I wrote to my friend, Pepper, regarding a lecture she was working on. Her power point included links to some videos representing several different perspectives on autism and related conditions. I thought that was a great way of using technology for teaching. Anyway, Pepper told me I should stick it on a blog or something so here it is. Oh--the Swedes: http://www.certec.lth.se/doc/artandscience/artandscience.pdf
They are doing constructivist learning and they are using novel ways to communicate.
Hi Pepper,
I was thinking about those videos as I was getting ready for a snowy school day, and the big conclusion I came to is this: autism is a greater problem for people who think that the goal of "therapy" is to MAKE the child do something in relation to the teacher/parent's own timing (e.g., the parent who talks about how she had planned for the kid to do a puzzle and the kid was laying on the floor not cooperating and the parent admitted the child could do the puzzle in 30 seconds). It's a lesser problem, it seems to me, for those who admit there are some really neat things about all kids, autistic or not, and who are willing to be flexible on what the child does.. It's not a problem for a kid to eat with her fingers for longer than normal kids. It's not a problem for a kid to accomplish something using a different time frame or method.
Some believe that the goal of special ed is "training." I believe that the goal of any type of education is for the child to construct knowledge (that's one reason why I love what those Swedes are doing) and to express that knowledge in ways that are understandable but not necessarily "standard." We need to expand our notion of communication.
Alexander Graham Bell set deaf education back about a century by insisting on oral communication instead of ASL because he didn't believe ASL was a good form of communication (since hearing people couldn't understand it and God knows we can't make "normal" people tolerate or even support something "different"). Instead of being like Bell, we need to be like the advocates of ASL who know that it is an excellent language (and lo and behold--a lot of hearing parents are recognizing that ASL is an excellent way of getting very young babies to communicate their needs and thus being much happier because they CAN communicate).
In sum, then, I think we, as teachers, need to be flexible in our desire to help our students develop the knowledge and skills to deal with the real world. That means that when a child does something that is different but tolerable, then we need to tolerate the difference. I heard a special education teacher talk about how she allows students to sit in different positions or even stand while they do their work. They are working--and the way they are doing it is a little different but the differences are tolerable.
By the way, I'd be glad to correspond with any of your students who have questions.
Carolyn
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Time
I am imprisoned by time.
I can't wear a watch. If I do, I am checking it all the time. Also, I don't like how it feels on my wrist--either left or right. So, instead, I have memorized the location of all the clocks in the areas where I do commonly go.
I feel a compulsive need to be aware of the passage of time; I believe this need is well beyond the "clock time" orientation of middle class Americans. I worry about time. I worry that I will be late and I worry that I will miss something I am "supposed" to do because of not paying attention to time. I believe I cut short personal interactions because of time and I think about how long a phone call is likely to take before I make it. It's annoying.
Years ago, I read that people with hearing impairments who cannot hear the alarm clock go to bed telling themselves the time they want to get up--and they wake up then. I developed this ability in myself and it works pretty well if I get right up when I first wake up. If I "hit snooze" and go back to sleep, I will definitely oversleep! I do believe I have an internal clock that is very strong, because I can usually time a 30 minute violin lesson without checking the clock.
My husband operates on "experience time"--whatever he is doing at any given time, that is what he is doing and he won't stop it until he is done, no matter what the time is. If he gets involved in music, he plays until he doesn't want to play any more for that period of time. I would say that living with an experience time person is therapeutic (if also sometimes frustrating) for me, because he reminds me to pay attention to what is going on and not just what time it is.
I can't wear a watch. If I do, I am checking it all the time. Also, I don't like how it feels on my wrist--either left or right. So, instead, I have memorized the location of all the clocks in the areas where I do commonly go.
I feel a compulsive need to be aware of the passage of time; I believe this need is well beyond the "clock time" orientation of middle class Americans. I worry about time. I worry that I will be late and I worry that I will miss something I am "supposed" to do because of not paying attention to time. I believe I cut short personal interactions because of time and I think about how long a phone call is likely to take before I make it. It's annoying.
Years ago, I read that people with hearing impairments who cannot hear the alarm clock go to bed telling themselves the time they want to get up--and they wake up then. I developed this ability in myself and it works pretty well if I get right up when I first wake up. If I "hit snooze" and go back to sleep, I will definitely oversleep! I do believe I have an internal clock that is very strong, because I can usually time a 30 minute violin lesson without checking the clock.
My husband operates on "experience time"--whatever he is doing at any given time, that is what he is doing and he won't stop it until he is done, no matter what the time is. If he gets involved in music, he plays until he doesn't want to play any more for that period of time. I would say that living with an experience time person is therapeutic (if also sometimes frustrating) for me, because he reminds me to pay attention to what is going on and not just what time it is.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Telephones
I am not in the least fond of talking on the phone. Neither is my husband, and we get into the "no, you call," "no, you call..." sorts of arguments.
It's really hard for me to handle knowing when it is my turn to talk when I am in person. This is worse on the phone, particularly cell phones when you can't hear what the other person is doing when you are talking because for some reason, the receiver kicks off when the sender (my voice) is sending. So it takes a lot of concentration to talk on the phone and I dread it.
Ironically, I used to answer crisis line phone calls. And, there were ways in which I was pretty good at it.
What I am good at is taking what I know and applying it. Also I am good at accepting people who don't fit into the norm. So, having had active listening training, I can apply that. And being able to accept a lot of people means that I don't have pre-conceived notions about who they are or what they should be doing.
I do have deficits. My empathy is intellectually-oriented rather than emotionally-oriented. In other words, I choose to use my intellect to put myself in other people's shoes and I try to remember any situations I have been in that might be analogous and use my experience with those situations to guide how I listen to the other person. It's a thinking process I go through, not a fundamentally emotional process.
However, I don't think I messed anyone up, and there were times when my approach really helped someone. For instance, one time a lady called and she was silent. I remember thinking about how it would feel to call a crisis line and thinking that I needed to do whatever I could to help this person feel comfortable talking with me. So I talked about how hard it is to call a crisis line and I talked about the shelter services we had. In between, I left in little pauses to see if she was ready to talk. Eventually, I began talking about how sometimes people can start their lives over in other cities and shelters can help with that. That is what she needed to hear and she began talking with me.
If I had not hung in there with her, she wouldn't have been able to talk about her needs and fears and all that. I know of instances where crisis line workers could not hang in with the needs of a caller because the caller was outside the norm, so I was glad I was on the phones that night.
I think one of the reasons I'm good at crisis calls and not so good at regular calls is that the rule with crisis calls is that I am supposed to mostly listen, while if I am talking on the phone to a person, particularly one I do not know (I REALLY hate calling strangers), I have to talk. I have to do small talk and figure out when it is right to go onto the business of the call. If I don't do small talk, I am rude and I don't want to be rude. Yet I am at a loss for what to say. Crisis lines don't involve small talk.
It's really hard for me to handle knowing when it is my turn to talk when I am in person. This is worse on the phone, particularly cell phones when you can't hear what the other person is doing when you are talking because for some reason, the receiver kicks off when the sender (my voice) is sending. So it takes a lot of concentration to talk on the phone and I dread it.
Ironically, I used to answer crisis line phone calls. And, there were ways in which I was pretty good at it.
What I am good at is taking what I know and applying it. Also I am good at accepting people who don't fit into the norm. So, having had active listening training, I can apply that. And being able to accept a lot of people means that I don't have pre-conceived notions about who they are or what they should be doing.
I do have deficits. My empathy is intellectually-oriented rather than emotionally-oriented. In other words, I choose to use my intellect to put myself in other people's shoes and I try to remember any situations I have been in that might be analogous and use my experience with those situations to guide how I listen to the other person. It's a thinking process I go through, not a fundamentally emotional process.
However, I don't think I messed anyone up, and there were times when my approach really helped someone. For instance, one time a lady called and she was silent. I remember thinking about how it would feel to call a crisis line and thinking that I needed to do whatever I could to help this person feel comfortable talking with me. So I talked about how hard it is to call a crisis line and I talked about the shelter services we had. In between, I left in little pauses to see if she was ready to talk. Eventually, I began talking about how sometimes people can start their lives over in other cities and shelters can help with that. That is what she needed to hear and she began talking with me.
If I had not hung in there with her, she wouldn't have been able to talk about her needs and fears and all that. I know of instances where crisis line workers could not hang in with the needs of a caller because the caller was outside the norm, so I was glad I was on the phones that night.
I think one of the reasons I'm good at crisis calls and not so good at regular calls is that the rule with crisis calls is that I am supposed to mostly listen, while if I am talking on the phone to a person, particularly one I do not know (I REALLY hate calling strangers), I have to talk. I have to do small talk and figure out when it is right to go onto the business of the call. If I don't do small talk, I am rude and I don't want to be rude. Yet I am at a loss for what to say. Crisis lines don't involve small talk.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Responsibility
What responsibility do we have for ourselves?
Over the years, I have gained a lot of information about myself, particularly recently. I feel a responsibility to use this information to make sure that my interactions with other people are as God would want them to be.
So, I know I am nearsighted; I use glasses when I drive. I know that I have trouble with my emotions--they are difficult for me to understand and I also know how I have allowed them to get me in trouble in the past. By not being aware of what was going on with my emotions, I ended up being hurtful to people when my emotions bubbled up well beyond my control.
The interesting thing is that in the past few months I have come to understand a lot about myself and also because I have gotten proper medication, I feel much better emotionally and physically. However, a side-effect of this is that my old way of maintaining self-discipline no longer works.
I lost forty pounds by making rigid rules about my life, which in my case was the Atkins diet. So, I ate NO carbs for awhile and very few carbs and I lost the weight and maintained that loss for three or four years. The combination of Aspergers and depression made rigidity very easy. Add to that the amount of guilt I felt for actions I took in the past that I didn't understand, and I ended up kicking my own butt all the time. Losing weight was the one place in my life where I felt I was doing the right thing.
Now things are turned around. I feel like I am, with God's blessing, doing more right things. I am understanding my life better and I am much more able to cope.
BUT I have gained more than twenty pounds. Yikes! And I don't have very many strategies to counter this sort of thing since the kick myself in the butt strategies no longer seem possible.
My challenge now is to come up with better ways of being responsible and having self-discipline than just to do things out of fear that I will mess things up. This is the first time in my life when I have felt free enough to do something outside the fear system that I had so internalized.
Over the years, I have gained a lot of information about myself, particularly recently. I feel a responsibility to use this information to make sure that my interactions with other people are as God would want them to be.
So, I know I am nearsighted; I use glasses when I drive. I know that I have trouble with my emotions--they are difficult for me to understand and I also know how I have allowed them to get me in trouble in the past. By not being aware of what was going on with my emotions, I ended up being hurtful to people when my emotions bubbled up well beyond my control.
The interesting thing is that in the past few months I have come to understand a lot about myself and also because I have gotten proper medication, I feel much better emotionally and physically. However, a side-effect of this is that my old way of maintaining self-discipline no longer works.
I lost forty pounds by making rigid rules about my life, which in my case was the Atkins diet. So, I ate NO carbs for awhile and very few carbs and I lost the weight and maintained that loss for three or four years. The combination of Aspergers and depression made rigidity very easy. Add to that the amount of guilt I felt for actions I took in the past that I didn't understand, and I ended up kicking my own butt all the time. Losing weight was the one place in my life where I felt I was doing the right thing.
Now things are turned around. I feel like I am, with God's blessing, doing more right things. I am understanding my life better and I am much more able to cope.
BUT I have gained more than twenty pounds. Yikes! And I don't have very many strategies to counter this sort of thing since the kick myself in the butt strategies no longer seem possible.
My challenge now is to come up with better ways of being responsible and having self-discipline than just to do things out of fear that I will mess things up. This is the first time in my life when I have felt free enough to do something outside the fear system that I had so internalized.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Alexithymia
It's very interesting to search the web for things related to Aspergers and I have found something else that is significant to my life and that is alexithymia. This is the condition of not being able to identify and/or express one's emotions.
For a very long time, I knew that I had this kind of trouble, but I ascribed it to not having this sort of thing properly modeled for me. Now I am realizing that this is an aspect of how my brain is wired. It is a fact of life--had my family been different, maybe I would be a little bit better at this. On the other hand, it's probably genetic, so it's no wonder it wasn't well-modeled.
There is an array of conditions that are associated with alexithymia, including depression, Aspergers, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and substance abuse (well, former substance abuse, thanks be to God), all of which are a part of my life.
I am glad to know that there are words that describe my experiences because goodness knows, I have struggled many many times to find those words. I was organizing my "FEMA room" (a disaster area in my house) and I have a huge stack of journals, most of which reflect my attempts to understand my life and my feelings.
Huge things happen to me--recently the death of a friend, but in past years, the loss of relationships due to my failures as a human being, the ending of friendships, and so forth. With the exception of the loss of my father (okay, I was miserable and I knew it and everyone around me also knew it), I have not had the kind of reaction that other people have. Well, even when I lost my father my reaction was not what other people have--it was stronger. Sometimes I thought I was going crazy.
I have feelings, but I don't know how to tell someone else what they are. I don't know how to tell myself what they are--despite a two-foot-tall stack of journals going back to my last year of high school. Not to mention all my blogs.
The inability to acknowledge and express emotions apparently leads to many of the physical, psychological, and emotional issues, particularly fibro and IBS. It leads to inappropriate attempts to deal with these problems, such as alcoholism. As an aside, I was discussing family history with my mother and she mentioned how many alcoholics were in my family (and why was it that alcohol was even in the house when there were so many on both sides of the family????). I mentioned that antidepressants weren't available fifty years ago and much of substance abuse is self-medication.
How does this fit into the "Proud Aspie" construct? Well, to begin with, we are only beginning to find out about the array of struggles people on the autism spectrum have. So, maybe in the next generation there won't be 47 year old Aspies with stress-related diseases because of the development of effective ways of teaching young people to cope with and compensate for neurological dysfunctions.
I wear glasses because I am myopic and I got my first pair of glasses as a kid (15 years old) because of the recognition that I could not see very well. Other children get glasses even earlier on. So, this is an analogy: it would be nice for youngsters who need it to get direct instruction in how to express emotions, how to recognize emotions, and maybe even biofeedback. Not to mention how to deal with other people's emotions.
At the same time, no one discriminates against me because I wear glasses. My state department of motor vehicles says that I can't drive without them and that fact is written on my license, but no one thinks I am less than other people because I need my glasses.
This should be the same for people with neurological differences. Society has accommodated my myopia by developing effective means for me to function (my glasses) despite the fact that my natural eyes do not have sufficient acuity for much of anything (20/450 vision without glasses). I think we can together develop effective means for many people to function in our society through the use of technology and thoughtful teaching.
For a very long time, I knew that I had this kind of trouble, but I ascribed it to not having this sort of thing properly modeled for me. Now I am realizing that this is an aspect of how my brain is wired. It is a fact of life--had my family been different, maybe I would be a little bit better at this. On the other hand, it's probably genetic, so it's no wonder it wasn't well-modeled.
There is an array of conditions that are associated with alexithymia, including depression, Aspergers, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and substance abuse (well, former substance abuse, thanks be to God), all of which are a part of my life.
I am glad to know that there are words that describe my experiences because goodness knows, I have struggled many many times to find those words. I was organizing my "FEMA room" (a disaster area in my house) and I have a huge stack of journals, most of which reflect my attempts to understand my life and my feelings.
Huge things happen to me--recently the death of a friend, but in past years, the loss of relationships due to my failures as a human being, the ending of friendships, and so forth. With the exception of the loss of my father (okay, I was miserable and I knew it and everyone around me also knew it), I have not had the kind of reaction that other people have. Well, even when I lost my father my reaction was not what other people have--it was stronger. Sometimes I thought I was going crazy.
I have feelings, but I don't know how to tell someone else what they are. I don't know how to tell myself what they are--despite a two-foot-tall stack of journals going back to my last year of high school. Not to mention all my blogs.
The inability to acknowledge and express emotions apparently leads to many of the physical, psychological, and emotional issues, particularly fibro and IBS. It leads to inappropriate attempts to deal with these problems, such as alcoholism. As an aside, I was discussing family history with my mother and she mentioned how many alcoholics were in my family (and why was it that alcohol was even in the house when there were so many on both sides of the family????). I mentioned that antidepressants weren't available fifty years ago and much of substance abuse is self-medication.
How does this fit into the "Proud Aspie" construct? Well, to begin with, we are only beginning to find out about the array of struggles people on the autism spectrum have. So, maybe in the next generation there won't be 47 year old Aspies with stress-related diseases because of the development of effective ways of teaching young people to cope with and compensate for neurological dysfunctions.
I wear glasses because I am myopic and I got my first pair of glasses as a kid (15 years old) because of the recognition that I could not see very well. Other children get glasses even earlier on. So, this is an analogy: it would be nice for youngsters who need it to get direct instruction in how to express emotions, how to recognize emotions, and maybe even biofeedback. Not to mention how to deal with other people's emotions.
At the same time, no one discriminates against me because I wear glasses. My state department of motor vehicles says that I can't drive without them and that fact is written on my license, but no one thinks I am less than other people because I need my glasses.
This should be the same for people with neurological differences. Society has accommodated my myopia by developing effective means for me to function (my glasses) despite the fact that my natural eyes do not have sufficient acuity for much of anything (20/450 vision without glasses). I think we can together develop effective means for many people to function in our society through the use of technology and thoughtful teaching.
Friday, December 7, 2007
More on labels
In surfing the web, looking at information on autism, I ran across a perspective that is interesting to consider. It is that the pathologizing of Aspergers benefits people in the mental health biz and doesn't necessarily benefit those so-labeled.
For me, the label has been freeing only in that I have finally found a way to understand the array of strengths and weaknesses I have. For years, I have wondered, why am I not achieving the way I "ought"? Why have I done so poorly in significant relationships? Why do I struggle to get things published? Why do I get the feeling that I really don't understand what is going on around me? Why don't I work full time instead of 75% time? Why can't I keep my house clean? Why is brushing my teeth or taking a bath so difficult? Why don't I like to talk on the phone?
Going along with these questions was always a feeling that if I only had more self-discipline, then I would be able to do these things. So, I felt bad because I was not being the person I thought I had to be.
Then along came the label, and I realized, well certain things are more difficult than for the people with whom I compare myself. Of course, certain things are lots easier for me than for my colleagues. For instance, some of my colleagues have a hard time attaching a word document to an e-mail. So, everyone has an array of strengths and weaknesses--it's just I somehow thought I should have all strengths and no weaknesses!!
So, for me, a label has helped me to be more realistic about what I can do and what I should expect of myself. It has not limited me.
But I can imagine that had I been diagnosed when I was young, then I might not have gotten a degree in counseling and run a battered women's shelter. I might have felt that Aspergers would have limited me in the area of dealing with other people--and what a loss to me that would have been.
So, it's really important to use words to help, not to hurt people. We need to not let people's dreams be limited by our own imaginations.
For me, the label has been freeing only in that I have finally found a way to understand the array of strengths and weaknesses I have. For years, I have wondered, why am I not achieving the way I "ought"? Why have I done so poorly in significant relationships? Why do I struggle to get things published? Why do I get the feeling that I really don't understand what is going on around me? Why don't I work full time instead of 75% time? Why can't I keep my house clean? Why is brushing my teeth or taking a bath so difficult? Why don't I like to talk on the phone?
Going along with these questions was always a feeling that if I only had more self-discipline, then I would be able to do these things. So, I felt bad because I was not being the person I thought I had to be.
Then along came the label, and I realized, well certain things are more difficult than for the people with whom I compare myself. Of course, certain things are lots easier for me than for my colleagues. For instance, some of my colleagues have a hard time attaching a word document to an e-mail. So, everyone has an array of strengths and weaknesses--it's just I somehow thought I should have all strengths and no weaknesses!!
So, for me, a label has helped me to be more realistic about what I can do and what I should expect of myself. It has not limited me.
But I can imagine that had I been diagnosed when I was young, then I might not have gotten a degree in counseling and run a battered women's shelter. I might have felt that Aspergers would have limited me in the area of dealing with other people--and what a loss to me that would have been.
So, it's really important to use words to help, not to hurt people. We need to not let people's dreams be limited by our own imaginations.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Need for the Familiar
This morning my husband and I ate at a new place because of being between two errands and not having time to go to a familiar place.
It was a hospital cafeteria (after the bloodwork that required fasting and before the doc's appointment) and while trying to negotiate the place, I realized why I like to go to familiar restaurants.
First we had a hard time figuring out how to get into the place--we had come in a back entrance.
Originally we got in a line. Then I looked around and figured out there were several lines. So I left my husband in our original line and checked out the lines. Yes, we were in the right one for most of what we would want. But what was available? How much did it cost?
Then I found something I wanted more than what I had and I put down one thing and got something else. And they only had relatively small cups for the coffee (I like a lot of coffee). Although it was good coffee, but the eggs were lousy. And we had a hard time finding the silverware and napkins.
I never did figure out where they hid the prices, so all the way up to the cash register I was worried that we would pay a fortune. It wasn't too bad, although like I said, the eggs were awful and while we had been told the sausage gravy was good, it wasn't. I guess that's why I go to chains so much--I know what I am getting, usually, and for a person of my neurological makeup, who has difficulty figuring out new places, that's a good thing.
It was a hospital cafeteria (after the bloodwork that required fasting and before the doc's appointment) and while trying to negotiate the place, I realized why I like to go to familiar restaurants.
First we had a hard time figuring out how to get into the place--we had come in a back entrance.
Originally we got in a line. Then I looked around and figured out there were several lines. So I left my husband in our original line and checked out the lines. Yes, we were in the right one for most of what we would want. But what was available? How much did it cost?
Then I found something I wanted more than what I had and I put down one thing and got something else. And they only had relatively small cups for the coffee (I like a lot of coffee). Although it was good coffee, but the eggs were lousy. And we had a hard time finding the silverware and napkins.
I never did figure out where they hid the prices, so all the way up to the cash register I was worried that we would pay a fortune. It wasn't too bad, although like I said, the eggs were awful and while we had been told the sausage gravy was good, it wasn't. I guess that's why I go to chains so much--I know what I am getting, usually, and for a person of my neurological makeup, who has difficulty figuring out new places, that's a good thing.
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