these numbers such as "q" has 4/12, "d" has 2/12, etc., then creating a 12-slice pie chart (tracing a small bottle lid), dividing evenly (geometry) and color coding the slices of the pie to correlate with each letter and the number of slices.
• Categorizing Animals Species into Types such as Mammals (plus Primates), Reptiles, Fish, Invertebrates, Birds, etc.  I ask her questions every day to have her put things she knows well, in these buckets, such as our old dog, an animal we once found that when I describe the situation she remembers to be a dead bird we once tried to revive, the mice we used to own, the kitten one of our ex-participants got, roaches, salmon we buy, etc.
• A number of concepts about earth, such as varying types of forests, equator, etc.
• I'm continuing our cultural literacy effort, watching famous movies everyone knows or references. 

It's all detailed and I should put it in videos and if you the audience think you can use that and ask me, I will show you how to teach these with an autistic person, but only if I get enough response.  It's SUPER IMPORTANT that a person learns the math concepts through body movement, and visual representation of other concepts that cannot be represented this way, or forget it!  For example, I spent a frustrating 10-15 min trying to teach the same math concepts of factoring, multiplication, counting by larger than on number, communicability of addition and multiplication, etc. using dried lima beans and number lines other than her fingers, which were still visual and tactile, but hands-based teaching won hands-down (no pun intended)! 

How you teach matters at least as much as what you teach, and the ABM and Son-Rise way is to make sure the person understands what you're doing or don't go forward, reduce and reduce the level until they understand for sure and then build back up to more complex concepts.  Connect things to what the child FOR SURE knows or it's hard just to participate in the lesson and the stress of having to imagine your set up and on top of that learn a new concept pretty much guarantees you'll make no progress, whereas using familiar things, like the slices of pizza from whole foods which she's seen and bought a ton of times and knows what 6 slices looks like from that, or our butterflies we used to raise, she'd know instantly and feel at ease while you try to manipulate those memories into new concepts. 

 

ABM Neuromovement Lessons Help you Add fuel to your Child's recovery without a lot of time

I asked Anat for help understanding how to apply her thinking to schooling, and she was excited to do an interview with me to answer my questions, but am finding I'm finding my own answers this last few weeks.  The brain needs variations and more intensive learning needs to be followed by ample integration time.  I think having so many mostly novice participants was a big drain on me and not worth the time to train those people, so going forward I will choose carefully and screen / parse quickly and with great energy.

I learned Anat Baniel Method and became a practitioner, because I wanted to be able to do more concentrated lessons and get breaks on some days rather than doing many more hours of Son-Rise, to provide variations on approaches, since in my opinion the two approaches are highly similar.  It's seeming to pay off to mix them, still joining and having a positive attitude throughout.  ABM Lessons are so intense you can only do up to a half hour at a time and the child needs to do something else that's low key for several hours at least to integrate, and I can feel good leaving her alone for those periods while I work. 

I couldn't spend many hours a day doing son-rise and have a life and as explained above, since there's a lot of work and issues that translate into time spent (and money, usually), so even help in the playroom is something of a burden (until the participants become fantastic at 6-12 months usually), and will treat participation more as a privilege now, which it has always been, to learn what I know how to do so effectively.  Participants, up until the highly effective stage, are mostly there for your sanity so you can refresh and be there for your uber-valuable session(s) with your autistic child. 

The level of excellence they need to cross to jump in value is "Adding Changing Roles" in my Participant Performance Pyramid, something that people who have attitudinal issues with the Son-Rise philosophy NEVER get to due to their underlying judgments of the program.  If they are going to cap out, even if they are great at that level, then, they must go out.  "Move up or move out" is the reality so why not implement it quickly?  Those people need to go somewhere where they can be more effective, less judgmental, etc. because they're doomed here as far as performance in that mindset.  Doesn't God or the universe want us to succeed at our effort to recover our child, have a happy life, and succeed in our business ventures?  Letting people go quickly would be an acknowledgment of such, as opposed to keeping less effective people and feeling burdened and being less successful. 

 

Son-Rise + ABM Neuromovement Lessons Cause our Daughter to Start Developing this Week

 

First time our child ever suggested adding punctuation - today! 

Today my daughter, whom I asked to text one of our most skilled participants to see if she was well enough to resume sessions, was repeating back the text content before sending, as usual.  She said, "Can I send it?"  I said "Yes". Then she asked "Can I put a period [at the end of the sentence]?"  I was shocked because I've been asking her to pause at periods, and she usually reads right past them, not pausing at the end of the sentence, so she can't truly understand them as separate units, for years.  Suddenly, today, she asked to add punctuation - suggesting which kind - to the text, something she has never asked to do.  Anat Baniel always says "The Brain is a quantum system" and any change, no matter how small or insignificant, indicates a change that can add to, reflect or cause major shifts, and that noticing and appreciating the importance and weight to all spontaneous changes - those that the child suddenly makes effortlessly as a reflection of their improved brain - helps those changes stick. So I pointed out to her that that's the first time she's added the period at the end of a sentence on her own and how neat that is, and then let it go, as Anat would want us to do.  Draw attention to it for her brain to notice, but don't make a big deal or add a lot of distraction that could disrupt this pattern setting into the brain.  That's the quiet enthusiasm, her spin on enthusiasm, something the Son-Rise Program includes.

 

First time our child ever got how it's funny to mispronounce words, today!

Our daughter started laughing when my son intentionally mispronounced a word - "pepper" as "peppaire" with a french twang, then mentioned how this was like how he immitated his trainer.  I asked her how he imitated his trainer, and she said, "Very Good, very Good" in that "Veddy Good, Veddy Good" pronunciation.  She was smiling and laughing after both.  This was the first time ever she's noticed and enjoyed these intentional mispronunciations and accents, despite my son doing this for the last several years.  He specifically mispronounced "pepper" many times - we were reading The Brain's Way of Healing and there's a chapter about walking off the symptoms of Parkinson's all about a guy named Pepper he has read whenever I took him to school, now suddenly she hears and delights in it.  Progress!!

  -  -  -  

I'm an Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® Practitioner and am happy to discuss this method as well as conduct Option Process Dialogues (I was a certified Option Process Mentor) whose certification has expired, but am seeking several people to do dialogues by phone for a reduced price for re-certification.  Limited time only!  Please email me at barb@powerofclarity.com for more details on my services.  

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. 

 ---------------

 

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.

 ---------------

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!"

 ---------------

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."

  ---------------

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. 

   ---------------

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."

 ---------------

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!  

---------------

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.

 

========================= 

 

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 casting@autismcommandos.com 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

 

---------------

 

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. : )

Autism 101: Celebrating Autistic People for Interacting - Overview - the Why & How

In the attempt to get my Son-Rise home therapy program participant training automated - at least in part - I am recording and uploading training videos so i don't need to repeat myself with new trainees, who are mostly coming from UWM (Univ of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) and Marquette.  As you recall, I have a "Training Pyramid" of I train people, and am constructing a website with an organized training library which I can put on for them to watch based on what I have that's available, with the intention of putting all my training online.  For now I'll just post them how I find or record them but subscribe to my youtube channel and/or to this blog (see the "feed burner" box at left to do so), and you'll at least be able to see them as they come and decide if they have value for training people who are around your autistic child.  Let me know if there are any topics you especially want dealt with and I'll do a post on it.

 

Today we're focusing on CELEBRATING INTERACTIONS, or what I often call CELEBRATING INTERACTIVE GESTURES, which can be any form of interaction, such as looking at you, helping you, talking with you, looking at your eyes, asking a great question (to you), etc.  This video is after a first session  - AFTER the INITIAL TRAINING (see that video here on my channel), where the trainee did little if any celebrating but did the other elements - (1) "The" attitude (loving, accepting, nonjudgmental, happy, and playful), and (2) joining in the "isms" (the child's autistic behaviors, those they do when withdrawing into their own world) - well.  There are around 25-30 things I teach people about celebrating, but this is a typical first overview of the topic of celebrating interactive gestures - that are so hard for autistic people - in order to encourage them do do more of them.  As you know there are pep rallies and cheerleader in sports for the reason that people observe that those encourage more efforts and enthusiasm of the participants.  Your autistic child who is working hard to communicate and interact with you, would benefit from cheering and encouragement, too!

 

First Son-Rise Training Session for an "ABA" (Applied Behavioral Analysis) Person in our Program

I have contrasted ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) and Son-Rise Program® before but never posted a training video for someone coming from that perspective, so here you go!  I recorded this at the spur of the moment - I didn't even take time to fix my hair before recording because a person was there for their training session and I felt like it was a bit over the top to do that! 

BTW, I always have in Informational Meeting before asking people to come back for training, and some of the Son-Rise perspective has already been set in that person's mind.  Then they come for their first session, like this one, which begins with me asking what they remember and about the program and their experiences (if any) with autistic people.  Then I base the training to build on what they already know.  In this case it's ABA, but that's just one of many possible approaches to teaching this material.  (If the person knows nothing about autism coming in, I have a basic training that I've already posted that is about the "5 things" - 1) The Attitude, 2) Joining, 3) Celebrating (interactions and flexibility), 4) Adding Variety 5) Positioning (for mutual peripheral vision.)

 

 

 

This is my spontaneous rendition of the "ABA person" training at a first session in ourSon-Rise program. I hope its useful for new people to Son-Rise to see.

 

Anyway, the points that came up for me were as follows:

• Son-Rise amps up quality, varied social rewards (such as varied cheering, really fun, novel and improvisational games and behaviors), for social goals, while ABA misses the point by rewarding social goals that aren't genuinely felt to engage in with non-social rewards, leading to "robotic" behaviors (which are never the case in Son-Rise).
  • Behavioral Therapy (ABA) is based on animal training, like Pavlov's Dog:  you ring a bell and give the dog a steak.  Later you ring the bell and the dog drools, because it's anticipated the sound with the steak coming after it before.  In ABA they reward the child with a positive reward - something they want - when they do a behavior that is desired, such as saying "Hello" to someone or looking at their eyes, primarily ABA gives autistic kids non-social/non-people rewards such as jelly beans to eat or electronic toys to play with, but is particularly stingy with and opposed to cheering and positive support and a flexible approach to maximally motivate the child.  They are not ushered into the joys of actual interaction being fun which limits their ultimate feeling of ease and social success, which is what we want from the Son-Rise perspective.
  • The Son-Rise rewards social elements (such as eye contact, communication and flexibility) with a amped-up social rewards, such as a friendly happy person cheering them for talking/ looking and/or more of an interactive activity they want and love, such as pulling them around the room again on a blanket as a pretend sleigh ride, or playing a game they love because the child has asked for it.  As a result "Son-Rised" children look at your eyes or talk to you because they come to enjoy your smile, enjoy seeing you understanding them, or want to hear what you want to add, while ABA children learn to speak so you will give their stuff back and leave them alone (ABA therapy includes primarily interrupting, taking stuff away the child is playing with, to get them to ask for it back), or to get food like jelly beans or something else. 
• ABA believes there are "good" and "bad" behaviors that they are the arbiters of, and rewards good and ignore (or in the old days, punish) the "bad", while Son-Rise believes that these children are doing the best they can in their situation, and loving and accepting them as a whole including the autistic behaviors they love, paves a way to bring their mind together in an organized way and to motivate them to be more social with people they feel great interacting and sharing with.  
  • ABA comes from the perspective that there are good and bad behaviors and those that the child most wants to do - their autistic behaviors such as hand flapping, rocking and spinning, which we'll call "autistic behaviors" or "isms" - are bad, and what the behavioral therapist thinks are good behaviors are, well, good.  They start with judgment and wage war on the child's autistic behaviors by taking things away and telling them to stop 24/7.  The child responds by hiding their autistic behavior from people around them and internalize there is something bad or wrong about them, or shameful, which destroys the relationship and splinters the child mentally into two spheres - the true self and the one they have to show you to not get punished by scowls or other negative treatment such as losing their preferred toys - as well as teaches them that fake, inauthentic behavior is what gets rewarded while their true passions that have the power to draw them out of their world and into ours languish.
  • Son-Rise in contrast is nonjudgmental and accepts the child's autistic behaviors as the child is doing the best they can based on their beliefs, experiences and biology, and recognizes that they serve a useful purpose to the child or they wouldn't be doing them.  That respect leads them to be like your best nonjudgmental friends or family, where you can just be yourself, work on your challenges and grow in a safe environment.  The child's connection with you gives them increasing calm and safety, and is the place social ambitions and practice take root.  We don't want to hinder that by telling them they're being bad to be what they are, autistic!

After that I went over the basics again with him - 

1) the attitude

2) joining

3) celebrating interactions

4) adding variety

5) positioning

and sent him in the room with my daughter.  Good luck and feel free to have a trainee from the "ABA perspective" watch this while you get something else done to help yourself and your child!  Best wishes and respond or contact me if you want to discuss further. Thanks for watching!