Aspies For Freedom

Very wise Stella.
Normally I'd strive to do just that.

I think I see what you call hyperlexia, as drafting or compiling.
I was trying to put some perspective in the middle, between SLP and what she proffers as ABA, and what early responders posted.
The hyperlexic perspective is like throwing a Bailley bridge across a chasm of some seeming confrontation.
I think you often have to throw that bridge, even although that necessarily entails hyperlexic articulation.
The initial matter of concern was whether SLP could anchor the bridge on the other side: and she seems to have done okay in that.

So. The main idea there, is.
I'm unprepared to accept confrontations and social chasms.
We have to do what is required to communicate across them.
That necessarily takes us into strange territory.
Its always easier to lob grenades from entrenched positions, than it is to turn the no-man's land into an oasis of communication.

Happy to do that.
I suspect that what is crucial, is pushing dialogue on this.
One datum is that educational outcomes for autistic subjects are often poor: which suggests that the current educational approach is generally unsatisfactory.
This tempts me to place even more emphasis on care, rather than education as such: where identity and self esteem become central. I suspect that there is mileage in allowing a sense of personal worth and identity to lead educational experience and attainment; rather than imagining that such sense need stem from educational attainment.
Perhaps how we best feed education into a particular autistic subject's occurrence is an inherently open matter.
Perhaps the notion of developing a theory of autistic mind, is not without merit.

Sorry I didn't respond immediately.
I found your questions complex.
Had to sleep on them.

Firstly, my working assumption is: that incomprehension, of them by another; is often a primary, and distressing experience, for those understood as being on the autistic spectrum.
Secondly, a next working assumption is, that for me to empathise with those on that spectrum whom I professionally serve: it is valuable for me to experience, in my own person; others not comprehending me, although I am doing my best to give of my best understanding.

When I am working, I am the servant of my clients. They begin by massively not comprehending me: and such incomprehension by them of others, is part of why they now have me as their teacher.
It is central part of my professional responsibilities to them, to achieve some mutual comprehension. I do that somewhat, by seeing the primary fault in that incompehension as lying with me: I do whatever I can, to end by my comprehending them.

I am also the employee of my employer, and co-worker to my colleagues. In frontline work time I stick to implementing what others expect of me: there is simply no time for my personal understanding to be expressed, in that phase of things.
I do blether to my colleagues in freer time, and there I can be met by incomprehension. That does hurt: and then I think; this is what my students encounter all the time.
I also have more serious conversations with my employers, and with local and regulatory authorities: mostly in face to face dialogue; but also in written papers. In these conversations I get comprehension, mostly: but I also get incomprehension; and I also get received by anger, and other high emotions. Again I think, this is what my students come up against all the time.


What has been said about hyperlexia, I have found interesting: and I'm grateful for the idea being placed before me in that way; and grateful for it being applied to me.
However, the definition you give of it in your post: does seem very deficit, and very medical. I tend to always seek out affirmative modelling, and I'm always wary of medical understanding outside the narrow clinical/medical setting.
In situations I've been in, where others have said that so and so "didn't really understand what they are saying", or so and so "is just after attention": I always cringe, I don't like these deficit ideas about others; and, I try to find ways of grasping what is happening, where I can see and affirm what the student is "doing" or trying to do.


I was also primarily responding to SLP as the origonal poster.
Where I saw the possibility, rightly or wrongly, that s/he could be simply snowed by stark rejection of what s/he led with.
My default is not to allow a confrontation chasm to continue: but instead to throw bridges across it; its something reflexive.
In such chasms, there is void and abyss: ground which, when you take it up, risks incomprehension by all parties to such confrontation; the confrontation has, over time, squeezed out what could have been middle ground.


Is AFF different?
Yes AFF is very different.
AFF has, rightly in my view, chosen to radically challenge neurotypical views, and to challenge a curative modelling of the autistic.
AFF also, perhaps uniguely, has this challenging progressed by "aspies", not by NT advocates.
Such challenging is so radical, that what is addressed takes on a life of its own: where it's hard to contain what will happen within protocols.
This AFF setting, in how it has set itself up, in what it addresses and challenges: stirs a hornet's nest; and exposes those who come across it, to this and that which is not yet properly mapped.

Something I sense Stella.

I would oppose all behavioural approaches to the care and education of the autistic. It's beyond the method being bad: the whole perspective of the behavioural does not apply well or safely to the care and education of autistic children.
That having been said, UK care and education of children is dominated by that perspective.
Our school is going through a debate on this right now.
The matter of manners, what you call social niceties, is particularly concerning. Even as a teacher I get pulled up about eye contact at staff meetings.
I suspect that in some middle term, the behavioural approach will be rejected on human rights grounds. When applied to autistic children, anything behavioural simply has too great a potential to become actual abuse.

A lot of decent people do good things working behaviourally: but over the piece it just doesn't work well enough for autistic children; the risks are just too great, and too complex. The behavioural should just be abandoned.

M, what you say here, sums up the current educational crisis; and indicates how we might resolve it.
Education needs to accomodate and support a diversity we haven't even set out to map.
The freak calling just has to stop: people have to be affirmed in what makes them different.
And we have to step away from the myopia of how we currently see things: remembering the immense variety of human ways of doing, which there has been over time.

There is something I can try.
When our (autistic) students and their care and education is being discussed and decided upon, in our school: then I can be honest about what I sense, think and feel about that matter.
When I do this, I encounter the same response as does any autistic person: my views, and perhaps the fact that I express and press them, always risking being judged innapropriate, and indeed wrong.
I can then hold my ground, seeking to show that my views are not inconsistent with the best interests of our students.

My views then hold more sway than that of our students. They hold more sway than when I act as a parent of my own children.
My colleagues and employers are constrained, as am I, by all sorts of professional bonds and protocols.
I have to give ground on what is involved in us all working collectively as professionals, and in the interests of our students.
These others have to give ground to me (if I'm getting it right), on the same basis.

There is an anxiety, for me and for those who have to deal with me, in working this way. I sense that our students experience very similar anxiety, and for very similar reasons.

So, yes, I do have more sway as a teacher, but its a highly circumscribed sway, and it entails a constant professional and personal anxiety.

Confession:  I am making my 4 yr old do 20+ hours of ABA/week after preschool and on weekends

My comments on SLP's description are:

Reinforcers -- We use legos.  I have spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars investing in many sets.  He'll do ABA for hours and ask for more "therapy".  Yes I let him play with legos outside of therapy.  Whenever he wants.

What I don't like is my consultant telling me to give him a different reinforcer because he will get tired of it. Lego's are not some gag for him but a genuine interest\hobby\passion\stim\whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

What I don't like is using food for a reinforcer.  Ok, I will make him ask when he wants more or make him say thank you or make him offer it to someone else before he gets some but not as a real reinforcer -- do this or you'll be hungry.

And let's not even start talking about the food programs where one lady who "recovered" her son said "and it didn't matter how many times he spit it in my hand, he was going to eat that rice".

My consultant is suggesting my son's behavior is diet related and wants us to take a route that I think is cruel especially given that she isn't recognizing that his behavior is socially motivated.  Yeah he is loud.  He is trying to say something.  Help him express himself socially.  Don't tell me I should try a very restrictive diet for two weeks and see if his behavior changes because any idiot knows a half-starved person isn't going to have the energy to be playful.

Repetition and structured teaching: Yeah yeah useful.  Oh but when my son says "I don't want to answer that because I already know the answer" but the therapist wants him to do repeated trials, I step in and say ask him something he doesn't know because you are boring him to death which will cause non-compliant behavior.

Also, therapists/consultants need to be more flexible to break the structure.  My son lacks compliance and so the order from up high was to make him answer his questions and ignore his speaking when he tried to change the question.  What I deduced was that he was making a communication attempt as an individual and not content to just aswer what was asked.  He wanted to ask and the therapists/consultants thought it interfered with his therapy.  I thought the therapists/consultants interfered with his natural communication developing and insisted his questioning be allowed.  He loves asking questions now because I could point out to the therapists that often when they had "non-compliance", it was because he tried to ask something and they ignored him.

Breaking learning down into small parts:  yeah yeah useful.  Oh but when my son says "it's for babies" after you ask him to do something, please get a clue that he wants a challenge.  Yeah yeah he should say "y" when you point to the "y" but he is already reading "you" and "your" and "yourself" and "smelly" [which sounds completely different] and ... just fine and understanding the meaning.  So he doesn't answer you when you ask what letter it is.  Maybe he should but I don't think the solution here is to make him name every letter.  Oh but he has to for "compliance" sake.  Well, let's find a better way to teach him compliance than boring him to death.

Presenting concepts in isolation :  yeah yeah necessary .  Still, when he gereralizes something, it needs to be recognized and not a therapist kinda going along on auto-pilot thinking all austic kids need to do every target of every program in order to learn their "language base"

Anyway, and I am spending everything I have on ABA and think my son absolutely need s it.  You may just think I have a lousy consultant but really they are pretty good.  My point is that even high quality ABA misses here and there. We are not "state-of-the-art" because we are not rich but still I think you get my point.  ABA seems to me to be consistently off the mark for my child.  People can not be "programmed" but ABA uses "programs".

I've seen my son explode verbally in the year or so we've been doing it and am really grateful that ABA exists.  Still, at times I feel it is limiting to him as a person and try to avoid that aspect as much as I can.  

Mostly, I enjoy seeing him use what he learned in ABA for his own spontaneous purposes.  Sometimes I cringe when he asks a playmate "tell me a toy" because that is what people ask him and he naturally think it is how people interact.  ABA is at times artifical and I try to make him aware of that.

I can't say my way is the best because my son doesn't listen to his teachers and other autistic kids his age do.  Maybe the true "ABA" way to establish compliance is right but I feel like I need to give my son more respect than that.  He learned to read and actually understand  at an early age because he has an agenda (and understands what interests him).  We need to leverage that interest to help him function in the "NT" world but ABA seems to be telling me that we need to condition him not to pursue his agenda.

I'll use ABA for what it's worth as a language excercise but no I don't buy into it without close close scrutiny.  You can see "autistic" characteristics in NTs if you really care to look.  I don't think we are so different.  Other kids need help to read.  He needs help to talk.  So what.  Still, he is the minority and by virtue of that perhaps will suffer.  The majority has the weight of numbers and I just pray that he doesn't get crushed.

HI,

Well the legos were really for my son because I felt bad about making him do ABA.  As for who enjoys them more...

No-one would call me an aspie except for my wife who knows me best.  Really though, I don't think you could fairly say I am.  Still, it's a spectrum right and I think you could honestly say everyone is on it someplace including my wife who is exactly like my son when he isn't being exactly like me.

Anyway, ABA it seems to me has its pros and cons.  I don't pretend to know what is what and probably won't be able to without some hindsight.  Mostly though it seems like the "behavioural interventions" are a bit flakey.  I mean my consultant is saying "oh that is your son's escape behavior -- here follow this plan" and I am thinking, is she real? -- my son is surely just trying to get attention and timing it with something I can't let him escape from because he knows it will get the most attention.

I like some of the language excercises in ABA though.  We had so much fun doing variants of "do pigs fly" (remember my son is only 4) and its a joy for me to be able to ask him questions because I really want to know who he is and what his world is about.  My SLP (not the one who started this thread) and I love the way my son takes language and uses it for his own purpose -- not necessarily what the ABA therapist is trying to get him to do with it.  

Yeah I want to believe I am doing what I can to help my child get the language he needs to communicate and survive.  I always have doubts about if I am doing the right thing.

itsok

We continue because I know that ABA is going into conversation training.  I have a background in linguistics and have read a bunch (and forgot a lot) on the structure of conversation.  I want him to understand that.  He can choose to follow or break the normal structure as he pleases, but I want him to understand it.

I work with many non-native speakers of English and I see how not knowing the structure of conversation in English confuses them and makes them reluctant speakers.  [please note: I am not trying to suggest that this is true for aspies -- I don't really know.]

In my son's case he will have to switch languages in a year or so and we'd like him to have an understanding of English before he moves on.  ABA is how we are doing that.

As for pressure, of course we feel it but it doesn't determine what we do.  

As for being a cardboard cutout, that would never happen to our son.  If anything, he will be the outside of the cardboard where you can see someone was cutout in the middle.  He will never the cutout person inside.  It's ok for him to be the outside of the cardboard I think.

When he saw two girls playing with bubbles yesterday he said "the girls are playing",  Then a minute later he said "it's two boys" with a twinkle in his eye because he delights in saying the opposite.  If the NT girls hear him calling them boys, they probably won't be pleased and I doubt he will be invited to play with their bubble.  I know he is trying to express something funny and I want to help him do that.  Still as a parent I feel like I have to help him understand how his comment "it's two boys" might be taken.  

I am not trying to stop him from saying things that no one else would say.  He will always do that.  I believe it is his nature either because he's an autie (or eventually aspie) or it's just his personality.  Still, I want him to have an understanding of how what he is saying may be interpreted by NTs.

I am not sure what he wanted to say about the girls and not sure what he could have said instead.  As time goes along though, I think it can be figured out and we can find a way for him to express himself in a way that won't cause a misunderstanding.

Anyway, it's very interesting to read what everyone has to say on this site.

Well the bubbles have little to do with it actually.  I am afraid that what will happen is that the girls will be offended and not want to play with him and that will make him cry.  I've seen it before where he does something that doesn't make sense to someone else and he is saddened by their reaction.

You are very right, I may well not be an ideal parent.  I try to keep his perspective in mind.  I really do.  

It's like minority groups who speak a non-standard English that has it's own special meaning to them.  I would never encourage them to abandon their way of speaking, but I would encourage them to be able to speak the standard for times when it's in their best advantage to do that.  I don't want my son to stop being a minority but rather to understand as best he can more about the majority.

One thing which might be noted with ABA, is what the student (child) encounters. The ABA tutor is going to be fairly unyielding, as they follow through their method: such a tutor will only yield when the student gives them what they want. This will also be accompanied by feelings in the tutor: feelings that they may associate with professionalism, and perhaps even kindness.
Taken together, these things which the student here encounters as ABA, are likely to come to model the student's vision of the world. The student will tend to come to understand that this is what the whole world is like.

People may be choosing or rejecting ABA, on the basis of whether or not this is how they want their child to model the world.
The child (the autistic child) may or may not have somewhat similar life chances under ABA as not under ABA. The decision to accept or reject ABA: may be based on judgement as to the child's best interest; but it may equally be a political judgement, as to what kind of vision of the human world, you want your child to embrace.

Well here they are all expensive, and sigh -- he just got kicked out starting from Sept next year.

I'll have to keep that in mind.  We are in a non-English speaking country.

Anyway, thank you everyone who posts here.  Amy especially helped me to realize how much I like his unique sense of humor.  Sometimes his jokes don't work and I don't like them but sometimes neither do mine.  I think that what I like best about him are really some of the things that are "problems" or make him different.

I have to say too that being in a non-English speaking country, the things that get written on this board sound so natural to me.  Even Biddy Roy who got criticized a little bit for his writing style I think is a gem because I truly appreciate how he phrases things.  I think some of you are pampered by a culture that expects a speaker or writer to always be clear instead of the listener/reader having to guess at what the meaning is.  Yeah yeah it's easier if the speaker/writer is clear but there is a freedom in allowing the speaker/writer to explore their thoughts more.