Curing Autism Together

Anna uses the word "freedom" spontaneously & in a novel sentence, first time using and abstract noun

ANNA'S FIRST SIGNS OF UNDERSTANDING/ SPONTANEOUS USE OF AN ABSTRACT NOUN

The last few days of Chinese - and life too, actually - have been really challenging with Anna, where she struggles to learn basic things from language most people knew before school age, like what "this" or "that" are used for (ie, "this" is usually used for nearby stuff, "that is usually for stuff farther away), which was what happened yesterday.  She has trouble understanding what I'm saying and what we're learning at Chinese again because it's doing something she can't or doesn't do in English most of the time, now.  I get so frustrated having to explain to a 20 year old how to use "this" and "that" in a sentence, and there's difficulty even having her understand the teaching that we often have to so sideways into teaching other basics of language just for her to understand my current point - all stuff even a 5 or 6 year old would normally have no problem with.  It's so frustrating I wonder what I'm doing trying, like I am crazy to keep trying. 

 

But here are occasional signs that she's moving developmentally in language she's been using here and there, especially in the last several months since we've "hit a wall" on harder language in the chinese duolingo app.  We work on chinese every day and every day she learns something better about language in general, but we're so behind in terms of the parts of speech and clauses being underused or not used at all that it's easy to feel overwhelmed despite small signs of success creeping in lately.  It's not like when she was starting her recovery, where any improvement or change at all was huge, in part because we were imagining a change in the learning curve that could approach normal or even high functioning, whereas now at 20, little glimmers of progress after years of never spontaneously using prepositions, nor adverbs, nor adjectives, nor conjunctions, nor clauses that make sentences more complex.  It's so easy to feel hopeless or upset with myself for spending so much time trying.  

 

Anna shown here, helping me clean up.  I made a shape with her out of plastic packaging we were going to recycle/ toss, before-hand.  

 

But still, the occurrence of these changes need to be encouraged and focused on by me much like blowing on embers to ignite a flame, is how to speed and encouraged the "sticking" of the newly emerging skill.  There was at least one or a couple changes lately, but the one I just heard was exciting and hopeful a few minutes ago, so I had to write.  (I often write to create a timeline, what happens with her that is hopeful, without ever posting it publicly, because that takes more time than I have at the time when I was recording, but I thought I should post this because it's a big deal.)

 

Anyway, Anna said "I was organizing my christmas paper toys into a zip lock bag so they won't get wet and if I want to I could have the freedom to play with them".  Notice the abstract noun, "freedom", not something we talk about often, not something she has a reason to have rehearsed using.  She often talks about organizing, something I've included her in for many hours as I have cleaned and organized myself, including labeling, cleaning and boxes and folders, etc. but never using new language that I know of.  Since she "hit the wall" as a child learning all the nouns she could that she could see or draw, and unable to learn any "concepts", I've been wondering for years how and when she'd ever be able to learn a concept she couldn't point to in the physical world of nouns and verbs.  Well, how glorious and poetic that "freedom" was her first abstract, spontaneously used abstract noun!  I figured she's use these parts of speech more masterfully first, but getting abstract nouns is something I've been waiting for since she was failing to develop at a year old, worsening, so I've been waiting almost 2 decades for this.  I guess I'll take what I can get and glad this was one I didn't have to coach to directly, a severe rarity when working with autistic people.

"Inner vs. Outer Sensory Loop" Theory Clarified + Today's session on Describing & Answering "why"

INNER VS OUTER LOOP - CLARIFICATION

I got a lot of responses to my "inner vs. outer sensory loop" theory of autism.  In this post I want to refine and clarify the theory, and wanted to update you on how my daughter is doing since starting exercises I created for her to strengthen the "outer" loop, based on implications of my theory.

I realized the "inner" vs. "outer" loop terms might be obscuring the fundamental distinction: whether a person is relatively disregarding (or involuntarily cut off from processing) data from their senses, vs. more continuously aware of their senses.  It appears as if people who are autistic drop into periods where they are less aware of the present, unable/less able to take in, store and process new information, and are preoccupied with either just doing very simple activities in a "safe idle" mode, or preoccupied with pulling data stored from the past in a compulsive and repetitive way.  This "mode" seems to reflect a shut off of a person's mental structures responsible for short-term sensory or cognitive data storage and manipulation, which is analogous to a computer not having any ram memory left.  (This state reminds me a lot of my grandmother when she had alzheimer's and how we'd have the same conversation several times within a 20 minute period as if she couldn't store any of it.)  and which inhibits ability to retain and create new mental content, which is what identifies them as autistic.  

Maybe we should call this "sensory/ short-term memory inhibited state" or something like that.   We'll see. 

One of our longest-term Son-Rise Participants ends - Alexis leaves to be a baker!  A very talented artist and missed already.  

My definitions are:

• "awareness" for my purposes here means able to have a thought about about something whether it's expressed outwardly or not (which sounds like a statement you could objectively say to someone), which is sensory such as "I like how that feels", or mental, like "I recognize this face".  Even our pets have this awareness in a nearly unbroken way.  It's autistic people who drop in and out of this state which is largely the reason they have the diagnosis.  (Its disturbing to be in an elevator with someone else's pet and be thinking how much better their eye contact is compared with your child, but I have had that experience!  This is also why we feel like we "know" our dog is loving us, trusting us and enjoying being pet.)  

 

• the "outer loop":  person is nearly continuously monitoring sensory data of all kinds, whether the senses are focused outward or inwardly, which is the "normal" human state.  "Outer" means allowing sensory data to filter in from the "outside" of one's central mental processes. Senses the person if monitoring include:
  • outwardly focused senses, such as: vision, hearing, temperature/ touch, equilibrium sensors in your ears, or
  • inwardly focused senses (which are as yet unnamed)!  They are whatever process or structure is responsible for making the core process of your brain that you identify as "you" aware that you are "upset" or that you "have an idea".   your meeds and feelings and feeling sensing and thought sensing structures or processes which I am not sure yet have a name.  

 Anna & Alexis clowning around earlier this year.

 

• the "inner loop":  person is disconnected from their sensory processes whether internal or external which just causes them to act without being "aware" of it, or as aware of it, as they are when they are not "isming" (in their autistic withdrawal).  This causes them tojust take in and retrieving information (the "inner" loop) in a more compulsive (hard to consciously stop) way.   It's as if our autistic kids are in a sensory deprivation tank, which causes normal people to start digging into their memories and fantasies to give their brain content without which it will go crazy.  the content for my daughter anyway, are certain events and rehearsed, highly memorized videos and songs from the past. 

 

This is important distinction because helping a child check in with their activities whether mental or physical are equally important.  I realized my daughter is "remembering", an action, and point that out.  When my daughter stops interacting mid-conversation, and looks away, and just starts reciting lines from a movie she's seen (inner loop), it's NOT the same as if she thinks to herself or says "I'm remembering a movie" (outer loop), which then leaves her free to decide whether or not to say the words out loud. I don't believe my daughter has the choice, much as we have a "song stuck in our head" but it overtakes her whole self until she "comes out if it". It's as if her either normal cognitive processes stop or her long-term memory storage comes aggressively out to overtake her.  At that time you can't raise her awareness and grow her short-term memory, it's only when she's out of that "ism" period, interacting again.  Mining your memory can happen in a context of being very outward-loop aware, such as when you told a story to a friend in a very interactive way, or can be done in an  inner-loop way that causes the child to just repeat that phrase or scene without perceiving much besides it (as if you're not there).  I'm making you aware to see how there is a distinction so you can point out to your child that they were "remembering" and celebrate when they say they are, which starts making them more aware when they actually are next time. 

 

 

Documenting the struggle! Starting to work on describing and answering "why" questions in a context of getting the date from a phone calendar app

 

THE GOOD NEW IS THIS IS WORKING!

The good new is the focus on "say what you see", now expanded it "say what you hear, feel, do, and think" is having the desired effects!  Friday (May 5, 2017) she suddenly said "Did you hear that?" I hadn't heard anything and asked, "what?" to which she said, "the church bells", with a kind of excitement I see in normal kids but not often in my daughter.  I could just barely hear them and celebrated her noticing and pointing that out. She's been talking about more recent events more frequently and I'm excited to hear her talking about things that just happened minutes before, which hardly ever used to happen.  I'm just creating activities and rewards (especially celebrating, which is from Son-Rise) to invite her to focus on the present sensory ("outer") loop. It seems to be growing her long-term memory and propensity to focus there.

 

TODAY'S SESSION - DOCUMENTING INABILITY TO DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN YOURSELF

I've now included work on describing things which has the side effect of directing focus to the present outer sensory loop, too.  I was so frustrated to discover today that my daughter couldn't describe anything. We ended up googling what "describe" means and doing examples just before this video was starting to be recorded.  We will continue working on describing. 

The reason I want to document some of the messy sessions rather than spectacular ones is because most of them are of the messy variety and take lots of work to yield small rewards.  I get frustrated sometimes, really frustrated!  Some of that is in this video and I wanted you to see everyone does at times.  People get frustrated with "normal" kids too.  You're not alone getting frustrated.  Anat Baniel says that a small change in a large, complex system can be more significant than you may realize and have unexpectedly large effects in the future, like infants learn a series of skills that suddenly allow them to roll over or stand up.  There's hope as long as there's any change, no matter how small, and you keep looking for it and amplifying it with your focus and celebration!

Emphasizing NEW things & brainstorming how to invite autistic people allow for new thoughts & questions to replace repeating phrases

Something like 95% of what my daughter says (it's probably higher, I'm just leaving room for occasional unusual comment, and perhaps a little bit of denial) are the same topics, same sentence construction, and in most cases, the same exact sentences or questions nearly word-for-word with perhaps one word swapped out.   She'll ask how I feel that she's gotten (or going to get) a certain toy, or what I think of something that happened in a video, or about how she found various videos and shows online.  A small subset of that 95%, maybe 20% of that, may be about something she did other than buying toys or watching a show, but that is almost without exception more than 2 years ago, any and all of which we have talked over - the exact sentences - dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times, just like the other sentences.  It's just a rotating collection of the same content and delivery.  It reminds me of talking with my grandmother with advanced Alzheimers Disease years ago where she'd have the same impulse to restart the same conversation and we'd have it over and over again and she would totally forget it and restart it with me over and over again during the same hour, as if incapable of learning or remembering.  

My little sweetie making a Valentines Day email for me with help of Brandi, one of our Son-Rise Participants

 

I sometimes help my daughter improve her grammar to help her make sense to someone who doesn't fill it in for her, or respond creatively to what she says, sharing a new thought, a different feeling, or drawing connections between something she said and something else she hasn't related it to in her mind yet.  Yet somehow all this modeling of variations doesn't work:  she doesn't have novel comments about the same topic or respond in novel ways herself to what I say.  She doesn't continue the conversation at all usually.  She just goes to one of the stock sentences and topics we haven't talked out in the last few minutes and says it again, perhaps with the occasional word swapped out.  

If I thought it was helping my daughter to keep doing as I'm doing - celebrating that she told me and adding variations - at the least the way I've been doing - to how I respond, I would.  But I don't think this is fostering anything approaching normal behavior and impulses so it's time to change it up. I'm going back to basics - such as asking myself what might explain the impulse to re-ask questions I know the answer to, or that would explain no curiosity, etc. and how to set it up to foster further development that heads toward normal.  

Lately, even though we've been doing a vast number of new things - swimming and breaking vast new ground with that, her using paragraph symbols for the first time, going to view apartments without freaking out like she used to, etc. she seems to just about never talk about accomplishments or recent events.  Of the <5% exceptional statements that are about something new, often it's something I'm still not sure is really not just a repetition, like asking me why I'm upset when it's something I don't want to or think it appropriate to share with her, or "Why are you serious?" when I'm just asking her to do the dishes, which now that I think of it are also repetitive and exactly the same, so I'm now putting them in the 95% repetitive content category even if they sound like she's actually in the moment and perceiving the other person.  and usually those comments are just adding a statement about a new show or having finally 

So first, why doesn't she ask any real questions, which are the ones where you don't know the answer?  My first thoughts are that you won't do something:

1. if there's nothing you want to learn / know given your situation;
2. if you don't understand what it is, how it's used, or what it gets you particularly not obvious connections and benefits;
3. you understand how it may be used but may believe there is another use for it that in fact is not a normal or acceptable use for it;
4. if, even after you understand how it's used, you don't see perceived need or value even if you did learn something (if the cost-benefit ratio doesn't justify the efforts);
5. if you have never seen it modeled and need to invent it for the first time in order to do it, which may never happen;
6. if you don't know how or are incapable of doing it even if all the other factors are a given for you;
7. if you are just in a deeply ingrained the habit of doing something else that is mutually exclusive so it feels like a deep comfortable groove and not easy or comfortable to change;  

I know we can eliminate the possibilities that involve not knowing or understanding how to create and what to get from questions in her life - she has had models, and has herself learned and then come up with novel sentences and questions, including all kinds of questions (in Stage 2 she learned "what", "where", "who" - and was emerging with her own "why" questions, and in stage 4, "when").  Why have they nearly vanished at this point?  All she wants to know is what people think and know about toys and her videos, and the same things over and over.  The other questions - the ones where she genuinely doesn't know something and wants to - I might only get from her once every month that I can remember.  

When she's upset she doesn't ask why it happened or how to fix things, she just suffers or fixes it herself.   I might suggest a question she might ask but she will not offer that the next time.   

 

Video of when I started a list of new and growing list of positive things my daughter and I  can discuss cheerfully:

I got sick of hearing the same content - same comments and questions about the same videos and experiences all the time, so I decided I should ask for and emphasize new events and bring them up and emphasize them in response to offer other options and shift her focus closer to the present. It started generating modest new content right away, and it's starting to stick for her to review THESE things as new content. I think I'm on the right track - ask for and model what you want, it works!!

 

I think she has little to stimulate her curiosity, and it deeply ingrained about what she asks about and how.  So I hope to:

• create new opportunities for her to want to know something other than "When are we leaving?" including new activities in new places.  I was thinking of taking her to a movie and ice skating, for example, and am going to try to teach her new topics such as typing and philosophy.  More on this later when I figure it out more. 
• focus her repeating comments and questions on new content by example, which is chosen to parallel what she says - elicit positive content:
  • I created a list of new experiences - particularly her accomplishments - so that when she asks me if I'm happy that she started watching the "Ellie" videos online after she was cured [of IBD 2 years ask - see a prior post on this] - for the thousandth time, I look at that list and remind her that she was able to dunk her head under the lane divider twice this week for the first time without getting water in her nose.   I'm trying to emphasize even small experiences that are new, like her learning how to use parentheses "( )" last week.  
  • When she asks me "Are you excited that I'm going to get the Sparkle Rarity [plush toy]? I answer but then ask her if she's excited that I'm going to get us more new chairs at our dining room table when we get paid.  
• I'm considering introducing asking her she feels about things that are NOT so positive, like people quitting.
• I'm asking my Son-Rise participants to remember to follow rules of logic and point them out to her as a way of learning rudimentary logic such as that she cannot ask us to answer for her a question only she would know the answer to, such as how she feels about something, and that if she asks us if she remembers something then lists the thing, it is of course obvious that she has to know.  
• I'm thinking of asking them to ask her questions about her behavior, such as why are you asking me how I feel about it if I just told you?  Do you not remember?
• Memory-enhancing assignments:  I'm also going to start increasing her short term memory by asking her to write down thoughts I state such as "The dog ate food." and see if she can remember and actually write them, then just do longer sentences until she builds up to retaining what's been said - like longer full sentences - minutes or even hours later.  
• ABM (Anat Baniel Method) approaches - I'm thinking of having her vary the sentences in various ways - her volume, pacing, pitch, adding words, adding body movements, touch, etc. - in order to recognize and remember the many times she asked and introduce variation into the system around these repetitions.  Anat says that people often aren't aware of their repetitive activities and to "use the process" (her 9 essentials) to help in any situation where brain change and novelty is desired. 
• Reducing and changing what she watches as far as videos so they are not the same and creating such a deep groove of repetition rather than a seeking and satisfying novelty repetition which is more normal.  I'm working on what series or movies for kids are reality based, not that violent and still fun and finding another dearth of things that are useful and appetizing for autistic kids - or frankly all kids.  Another opportunity for someone - perhaps me - some day.
• Creating more curriculum for her bit books of learning, such as writing a sentence and then asking her to write a question mark if it makes sense as a question better, or other punctuation such as an exclamation point or period if it's a statement.  She learned this months ago but seems to not have clarity about which statements - like those she knows about - are not questions. This may help.
• Will continue further cognitive science musings about what makes a question a question, what she might be after by repetitiously asking, etc. 
• We'll continue giving her rewards for her work even if they do result in questions about the next toys she can buy - it keeps her visualizing, planning, working towards new skills and by itself is a plus.  (See bunny picture below!)  They are part of having her talk about new things, so no reason to take that away.  We just need to help her find other things to talk about, too! 

Anna's new bunny plush toy she bought with money earned from her big book of challenges, mainly for learning all the 2-letter state codes so she can recognize understand what states are.  Very cute and motivating!  

 

I thought at first all those repetitions of sentences meant she was just learning how to say the sentences she most wanted to correctly, but often she regresses to the earlier non-grammatic version of the sentence that leaves out words, and even if sometimes once learning how and saying it grammatically, she just repeats them just that way over the course of the day, disregarding the content.  It's as if we've replaced her cycling from one "ism" behavior to another all day in her own world to cycling through interactive isms with me all day, which is truly not that much better; if in the end the person is just a person repeating hand flapping all day under the hood and learns and changes nothing, why put in all that effort all day to help in the flapping?  I don't want to be giving her the wrong impression that this is normal and will go over great in the world - it won't.   I hope these ideas work. 

This is an Son-Rise and Anat Baniel mixed play therapy program. Contact me for more information. I give Option Process dialogues (I am a certified Option Process® Mentor-Counselor) and an Anat Baniel Method® Practitioner Trainee - graduating and available for services in May 2017.

Creating custom curriculum for Kids with Autism and ADD/ADHD 'on the fly' & combining ABM + Son-Rise

2016-11-07

CREATING CUSTOM CURRICULUM FOR KIDS WITH AUTISM AND ADD/ADHD, “ON THE FLY”

I created "Big Book(s) of Learning" from a thick spiral notebook, where I capture my child’s focus whenever it lands and create an activity to extend that area of interest through an activity.   Autistic kids and those with ADD/ADHD (all autistic kids have, both) have trouble controlling their intentional focus, and many time more difficulty doing so when someone else is directing them, so whenever their interest is on a topic it’s extra valuable to go with that topic, which is exactly what we do in the Son-Rise Program. It’s like jumping from lily pad to lily pad with your child, where each place you land you’re ready to start doing and learning something together from that vantage point.

 

 Anna's two current "Big Books of Knowledge", organized by tabs for each page.

 

I created these book because we’re at the age that physical stuff and skills like going to zoos, playing sports, cutting with scissors, noticing sticks float, and concrete concepts you can DRAW like “soap” or “apple” are being replaced in normal kids with abstract, symbolic, complex mental activity and self-understanding, like math, sophisticated words you CANNOT DRAW, and real-world concepts like why and how we pay bills, how to use advanced tools like settings on an iphone, and how to know what foods or activities work for you. We needed a way to accelerate that and bring more adult concepts and skills into her focus and link it to strong motivation.

While the core engine of learning in the Son-Rise Program is to “pair a motivator with a challenge”, Son-Rise is all about pairing social goals with social rewards (such as cheering and favorite interactive games and activities), I’ve found non-social rewards are the most effective the way to motivate children toward accomplishing non-social goals. I pay my daughter $5 or $10 per “challenge” depending on how long it takes to work through it.  

 

Examples of challenges I’ve created for her and what inspired the challenge:

• Behavior: repeatedly watches and talks about a character (“Ellie”) online who sings children’s songs.  Challenge: learn to sing and perform a song of her choosing, well (on tune and all). I am helping her select, practice and refine it.
• Situation: a former participant died and her mom sent a letter to us in cursive which Anna totally couldn’t read.  Challenge: learn how to write in cursive (turned into 3 sub-challenges (1) write all the small case and (2) upper case letters each 12 times, and (3) write 30 sentences all in cursive words that are true statements about her life).
• Behavior: Anna kept leaving out the “when” words in sentences, like saying “Can we buy ice cream?” rather than “Can we buy ice cream when we go shopping tonight?” Challenge: Learn to use all the “when words” by (1) Write all the most common “when” words for past, present and future events such as (“next/last ___”, “now”, and “before/after ___”) and use 30 of them in 30 different sentences that are true statements about her life.
• Situation: she speaks repeatedly about episodes in the Simpsons, My Little Pony, Berenstain Bears, Arthur and Curious George, particularly certain favorite episodes as well as characters she doesn’t like.  Challenge(s): (1) write a list of favorite episodes (2) write a list of characters she didn’t like and why (3) write a list of characters and real people she likes and why, and (4) help her understand the meaning of words in characters' lines she doesn't understand. 
• Behavior: She doesn’t brush her hair or if she does, it’s a partial job and she brushes straight down - not flattering! It makes her look mentally off in how unaware she is of how it affects her appearance for better or worse, and what it says about her – in fact, she hardly ever looked in the mirror at all when brushing it and it showed.  Challenge: Learn awareness about how her hair looks when it’s beautifully cared for and styled vs. disheveled, and how to brush and style her hair on her own. I showed her how to brush ALL of it, then style it, brushing across the top, running her fingers through to get rid of knots and also scrunching the top with her hands to make it bouncy and beautiful and well-balanced in by shape. She gets paid less than a dollar for every day she thoroughly brushes it.
• Situation: She earns or receives money as a gift, but can’t calculate how much she has left each time she buys something – can’t do long addition or subtraction.  Challenge: long addition and subtraction.
• Behavior: I use sayings with her that is very valuable but she never seems to remember or mention them.  Challenge: She memorizes quotes I most want her to learn such as the Golden Rule, “No matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, turn back”, and “Happiness is a choice.”
• Situation: Words came up in conversation she didn’t know.  Challenge: learning our “word of the day” page - all selected for being relevant, occurring in her shows or directly relating to things she was discussing with us.

 

Our Son-Rise session, the starting shot of this embedded video is of me joining her.  It looks like you're mirroring although it's deeper, you're getting into what's comforting and cool about the activity.  This distinction is more important when a child is doing something not easy to join, when you need to capture the essence of the activity using a different item or behavior because you don't have a matching item and must improvise, like when she's making a dress for a doll and you don't have that type of doll and need to dress a different character like a stuffed animal, or can't exactly join without hurting yourself, like when my child used to do headstands when "isming".  It's then that those that merely "mirror" are stumped and those of us getting what's at the core of the "ism" don't skip a beat.

 

 

As you can see the opportunities for engagement and learning are endless! Some of our current challenges include:

• Brainstorm genuine and silly reasons why some people don’t answer phones calls and texts,
• How to measure things with rulers,
• Create a “vision board”

 

 

Benefits include that Our Son-Rise staff is better focused on these side-non-social goals: they have at least one default activity to reach for and always know where to find it, and that our child is:

• Learning these non-social goals more quickly, with more consistent efforts across days, sessions and participants.
• More aware of and proud of her progress and accomplishments.
• Learning about the “real world” and adult behaviors by “going to work” like mommy, including getting paid.
• Willingly diving into more abstract and engrossing mental activities that she previously was totally unmotivated to learn.
• Feeling more aware of herself, history and preferences, since many challenges are designed to help her write about herself.  One of her favorites is writing what she used to be afraid of but is no longer - she smiles when she reviews it. The Big Books of Learning are becoming part of her sense of who she is.
• Is learning about numbers, math and money, particularly the decimal system, because the number of iterations I ask for and reward amounts appear in multiples of 5’s or 10’s, and how has to keep a budget.
• Replacing a tutor by teaching herself. I was initially going to be cheap about the rewards because we’re so short on money, then I thought how much I’d have to pay someone else to teach her these things if they could at all, and how important time was in getting this to happen sooner to catch up, and realized it was worth being generous and making a big impact. 
• Starting to see the pleasure intrinsic in being more “mental” and in “getting” abstract things. I remember the first abstract vocabulary word I taught her was “metaphor” and I used the example of how she was like a butterfly, how she changed from having IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) to well (I’m writing a mini-book on this right now), and she quickly she started saying how she was “like a butterfly” couple minutes afterward, unprompted.
• Organizing her thoughts and feelings.

 

 

Anna and me, taken right before the video. We're buddies!  Hard to believe we had NO relationship before the Son-Rise Program gave us a way to connect and enjoy each other. This can happen with you and your child too!

 

 

SON-RISE + ABM (ANAT BANIEL METHOD) = EXTRA AWESOME PLAY THERAPY

The two best autism therapies, combined!! I’m training in the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) in order to apply the concept of the “nine essentials” (http://www.anatbanielmethod.com/about-abm/the-nine-essentials) in conjunction with my Son-Rise Program. This video shows an example of us using both simultaneously right after I'm done showing the “Big Books of Knowledge”.

The Son-Rise and the Anat Baniel Methods mesh and synergize.  ABM encourages body awareness and variations in movement, a rich source of physical variations you’ll see here. My daughter had been playing this “faces game” for like years and I felt stuck, unable to come up with more variations, uncomfortable with how repetitive it was. Through the ABM training I realized body movement variations could vary this activity, while helping us both with body mapping and differentiation which we both – as autistic persons – could benefit from.

Improved awareness and mapping of our physical bodies helps people move more efficiently and in a differentiated way physically, mentally and emotionally, more sophisticated because it’s the same brain improvement delivers all 3.  Contact me for more info on mixing them.

Anna accomplished 2 Stage-4 Context goals two days ago!! Anna's big books of learning score again!

2 STAGE 4 DEVELOPMENTAL GOALS FALL!

Friday Nov 4th, 2016 Anna completed something like 2 years of work inviting, prompting, questioning, etc. her indicate the missing where and when, which together indicate the context of any statement, like the setting of a play.  She used to always say for example, "Can we get ice cream?" or "Can we get ice cream at Pick and Save?" with no "when words", so it was "no" if she meant now, and yes if she meant next time we were shopping, but it was never obvious to the listener absent the where and when what to answer.  The context statements usually bundle the where and when - the when is next time, the where is at the store. She's now indicating both most of the time - up at the 85% of the time it would be appropriate for normal speakers.  This means she's done with both of these Stage 4 Son-Rise Developmental Model goals simultaneously:

• Makes him/herself understood (uses context when telling a story)
• Able to answer / ask questions and make statements about past and future events (e.g. "When did you make the card?", "I am going to having spaghetti for dinner")

I'm going to include adverbs to extend this goal or add an intervening one - so I guess that's another one I'm adding to the Son-Rise Developmental Model including:

• probabilistic terms like "usually", "often", "sometimes", "almost never", etc.  and
• quickly, slowly, carefully, etc. to describe the action further.  

I noticed these when we were looking up all the "when" words, which were listed under the adverb listings online.  I had Anna write a whole page - like 30 - when words and examples of all 30 of them in a sentence so she could earn a stuffed animal, which she did.  I think this helped her start being more aware of the words as a group, but also let's not forget those thousands of reminders and prompts for 2 years, too!

 

BIG BOOKS Of LEARNING

I started creating a curriculum notebook on the fly as interesting things grabbed Anna's attention and would create a "challenge" around it for her and I to work on the others in our program to work on as an option - not a requirement - when I wasn't there.  They took off - our first 100-page spiral bound notebook is nearly full and a second is most of the way there t00 - we need to buy another notebook as the topics grow.  The "'Whens' Challenge" was just one of many.  My scanner isn't working so I'll just have to attach a scan of the page or notebooks later.  

 

 AS FOR ME...

 Just started coding a website I designed over the summer.  I was too busy to post, reading about so many technologies.  My Independent Study report was 116 pages and left out vast swaths of stuff I had no time to mention but that I had studied on my own and/or discussed with my professor.  I am planning to create the most important module and core design of a site that I hope people will hear about and use someday, but don't want to say too much about it.  Like the wheel, great inventions and insights seem obvious once someone has made the leap, so I'm not saying much about it til it's ready to go or close to it.  So much work on formatting text and keeping your points short are benefitting all areas of communication in my life including this blog.

My son is starting college, and we're finishing up rewriting a science fiction short novel he originally drafted with edits to most sentences.  I noticed it made my writing somewhat better.  I make him spend equal time reading the autobiographies of billionaires like Mark Cuban and Richard Branson and other books I think are really interesting to both of us or could be useful to him, in exchange for that writing time and coown the copyright with him now.  

More later, but gotto go! : )

Son-Rise Homework for our Participants! Extending Conversations with Autistic Kids by using "free association" to add variety

People who are learning how to invite and extend conversations with autistic kids through adding variety to speech.  Celebrating (cheering, showing appreciation, reacting positively) is the more important, effective and fundamental way to extend conversations, but the adding variety angle is the very next thing to do once you have the child taking an interest in you because of the celebrating. So here is stuff to brainstorm about that will help you work with your child to entice more speech and interaction. 

Throwback photo of Anna from 2013 with of our long-standing participants, S.M., who has once moved on (sniff!)

(1) Make a list of everything your child most talks about - you know, all the things your child says or talks about over and over again).  Break down that conversation into its component parts.  Write 3 things that each thing that relate to any or all of the component parts.  If there's ever a comment that you don't do something the child loves, mention in detail why; it helps the child learn and helps bring you together rather than apart.  If you don't eat ice cream, why not?  If you stopped watching Arthur, why did you?  It changes over time, but right now my child is interested in and talking about, so I wrote this out with examples at the moment:

My little pony:

Components:  TV show (cartoon), about ponies, ponies can fly, various show episode story lines she's interested in

Related things to possibly mention:  did you used to watch arthur and if so what did you like?  why did you stop watching or continue to like to this day?  Did you used to like other books/shows about ponies and what about them?

Arthur

Components: TV show (cartoon), about reality for adolescent and younger children, PBS, Themes related to school and growing up portrayed realistically but with humor

Related things to possibly mention:  Do/did you watch Arthur? What episode(s) do you remember and why?  Do you watch any other cartoons, and if so which?  If you don't watch any cartoons what do you prefer to watch and why?

Ice cream

Components:  food, dessert, dairy, vanilla or chocolate vs. other flavors, Haagen Dazs vs. other brands

Related things to possibly mention:  Do/did you eat ice cream and if so what brands and/or flavors do/did you like or dislike?  If you don't, why? Do you prefer soft-serve vs. regular ice cream?  Can you eat dairy, if no why not?

How we used to go to Planet Fitness to see the trainer

Components:  trainer, Planet Fitness, gym, exercising

Related things to possibly mention:  Do you have a trainer and/or go go Planet Fitness?  Do you like other kinds of exercise? What do you do to exercise or if you don't why not? 

Throwback photo of Anna from 2013 with one of our ex's C.J., having dressed up her favorite stork doll in clothes she brought.  Still hoping you can do a few sessions here or there, C.!

(2) Make a list of what you do during a typical week in priority order of time spent per activity.  Think about what it is about that activity the child can relate to, which includes, as in part (1), breaking the activity into component parts.  Write something you could say to the child in an open moment when the child is interested in hearing about you, and where the conversation could go next.  For example, I currently:

Walk/run by the waterfront or at the downtown YMCA track if it's after dark and/or cold.  I might mention what it was like last time I was at the downtown YMCA - there wasn't hardly anyone there.  The track was spongy like jogging on rubber and I felt great afterward.  Where this could go:  plan a trip to go there together after dark or when it's cold. 

Read books.  I might mention how I was reading about how firemen decide how to respond to a fire, since I was reading about that yesterday.  Where to go:  Plan a trip to our library to get books, and/or to half-priced books to swap for new books, and/or try to write a book with her. 

Like to talk to my best friend.  I might mention how I like to explore how I feel about something that happened recently.  Where to go:  talk to her about my best friend (Michelle!) is planning to move to New Zealand, get the globe out and look at the map, etc.

Am trying out Asian restaurants every week to find a good one.  I could tell her about the ones I've tried and what kind of food I ordered, such as the time I ordered "Pho" soup with sprouts and cilantro in it, and the chairs and tables were duper comfortable and I stayed there and worked a while before bringing it home.   Where to go:  have us search on google and plan the next place we try out the next time (probably the next weekend).

Am looking to hire new Son-Rise participants.  I might tell her about the different people applying, like someone who has an autistic teenager her age, a participant's (K.'s) sister, and a professional dancer. Where to go:  pull out the resumes and and talk about what they are like in more detail, their names. 

 

Throwback photo from 2013 with A.M., who like the others has moved on (sniff!).

Final tips:

• One of the biggest tips is that the key to feeding the fire of a great conversation is continued adding of information from your life, experience, beliefs, wants, hopes, likes or dislikes, etc.  Turning it into a quiz where the child is being asked a stream of questions you don't adequately comment on will kill the conversation.  
• Make sure your comments include specificity - who watches TV with you? What shows do you watch and why?  What instrument did you used to plan in band or if you never did, what did you prefer to do instead and why?  What kind of dog exactly do you own and what did he/she did that you might want to share?  If you can't draw a mental picture like it's on a TV screen of what is going on, it's too vague and neither can your audience, and they won't know what to do with your comments. Examples:  Don't say "I watch shows with my family" (who? what show?), say "I watch the Simpson's with my dad".  Don't say "I wish I had played an instrument but never did" (none can picture a "not"), say "I wished I had played an instrument but never could decide which, and then my father said he didn't want to pay for it, so I decided to play soccer instead", for example. 

Good luck and have fun!