I am a fairly strong advocate for my fifth grader. He is the first of many who are recognized as autistic who are going through our public school system. I am finding that most of our special educational teachers have little or no training when it comes to Autism.
Further, there is a denial about getting or needing such training, a resistance if you will. This is only overcome by badgering and insistence and\or finding someone new enough to the system that they welcome training opportunities.
As I work with and against this system, I start to get an underlying understanding about why things are the way they are. I also get better at pointing these patterns out and getting buy-in to what I am advocating.
Special Education teachers are usually trained in modifying kids behavior. They have set in their minds cause, effect relationships and methodology for dealing with unwanted behavior. The behaviors they deal with willful, malicious, attention demanding or otherwise inappropriate for to the child's stage of development. The goal is to stop the behavior by ignoring or punishment followed by introducing more acceptable behavior and reinforcing.
Autism works differently then this. What can appear to be willful or malicious or attention demanding, is not always the case. My Connor, for example, has difficulty understanding when kids are being mean to him. If a child lashes out at him or treats him badly he will stay away from that child more out of confusion. He really has no concept of being malicious.
Lets say you are in a country where you do not understand the language, gestures or culture. Someone approaches you says something, it escalates, despite your effort and you wind up in jail. You are taken someplace else where people again speak at you then punish you physically and throw you back into jail. This pattern is repeated despite what you try to do.
You can imagine the frustration, how would you react? how would you react over time?
Get out, give up or die. None of which are the desired goal.
2 comments:
Typically, the autistic child gives it their best shot. If it doesn't work, they regress to something that worked in the past.
The less something works, the further back they regress until they are in a tantrum (or Meltdown), because that will ALWAYS get you out of the situation (at least at school).
The more tools they have to try, the longer it takes to get to the meltdown part. Our goal is to give Connor as many options as possible, using language, signs, whatever, to help him be able to communicate his frustration so we can fix it.
Sometimes all he needs is a little break from the situation to move his body and get out the wiggles. But until that happens, no amount of coercing can get him to do the work if he has to wiggle right then.
This so talks to my story about Autism and the police department. As these kids get older, there will be run ins with law enforcement, and they are trained to keep increaseing the level of force until compliance is reached. Very effective for criminals---problematic, even fatal, for autistic folks. I hope departments get trained to recognize and deal differently with people on the spectrum.
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