Aspies For Freedom

Hi SLP

I teach.
Teach students characterised autistically.

I have a thing about everything behavioural.
I don't favour anyhting cast in behavioural terms.

That being said, behaviouralism is just like Communism in what came to be the Soviet Union. It's the dominant applied ideology. Everyhting has been cast in its image. You have to come to terms with it.

The failing with behaviouralism is simple.
Behaviour is how you are seen by others.
For anyone who is organised autonomously, as are those characterised autistically: such behaviour, while significant because the understanding of another; is very much secondary or tertiary.
The primary matter, for any person organised autistically, is their own understanding, their own subjectivity.

Behaviouralism, most anyhting cast in terms of behaviour, simply because of how it emphasises how others see a subject: actually carries an anti-autistic agenda.
This difficulty is compounded for the autistic, because the difficulty is mediated syntactically. A world composed on a behaviourl basis, has a syntax which subverts autistic occurrence.

As a dsylexic person, breaking learning down into simple elements, is an understanding disaster for me: as is placing emphasis on my understanding one element before moving on to some next in a notional sequence; when I learn, I learn holistically; what I learn is very often other than what any teacher sets out to teach me.
I can experience the behavioural as abusive, and always as an exigency. I want in no way to be conditioned by any collective: I regulate my relations and interactions with others, on the basis of a personally autonomous ethicality; what the collective feels is simply environmental data, not something I would let influence me.

Conception for an autistically organised person is, I think, something of a whole person action: a whole person action which mediates their person and world; where the fulcrum of this is a radical subjectivity, but a subjectivity capable of encompassing as much as needs to be encompassed.
The autistically organised person has, if undamaged, something of a feral basis to their occurrence: it's them and the universe of things, and a very personal journey, where things come into being in conception and understanding.

The behavioural seems based on some other understanding: where what some notional collective experience and understand is, is some datum, some neurotypical normal; where behaviourally grounded education seems intent on leading all children towards this collective understanding.
The trouble is, I think, when viewed from an autistic point of view: that collective understanding is so very often wrong, biased, partial; simply something of an arbitrary ideology in fact.
That ideology reflects some dominant world: and it may serve some constituency of the neurotypical well enough; but, for autistically organised and characterised subjects, such understanding can be profoundly harmful.
The difficulty in discerning this harm, beyond a general exclusion of autistic understanding, is that the harm is mediated syntactically.

Imagine working on a petrol engine, using a diesel manual; or on an AppleMac using a PC manual: the outcome is going to be screwed up; the syntax of the applied knowledge is wrong.
A trouble with behavioural methods is, that not only can they mask this syntax problem, they can have the power to simply impose upon and shape the child regardless. You end up with a terrible diesel engine or PC: wrongly badged as diesel and PC, because constitutionally they are petrol and AppleMac; but where the behaviourally mediated dominant setting, has the power to corset the outcomes as properly diesel and PC, but without the normative functioning of these items.
Where these misbadged diesels and PCs are actually people, who continue to autonomously operate as if they were petrol engines and AppleMacs: then such subjects operate on the basis of understanding which does not register with the collective; the collective only working to understanding which lists diesels and PCs. That is one model of the autistic exigency.
Where a subject so autistically circumstanced, reaches for and expresses their autonomous understanding: then, in a current behavioural dispensation, that expression, if acted upon, is liable to be deemed innapropriate behaviour. The behavioural can and does come to stand neurotypical guard, on every byewway of understanding which an emancipating autistically characterised subject might take.

Sometimes I entertain the vision that the behavioural currently implements something of a holocaust against the individualism which I value.
Personally I do not dissociate the behavioural in its current guises, from the political developments on both sides of the Atlantic, which led to the travesties of our intervention in the Middle East, and some general erosion of our collective sense of what is genuinely right and wrong.
All of this sees some social quorum simply imposing its understanding on others.

I, personally, do not think that the behavioural, in any guise or form, has any place in the care and education of any subject characterised autistically.
The fulcrum, I think, in the progression of any autistically organised person is, rather, communication. Communication, not of something already assumed or preconceived: but communication which is a beginning in itself, where conception and assumption follow from that communication, and do not precede it.

...Oh good. It's not just me who was having difficulty understanding that post..

Something along the lines of methods and techniques used to teach an NT are unlikely to be as effective on an autistic is what I got from that.

(a little like stress relief techniques, really)

Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood.

When I unleash, as in these posts, others do find me difficult to understand.
Generally I do not so unleash: I work within the understandings which others have; and work through my own understanding as best can. The capacity to do this makes me primarily dyslexic, rather than primarily autistic.
When I actually express and articulate my own understanding, in terms of how I sense and experience things: then I move into a primarily autistic moment; what I say risks going of the radar of the collective I'm trying to speak to.
My understanding of what the autistically characterised students I work with are going through: is that they do not begin with this on-off switch I have; and as they seek to progress through their own understanding, they run into real difficulties with a dominant collective view.

Say for example I were to take the vision of things which informs this forum, as I in fact will: and seek to express it in a mainstream care and teaching setting, as I will; then I will risk going of the radar of the understanding in terms of which my colleaugues work.
Similarly, if I were to too prematurely express the understandings I share with these colleagues, in this AFF forum setting: then I risk going of the radar of this forum's culture.

Not being comprehended, when working with the autistic, it seems to me, is the core experience.
What autistically characterised subjects encounter, perhaps more than anyhting else, is incomprehension: a reception of them which involves essential incomprehension of them.
My working notion, is that what we must do, is adjust reception: so that the autistically organised person comes to be comprehended; and that I would call communication.

That having been said, incomprehension is something you always want to progress to comprehension.
What I find, when I achieve some degree of communication and comprehension, with my students: is that the diad we then are, is generally in an awkward relation to the dominant setting, the neurotypical setting.
A colleague summed this up by speaking of "being in the middle with you": we get something right with our students; the next thing is to get the straight world to adjust itself, to accomodate what has allowed this to happen.

I take the autistic understanding to be generally intellectually superior to that of the neurotypical.
There are then fundamental problems.
That autistic understanding is radically subjective, individuated and private.
The autistic problem is to take their autistic understanding to collective market.
Keep striving to articulate that autistic understanding: and the incomprehension feedback allows for progressive adjustment; becoming a trial and error experimentation, as to what allows for comprehension.

The thing is not to stop doing this.
The trick is not to lose sociality while doing this.
The neurotypicals are perhaps better at sociality: the autistically organised subject can learn from the neurotypicals in this.

What I don't want anyhting to do with, are conceptions of the autistically organised person, which are grounded in deficit models.
You know the kind of thing. Autistic folks cannot empathise, don't have a theory of mind, have underlying brain disorders, cannot accomodate change.
What I'm striving to do, is develop an affirmative model of the autistic: and an educational intervention therapy, based in that model; where I fulcrum that model in what I would call communication.
This has a concomitant of countervailing or displacing the dominant neurotypical colective world. That being a massive ask, incomprehension is likely to remain the default consequence of such striving.

I find Einstein a good model of this. When he was on the way to his relativity and quantum modelling: the default response to him, and his articulation, would remain incomprehension.
What Einstein won through to, was a profile of communication, which would have begun as tenuous: which eventually saw the collective progressively migrate to subscription to his modelling.
Eventually, Einstein had articulation so refined, that people accepted its symbolic expression. E=MC2 is such an expression.

That's a fair paraphrase.
Sentence use in context: active context; active person and biography mediating context.
You might see it as having to take the student to where they saw the point of something: saw the instrumental significance of something; saw how it could see their own progression, enhanced and refined. That might be taken as their personal pragmatics.
What you might then encounter, was some realisation that the pragmatics which saw some conventional outcome, would not be the same as the pragmatics of autistic occurrence. As an autistic dyslexic, I use language for different purposes than does a current neurotypical subject: I therefore have a language usage style which is dys-lexic; I am not constrained by a conventional lexicon of language usage. Subjects organised more autistically than me, will have laguage usage determining pragmatics, likely to deviate more from some neurotypicall lexicon.

My understanding is, that you must empathise with what the autistically organised subject is about: and that can only be done by entering autistic plane; occurring autistically as a teacher. That entails being able to take the educational project beyond the neurotypical envelope: beyond the conventional landscape of a collective; and to the autistically organised subject's loci of occurrence.
Maybe a rule of thumb would be, that an autistically organised subject will use language autistically, and for autistic purpose: and the crucial aspect of this could be termed syntax; where autistic syntax differs from neurotypical syntax.

As a parallel. I teach craft and design technology: where, conventionally you teach design and craft; then move to make a project. I reverse that in practice. My students demand to go straight to product crafting. I scaffold such producing. Then I use that unfolding production to make reference to design choices present in the crafting: we could cut this 50mm longer, what do you think; should we use wood or plastic for this part.
For many students decisions and concentration are difficult. There I shift to what I sometimes see as dream catching. Latching into some moment of their occurrence, bridging from that to something understandable in craft and design terms, seeking to embed all this in their identity processes, perhaps extending all this vocationally. I then manage the central coherence of all that.
It can be flying by the seat of pants stuff: and it remains massively supported; but, hopefully, what we do has has meaning, pragmatic signficance for the student.
What the student takes from this, may lie at an odd angle to what the Scottish Qualification Authority define as Craft and Design Technology. The loci of their educational experience and attainment may risk being somewhat unmappable in SQA terms.

But, and here language and CDT are similar, there is an orientation to an underlying lexicon.
Both crucially mediate and sustain the modern world we live.
The lexical aspect (and maybe sometimes I call that syntax) comes in the dynamics and mechanisms of this mediation: there is a coherence, an almost rule governed coherence to how this mediates; where we can usefully term that lexicon as a whole, and syntactical in its processes.
Neurotypicals are significantly bound by the lexicon, and its syntaxes: they occur within lanscape mediated by them; they are conventional. Autistic organisation orientates both to a ferality preceding such lexicon, and to possible variation of it: that sees such autistics are origonal, creative, innovative, essentially unconventional and aconventional.

A major problem is the the dominant neurotypical culture, generally does not track and map this.
So when autistic departure from convention occurs: the neurotypical only sees nullity; there is not departure to an autistic somewhere else, only movement to what is not comprehended.
The exigency in this, for the autistically organised subject, is infinitely profound.
Autistic language usage then reflects that. That usage referring to what is inconceivable to the neurotypical constituency. Syntax varies profoundly: as between reference to what is neurotypically conceivable; and reference to what begins as neurotypically inconceivable.
The emancipating autistic remains fluid in such syntactical variation: the broken autistic becomes rigid, repetitive, stereotypical.

An important language matter for the autistic, can be the distinction between thing reference and action reference.
Thing reference would have it that something obtains as an element in an objective and common world: where action reference would have it that such an element arises as a result of process; where a very human process of self creation could be implicated in that.
Autistically organised subjects may have, I think, sensory experience which does not reflect an objective and common world. Much thing orientated language can there become redundant, if not misleading: except as a tool for relation to neurotypically organised folks.
My own sensory processes are radically subjective: varying with my whole person condition; varying over time, varying with who I am with, with what involved in. Objectivity only has nominal and linguistic meaning for me: it simply does not figure in my experience; I view objectivity as a neurotypical ideology.
My language usage is process referring, where a neurotypical language usage might be more object referring. Each of us can only award a strange status to what the other takes as most real.

My task, in advocating for the students I teach, is to seek to make their universe of autistic occurrence, more visible to the neurotypical subject.
That requires being able to run all the syntaxes involved.
The difficulty there, arises from the sheer scale of what the autistic and neurotypical alternately manage: where their alternate instruments for so managing, have been forged by this massivity.
It proves very difficult, with this particular approach, to have autistic and neurotypical instruments of self management in the same frame of reference.
This difficulty is something needing to be approached from both sides: there is need for neurotypical perspective on this; there is need for autistic perspective on this.

The language entailed in any perspectival conjunction in this, would be singular.
Not always turgid and recondite, but stemming from moments of just such.
That language would be embedded in real and actual people: not just in scholastic treatise

I think what I'm saying is, that what is singular in effectively teaching an autistically organised student, and what is singular in the use to which they might put what they gain through education: are intimately intertwined, and only incidentally related to some nueurotypical way of doing; where the key to such educating, and to its fruits usage, entails a communication with the autistic subject, and in autistic terms.
Language education bears on all this. We educators are required to empathise with the autistically occurring subject: we need to develop a theory of autistic mind. We need to comprehend how language works in the processes of all that.

What you say is very useful Amy. Very valuable to me.

Hello Biddy Roy - a few words from a friend.

You speak very exactly - which is great - but you put so many good ideas in a sentence it makes it difficult for us to keep up.

Try this
- sort out the main ideas
- put them in as few words as possible


I had to do this, but discovered my way out of hyperlexia all on my own.

Now you've got AFF helping you!!! Talk to us in a few carefully chosen words! AFF is listening!

The meaning achieved in the language we use, is mediated syntactically.
Language process works holistically, and the relation of element to whole is syntactical.
Syntax is the term referring to an order in this whole-element relation, a dynamic order in a process.

The behaviourally informed world being forged under New Labour reforms in the UK, has the same dynamic relation between whole and element.
Use the elements, generally elements of comprehension and interpretation, and you engage in a phenomenological syntax, where the outcome tends to be this intended behavioural world.
Using the syntax, using the behavioural phenomenology, tends to mediate that behavioural world as outcome.

This has hamstrung those opposed to these New Labour behavioural reforms: effective opposition has proved very difficult.
Refuse to use the New Labour terms of reference, and you risk fundamental marginalisation.
Use them, and you risk ending at a New Labour branded terminus.

This exigency, this political ennuie, is mediated syntactically: New Labour have succeeded in setting the very language of political discourse; where use of that language makes it well nigh impossible to orientate to what is not generically New Labour.

The autistic exigency, that of occurring out of perspective which tends not to register collectively, conventionally or neurotypically, is even more extreme.
Use neurotypical elements, and a syntactical action makes it well nigh impossible to break out of the frame of reference of the whole, to which these elements and syntax are tied.
Again, the example of the Communist Soviet Union is an accessible example: use the elements of the phenomenology of that societies Communist culture, and you were tied to a syntax which tended to leave you contained in the Communist frame of reference.

An autistically organised subject, has a phenomenolgy of elements and syntax, which differ from the behavioural: because the behavioural is fulcrummed in the collective, and its primacy; and the autistic is fulcrummed in autonomy, and its primacy.
The hammering that the autistic then takes in this, occurs through syntax: the syntax of the neurotypical will end with the effective nullification of what the autistic would affirm; recourse to elements and syntax which might so affirm, will see the whole person of the autistically organised subject, itself nullified as off the wall.

The syntax relating Newtonian element (point, say) to Newtonian whole; differs from the syntax relating Einsteinian element to Einsteinian whole.
Stick to Newtonian elements, and you are drawn into a syntactical usage, where you will tend never to break out to the Einsteinian paradigm.

The Newtonian vision of the physical universe, we remained within for three hundred years. It was mediated by its syntax: the dynamic relation between its elements and its whole.
Likewise, we now inhabit an Einsteinian physical universe: its phenomenology mediated by its syntax; where we begin by using its elements, and obeying its syntax, and end within its conception of physical universe.

Social process is no different.
Use the language of New Labour reform phenomenology: refer to its elements, and abide by its syntax; and you tend to have New Labour, behaviorally informed social process as outcome.
If you do not want such outcome: then, really, you need to abandon its elements and syntax; you need to abandon its phenomenology.

The crucial aspect is always syntactical: the dynamic and ordered relation between elements and whole.
Mediation picks up on the highly subtle aspects of process. Things come about through processes. We can move from not having something, to then having it. From not having the preconditions of some process, to then having them.

Biddy - you're amongst friends now.

I really have never had a good explaination of what ABA is or some examples of it.  I have heard many bad things about ABA, especially aversions.  

I think this other person is just using verbal diarrhoeia to be annoying.  If people are here to just be annoying then they should go away.

Please tell more about ABA and why you think it is important.

Me too. I really don't understand what it is at all.

What I can not understand is families of autistic children demanding as a right that they need to have full-time ABA therapies for their children at the cost of $40,000 per year of more.  Somehow they believe that the ABA therapy will cure the autism.  

Some of the types of teaching methods that SLP describes are just ways in which our family usually "plays" with pre-school children.  Other families might just sit the child in front of the television and expect them to learn the alphabet from Sesame Street.  Some families should just turn off their television and start playing with their children.

For example:  we read alot to our babies and children.  Even just babies who are 6 months old.  They can turn the pages.  We try to praise more than say "no".  We do not just read the text of the book.  We try to point out images on the page and ask the child to point them out or say what the image is.  All this type of play which is called therapy, such as demonstrating hard/soft, big/small, hot/cold is something we do everyday one-on-one with the children in our family.  This is because we do not use day-care.  At least one parent is home during the day with the child.  Other relatives come over often to play.  We do not use the television for extended periods as a babysitter.  We do not use the television for children under three at all.  We talk to the children and babies all the time.  The babies are carried around in a sling most of the day while the mother carries on with her work and talks to the baby.

I can understand that some families might need a therapist since they are too busy to play and care for their children themselves.   I think that some people might find it difficult to play with children who are autistic just because at times they do not seem responsive.  They just give up and ignore them because the non-verbal communication is not happening right away.  

I wonder if birth order has anything to do with how an autistic child will progress at learning.

I should think that having a therapist working with a child for 6-8 hrs per day, 5 days a week too stressful and too tiring for the child even if the therapist is very nice.  That is what some ABA programmes recommend.

Education in schools for children is a fairly recent invention as far as the development of the human race.  I am convinced that it does not work well for everyone.  Why make everyone fit into one method of learning and call everyone who does not a freak?

Classroom learning where the students sit and listen to a teacher blah blah blah all day - sitting in little rows and learning about things instead of experiencing them.  Classroom education favours auditory learners.  Visual learners can survive in that environment but other learning styles will not.  

Think back a few hundred years ago.  Education was mostly on-the-job-training done by parents, family and sometimes an apprenticeship programme.  If anything modern educational methods are UNNATURAL.  

Unfortunately, not many people homeschool.   Some people believe that television will educate their children.  They do not interact or even talk to their babies and toddlers because they are so ignorant of child development.

ABA =  old wisdom/teaching repackaged and often distorted for money

Here is an excerpt from a Christian homeschooling newsletter I received.  The article is entitled "Spreading the Good News"


"Am I teaching my children to help others?  .....

We can teach compassion.  We can begin this very young.  We can say, "Don't do that.  You're hurting him," or "The baby is sad.  She's crying.  What's wrong?"

When children fight over toys, we can say, "He likes the truch too.  Let's let him have a turn."  We can teach them to share.  "Here's a cookie for you and here's one for Sallie.  You'll make her happy."

We can remind them to "be sure to help Tim.  Remember he's younger than you are."

Making fun of others seems such an easy thing to do, for adults as well as children.  When we adults slur other nationalities and laugh at the less fortunate, we're teaching our children we think we are better than others.  Galations 3:28 reminds us that in God's eyes we are all on the same level.    ..........

All of our churches have those with special needs.  Sometimes mental or emotional weaknesses make us want to avoid certain persons.  We need to love more like Jesus did.  Jesus healed the lame, the sick, and those with mental disturbances.  We can't heal, but we can love with Jesus' love.  We can smile, ask how they are doing, invite them over, or offer them a ride.  Our children are watching and learning about compassion.  

Hospitality is something we can teach at home, and shows Christian love.  Our children can learn to help make others feel welcome in our homes.  We want to share hospitality with our best friends, but maybe we could also follow Jesus' teaching in Luke 14:12-15, and invite someone else for a change.  

Compassion begins at home and in the church, but we can also show compasssion to our unsaved neighbors when they're hurting."  ..........