This morning, after imploring my daughter Anna for months and years to ask questions and periodically to teach/ tell me something I don't already know, she asked her first freely generated, fully unprompted and non-contextually demanded question about what a word meant - something that normal children are asking by toddler age - 2-3 years old, maybe 4 - I'm not a child development specialist: "What does 'fanfare' mean?" She asked this after hearing her phone text notification, called "fanfare". After I explained and acted out the word by acting like an emperor making an entrance and making up a fanfare-type series of sounds, she said, "See, I'm teaching you what the word 'fanfare' means!" Which is kind of backwards - I'm teaching her, but she's at least trying to learn a word for the first time in her life that I didn't cue up or prompt somehow. What a big deal!!
Also yesterday we were walking while doing duo Lingo chinese, and my daughter noticed a ladybug on the deck, something my son, daughter and I often do, which we then move off the deck on a leaf or my hand or other object so as not to crush them by accident, only to realize this on was already dead - someone had already stepped on it. I heard Anna quietly, almost under her breath, say "it got unlucky", I heard the word "unlucky" clear as a bell. This kind of summary statement or secondary comment/ rflection about something that has happened using uncommon or never-used words, particularly abstract adjectives or other words like "unlucky", has never in my knowledge happened in the three years we've done DuoLingo on the deck and elsewhere. I was shocked! It reminded me of another summary statement she made about her brother in a recent prior post, just out of nowhere announcing that she loves him because he is very helpful and nice to her, something that had never happened in her over 20 years of her life following when she should have - based on normal kids - been talking.
Why I think this new emergent language is happening in a way that other prior methods have not triggered: Our autistic daughter has been continuing to improve cognitively via taking citicoline (aka citicholine) and ginkgo supplements alone (with no other supplements, switching back to the Carlyle Ginkgo brand that was working prior to using the BioKrauter brand that didn't work) primarily. We are continuing to learn DuoLingo chinese (we just crossed the 3-yr mark) and are doing grade 1 & 2 math workbooks, but these were things we were doing prior to doing the supplements, while she was taking Citicoline and Ginkgo of that other brand that didn't work for the last month or so, so it's the supplements. I'm restarting her on fish oil gummies made by amazon that are inexpensive and have good amounts of DHA as well as testing Uracil (the deoxyribose-related compound supposedly helping in neurological regeneration) that i have yet to find in gummy form (please send me a link on this blog or otherwise if you have found it in a gummy). I'll be posting links to the supplements for people to buy in a future post so follow and check back.
Autistic kids struggle with mental fragmentation, and this makes the concept of an unbroken linear, regularly spaced "number line" foreign and hard to absorb for them. Imagine if someone asked you to count and you had 7 tape measures each measuring different parts of it - like 1-7 is on one tape measure, 9-10 on another, and 8 and 11-13 on another, etc. It's confusing. There is nowhere to see them as an unbroken line and no habit of trying to merge them. This is what it's like for autistic kids, in my opinion. This is also why kids with autism get so focused on and successful in science and math and music because it's the first place linear concepts are taught and we hold into that (yes I'm autistic too!) for dear life and see things built upon that, without which regular social interactions and "regular life" has no such anchoring and we feel confused by it. I remember being so great at the Periodic Table and a brilliant science student because those things could explain everything and nothing was left out. It's like the linear space for those kids gifted with math - there is nothing you cannot describe mathematically, or model, at least at some level and eventually.
Teaching Anna about number lines and brushing hair today 7/1/17
In this video I'm trying to teach my daughter in such a way that she has can create that continuous number line in her mind's eye - or the conceptualization of it - as the anchor on which to build all math comprehension. (There is a big section on brushing hair that happened in passing at the beginning - I'll do another video about hair brushing and washing challenges at another time.) My recent computer science studies reminded me how computers in the end only do incrementing, decrementing and comparison (greater than / less than / equal) so, fundamentally I understand people as doing the same with numbers at the most fundamental level. (For example, multiplication is just multiple incrementing, exponentials are just multiple multiplication, etc.) All math then falls apart, makes no sense or has foundation to grow on if you have no mental construct of an unbroken and potentially endless number line. I get so upset when all the people I have ever instructed to see things in fundamentals over the last 8 years don't see what I see but I think this may be a special gift I have since I'm autistic too - at least borderline so at this point. If you don't understand regular movements of the same size - like stepping and counting for each step or counting up a number as you lift each finger one by one, you don't understand what those numbers "mean" (this is Anat's influence on me - seeing how movement underlies cognitive comprehension, and how knowing is impaired by disorderly movement).
I have worked with my daughter so many times on creating a regular number line on her fingers, as well as on a meterstick. I realized I should start recording before she understands it all and people won't have the opportunity to see how to teach this themselves.
In this video I'm catching the end of our session today where we're working on putting numbers on a number line in a context she cares about and is motivated to accomplish it. Son-Rise and Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement ("ABMN") both couch learning in a context that the child actually wants to develop the skills you want them to, too. Anna ran out of digestive enzymes/probiotic (Enzymedica Digest Gold + Probiotics) that were part of the cure of her Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). (This IBD cure which I designed succeeded - see past blogs on this - and I am writing a book with the protocol). I have always wondered if these supplements were an essential element of the cure or not, since she used them at the time she was cured and never stopped. This was an opportunity to test whether they were key in maintaining her recovery. I told her she needed to put the prices per capsule on Amazon - which I calculated - on a number line in order to determine the least expensive per capsule. I did this because she couldn't tell me which of the 5 numbers was the least expensive - she flat out guessed at numbers in the middle of the range - and I thought she needed the number line to understand my question.
She demonstrates she doesn't understand what least and most mean. In fact, I decided to record this video when I asked her which was least expensive and she was flat out guessing the answers incorrectly, and when I asked her what it it would "mean" to buy something least expensive, or what "most expensive" meant, expecting she might say "you pay more money for it" or something else evidencing comprehension through rewording, she could only repeat back that least expensive meant it was least expensive. She didn't understand the word or math concept of what I was asking. The more fundamental, huge and "worse" the lack of comprehension, the more important to address and focus there and the more the return. It means you've struck gold in understanding how to recover someone from autism. Yeah!!
She struggles but eventually gets it. Then we celebrated and ordered the supplements after the video. A happy ending and she is finally, through visuals, coming to understand least and most and how that is expressed through a number line. Thanks for reading, do try this at home, and let me know if it's useful for you! Do like our video, too, if you want to encourage me to publish more!
Anna is "moving" developmentally in response to some new elements I've been adding to her Son-Rise® Program, some that I invented, some drawn from the Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® (ABMN) approach (I became an ABMN practitioner in May 2017). While actual ABMN requires someone who has been through the training to do physically with someone or directing them physically, lots of elements are about thinking and general awareness (what they call "being present" in the Son-Rise Program) can be incorporated into working with autistic kids or adults by anyone as play therapy goals that require no touch or special touch, which ABM does of course. (See earlier posts where I mentioned teaching body position awareness, balance, and my teaching my child how to brush and wash her hair, for other examples.)
INCREASING SHORT-TERM MEMORY In a past video I mentioned how I theorized from the data that autistic people have as a cause, result or co-occurring sub-normal short-term memory ability, and have been creating opportunities for my child to use her short term memory in a context where she would be motivated to do so. BTW I've decide to coin a term for this formerly elusive but now to me obvious phenomenon that I've never heard anyone before describe or address, for now, "Autistic Short-Term Memory Deficit" or "ASTMD".
Today's session 06-29-17
For example, drawn from my insight around a year ago that curriculum can/ should come her learning to do everything I do for her, I started working on my child remembering phone numbers as I look for commercial real estate space for my office for ABMN and Option Process® Mentoring. I'm teaching her exactly what I do, which is to repeat the number I see on a sign as I drive past it until I can pull over to write it down or make the initial call (for example at the next light). I remember doing an exercise at the Option Institute's (home of the Son-Rise Program) week long adult programs that involved using our short term memories for an extended period and noticed an improvement in my short term memory that to this day is an asset I can use, an obvious demonstration of neuroplasticity of the adult brain, and that practicing using it would improve this ability. My child gets rewarded with buying whatever she wants with the money, usually toys but sometimes organizational containers, books, etc. for her toys, trading cards, etc.
Also you can see her interrupt me several times while I'm in mid-sentence, which I believe is a combination of lack of awareness that I'm talking and inability to remember (or belief that she will not or cannot remember) long enough to share it after I finish. I'm working on asking her to hold her thought, then say it later, but still refining the goal. I'm thinking now I can have her hold her thought, count to 2, then say it, then increase the counts over time. I still celebrate the urge to share which is an interactive gesture, which is a Son-Rise core technique.
USING ADULT DOT-TO-DOT BOOKS TO TEACH THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL MATH SKILLS
My daughter is still struggling with the most fundamental math skills, and I have to in the end teach them to her because despite people best intentions, all the math she's done so far still doesn't stick or allow her to do most of the most basic things because people don't "get" what's going on autistically, but I do. She never learned incrementing, decrementing and comparison, which is what's doing on in a computer CPU and what's beneath everything we learn mathematically. It's too big a topic to cover here but counting this was is the product of regular and ordered movement done in a consistent way which my child never did, and requires a map of a continuous, regularly stepping number line in her mind's eye. I have taught her regular stepwise counting on her hands involving regular "pumping" of her arm accompanied by lifting a single finger as she counts (using ABMN skills of observation), bought several meter sticks which I use whenever I need her to picture adding or subtracting as moving up or down the meter stick for a visual, and finally, using dot-to-dot books to teach her how to increment, and now how to decrement. In this video you can see how effective these books are because they're fun and the skill is learned while the child is having fun. Making learning fun is a core Son-Rise goal, and I'm always mining what my child loves to do - such as doing dot-to-dots - for what can be learned from them, where in society any piece of any activity she likes can have value and she can make a living with it, and I develop activities with those "motivators" in that direction.
ABMN ELEMENTS
Noticing Distinctions
Anat Baniel, creator of ABMN, always says that a noticing distinctions is THE stuff of learning, so whenever I can offer my child opportunities to notice and expand on observation of distinctions between things I do so. If we're looking at two houses out of the window I start noticing and pointing out distinctions and ask her to notice and name differences too and celebrate as she does, in keeping with the Son-Rise goal to reward flexibility (the child doing what you ask for, mostly). When my child recently started replacing her My Little Pony Ty Beanie Babies with the "sparkle hair" versions, I immediately saw an opportunity to compare then, and offer her $5 to list at least 10 differences between old and new ones. She has to be present and use her "outer sensory loop" (see my prior post about autistic "inner memory loop" over "outer sensory loop") throughout the activity and sees finer distinctions within the whole, thus creating mental refinement as well, that can generalize to other activities such as math or more subtle language.
Anna has come such a long way! This was the child that used to run in the street to see me get upset, and here we were surrounded by something like 6 different roads including 4-lane highway feeder roads, on this little island, and I realized I was trusting her not to do something crazy like that - trusting her with her life! She had found the world made sense and she wanted to be in it, and that I could laugh and she could get the reactions she wanted from me reliably doing other things, now. Her brother, looking like a like secret service agent, is there too, as we walked back from downtown Milwaukee, taking our first ever spontaneous bus adventure trip, which was pretty impressive how cool she was too.
First Homework
Anna's FIRST HOMEWORK EVER happened in the assignment of this activity, and by "homework" I mean assigned thinking work done when she was on her own. She will sometimes vacuum or clean things on her own, but NEVER done assigned "thinking" work on her own before. She had this activity twice before with two other prior ponies she upgraded so I thought this was a pattern she could feel confident doing on her own. I set up the activity in one of our life curriculum books and asked her to go ahead and do the contrast while I was out. After suggesting this sort of "on-your own" activity before - again, that I have done almost every time I've ever left the house, so at this point hundreds or thousands of times - AMAZINGLY she did!! She didn't get all the way to 10 elements but had listed something like 3-5 additional elements, after my first 1-2 examples I had gone through with her before leaving. She was eager to show me several times when I returned that night, which I celebrated with her (substantially inwardly as Anat recommends, which percolates through to positive attitude, which is what Son-Rise advocates, although with some outward praise in keeping with Son-Rise).
Don't force - be easy with the child's timeline
Note that she did this first homework when she felt sufficiently comfortable with the pattern of activity expected and confidence in her ability that it demanded. This is similar to Son-Rise and ABMN totally accepting the child's timeline and not forcing it; we offer opportunities but not punishment if they are not ready, without judging that timeline. Anat always says the brain is a quantum system and that as long as there is any change, that's all that matters, no matter how small. Every outward change in behavior reflects a change in the brain, and we never know whether the small change is the first, middle or last snowflake to a dramatic quantum shift. So have faith that the step the child just took is necessary on their path to recovery from autism and don't believe you can force the speed to increase. A core ABMN principle (see 9 essentials from any of Anat's books) is doing things "slow", which means the slowest speed that system can see the distinctions, and when the child feels they can go at their slowest necessary speed that's when greater learning happens.
Don't strain newly acquired abilities or connections in the brain
In keeping with ABMN, I didn't ask her to "finish" the activity, although I would been tempted to - seeing that she is so close to her goal - prior to getting the ABMN training. Forcing someone to keep going when they have had an initial success, Anat says, may destroy or limit the progress that day or in the future. Instead I celebrated my daughter's success and let her feel good about it and leave the next step until the next day, facilitating her to integrate it into long-term memory.
ABMN's "Slow" concept helps us work on the Son-Rise Goal of sensing & articulating the desire for breaks
Incidentally, our Stage 3 Son-Rise Developmental Model goal "appropriately communicates when she wants to change or stop an activity" - probably not accidentally the only one from stage 3 we didn't complete. I'm finding lots of opportunities to work on with her in implementing her desire to take breaks to integrate her new learnings. Anat teaches us not to force someone to learn or do something they are just learning past where they naturally want to stop after initial success, anyway. It's only after they have been successful, let it drop, and return when they're ready, that the ease and pleasure around mastery really takes root, and she suggests "drilling" is less effective than the "declare victory and leave the field" approach. Forcing continuation of something when they feel done makes it feel unpleasant and a person's brain wants to avoid it, and this will make the person NOT keep that route, due to the unpleasant outcome, I'm guessing.
One of our longer-term Son-Rise program participants, Brandi, at her yoga studio "Zen Gen" grand opening with Anna. She had participated since 2014 while in business school to accomplish this goal and will only be an alternate now. She's one of 3 yoga instructors we have had in our program, since many principles of yoga are well suited to Son-Rise. I just offered her to write up a post on how yoga and Son-Rise mesh and I will post all or parts in a separate post, in exchange for publishing more links and info for her business, which would be a win-win.
ABOUT ME
Skills for sale!
I continue to use both systems of thought to help myself now with my own high functioning autism. I'm setting up a practice to do Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement Lessons and Option Process Dialogue sessions in person in Milwaukee WI, and am finalizing customizing an online scheduling web app that will allow me to do phone sessions as well as be at platform for other Option Process Mentors to be open to getting sessions through the Power of Clarity® LLC, which is my new company name under which I offer both services (ABMN and Option Process). I will post about it once it's open for registration.
Son-Rise + Anat Baniel Method Neuromovement: Invaluable, possibly necessary for full recovery from Autism
Option Institute / Son-Rise training, classes and "Option Process Dialogues" helped me choose and have more conscious control over my emotional reactions to things which used to overwhelm and stop me as an autistic person before, and have the "why not?" attitude toward going for what I wanted as well as determination to persist at it. However ABMN training allowed me to see challenges, which used to always look like mountains, rapidly and effortlessly crumble into doable pieces that make momentum toward whatever I'm doing increase. Both were and are invaluable to my recovery from autism which is nearly complete. I am just trying to share what I know before I decide to move forward, so email me at [email protected] for more information or call 800-800-0321 between 9:30am-9:30pm central time (US) to discuss; leave a message if I am unable to answer.
CONCLUSION
Good luck using these techniques at home. The Son-Rise® Program and the Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® are the best things I've found to help with people of any age with autism improve dramatically and lastingly, including myself!
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!
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:
if there's nothing you want to learn / know given your situation;
if you don't understand what it is, how it's used, or what it gets you particularly not obvious connections and benefits;
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;
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);
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;
if you don't know how or are incapable of doing it even if all the other factors are a given for you;
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”
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.
To participate in Anna's program or more information on that email us at [email protected]
For information about paid phone consultations, clarity exploration/ conversations, or home visits, send your contact information and what services you'd like from us at [email protected]
and/ or visit www.autismcoaches.com
To ask questions you want answered on the blog, submit them to [email protected].
If you are interested in participating in a free weekly autism Q&A conference call, send an email with contact information including country/state/city and time zone, your questions and best days/times of the week for the call, to [email protected]
If you are interested in your child participating in the "Autism Commandos" reality show in development/ production which may include home visits and being featured in an episode, please email your contact information describing challenges you'd like to improve to [email protected]
Visit www.son-rise.org for more info on Son-Rise itself. Remember to say we referred you!
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