spoke today

[Guest guest]

, a 17 year old with autism, spoke at our ASA-ETC spring

conference today. He is a very handsome, articulate, funny young man.

Among some things he taught me today is that most of the behaviors we

consider negative from our children with autism have explanation. He

stated the majority is rooted in anxiety, fear, or both. One mom asked

why her 18 year old is so prompt-dependent, gave an example of him

waiting in his room every morning until she comes up and tells him to

come down. She wanted to know why he wouldn't eventually come down.

' response is that he probably feels so insecure that he's going

to do the wrong thing. suggested the boy has learned from being

fussed at that it's better to do nothing until he's told what to do.

That broke my heart. Made me realize that while sometimes I need to

tell Allie what she should not do, as mom I need to be very careful to

give more opportunities to praise her and build up her self-esteem,

and encourage her to make choices so she will build confidence in

making her own decisions. I know with the mother-daughter relationship

we can say 10 positive things and 1 neg and our girls will remember

the 1 neg more than the other 10, at least that's how I was with my mom.

Another thing he said is that auditory integration helped him

tremendously. In fact, today he was wearing earplugs so all the sounds

would not be so distracting. He could hear our questions easily with

the plugs, was amazing hearing. He also said the vast majority of kids

with autism have hearing that is too acute, too good, that's why sound

is such a problem. I'm definitely going to look for a good AI program

in my area.

Another thing, he talked about him being bullied in elementary

school. Said what many kids with autism will do in that situation is

actually provoke the bulliers because they feel it is a torturous

experience they must get through and provoking the bullying somehow

gives the person with autism a sense of control, that at least it's

happening on the person's terms. I wonder if this might be the case

with a lot of other behaviors. Like with Allie, I wonder if that's why

she distroys her room as soon as we get it clean, like maybe she knows

it will get messed up, might as well go ahead and take care of it so

she feels she has some control.

He also said that we as parents need to stop placing time limits on

every aspect of our kids' development. He gave an illustration of a

child hearing the Hanzel & Grettel story then taking breadcrumbs &

throwing them all over the floor. When she's fussed at, she cleans it

up, then goes and gets a doll & throws it into the oven of her

sister's birthday cake baking. Clearly she was engaging in pretend

play and if she was 2 we would think it was cute, but at age 10 we

would be annoyed. Well, for our kids, their pretend play skills might

be at the 2 yr old age so why are we mad for them doing something

appropriate for their individual development.

I think what the things said today further what I've been

feeling for a while with Allie. I've felt like I push her to do what

" she's supposed to do " to the point that she is forced to participate

in a world for which she has little control. That must be a defeating

feeling and I hope to stop doing that and find a way to make life more

relaxing and enjoyable on her terms. I'm trying to ask her more what

she wants to do and teach myself that if it's not an absolute issue,

why not let her choose what she wants. It might open the door to more

self-esteem and help her development more than forcing everything. For

any other 6 1/2 yr old we would allow a certain amount of choices, but

Allie's limited communication tends to make me want to choose for her.

I'm trying to slow down and find out her needs in a way she can express.

Debi