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  • Home
  • Introduction to Autism
    • Characteristics
    • Common Myths >
      • Negative Narrative >
        • Autism Controversies
  • How to Interact
    • Stigma & Discrimination
    • What to Avoid
  • Advice for Parents
    • Visual Supports
    • Autism Treatments
    • Explaining Autism to Kids
    • A Mother's Story
    • My Sibling Perspective
    • Autism Explained for Kids Site
  • All Kinds of Minds
    • Culture of Autism
    • Late Diagnosis
  • More
    • How to Assess Claims
    • What Causes Autism?
    • Additional Resources
    • Site Info & Feedback >
      • About the Website
      • ASE FAQ
      • Survey
      • Contact Us
      • Make a Submission
  • Our Blog
    • On Self-Advocacy
    • Trouble with Changes
    • Smoothing Transitions
    • Autism Speaks
    • Vaccines
    • Infantilization
    • Her Autism is Worsening
    • Stimming
  • Autism Tutoring

Finding the Right Autism Professionals

6/27/2014

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Most of you know that the right professional can make a world of difference, particularly in the context of an autistic person's life. The good that the right professional can do is immense...outweighed perhaps only by the bad the wrong professional is capable of. I have the joy of announcing to you all that I met some of the right professionals this past week, and I know they make a deep impact on the lives of every child (they're pediatric therapists) they touch - and I know they will make an especially deep impact on a child close to my heart.

I have only met each of them once. But once was all I needed. Just as there are ways of knowing rapidly that a professional is not someone you want working with you/your child (lack of qualifications and lack of empathy probably being the biggest), there are some hard and fast ways of knowing when you've found the perfect service providers. Here are the ones that convinced me:

- Seeing and adapting to the person in front of them
As soon as these therapists saw a need for sensory stimulation, they incorporated the needed stimulation into what they were doing. They provided (requested) deep pressure while working on articulation, incorporated wheel barrow walking into naming flash cards. They also used the time table that worked for their client. By which I mean, if he was having trouble focusing, they didn’t look at the clock and say, oh dear I still have three more goals to work on today. (Or if they did, they did a great job of masking it.) They adapted the activity, and the time table, to fit him. They weren’t just checking the boxes and going through the motions of what a therapist should do, but actually focusing on doing the things that the client needed.

- Open to Listening and Learning
I was concerned when I saw a therapist (gently) grab the client’s face to force eye contact. My face showed it and I started to say something and cut myself off. The therapist could tell something wrong and encouraged me to talk about my concerns. And when I told her, you know what she did? She listened. Instead of immediately brushing my words off, she let them seep in, and even asked questions about what I told her. As I poured out to her how invasive that can feel, how Autistic adults have spoken out against that, how even requests for eye contact can actually lead to a whole new set of problems (eye contact and staring are easily confused), and the compromise that Caley does instead of eye contact (she looks at people’s mouths, chins, eye brows, or noses instead of actually looking into their eyes – it satisfies our cultural standards while not being uncomfortable), she listened attentively and said she’d change what she did with the client as a result. And THEN she said that she was open to learning even more. It was an awesome moment.

- Making accommodations
When I saw the visual schedule, I was excited. When a therapist actually asked me what transition techniques worked best for the client, I was in love.

- Caring
If you get the vibe that the client is just another appointment in the long day until 5 PM comes and the therapist can go home, you’ve got the wrong therapist. No matter what time of day we met with them, these therapists brought the same amount of compassion and caring to the table. It’s obvious that they’re in it for the clients, not just a pay check.

- Applications to daily life
One of the therapists said to me, look, /l/ sounds are all well and good but what we need to focus on most is what will have the most impact on the client’s daily life. And then she gave me tips, not just on how to do speech homework off of a worksheet, but how to incorporate working on speech in every day contexts. Have I mentioned I’m in love?

I am so very excited. And relieved. As a future therapist myself, I had been very disappointed by the sort of therapists I had seen. 'Is this what my field looks like?' I'd asked myself. I am so very happy to be able to report that is not the case. I pray that the rest of you also find therapists such as these, and even if you don't have one right now, please know that they're out there. Don't lose hope, because they really and truly do exist. I hope this list of characteristics will help you find them.  

And if not, here's a list of clinicians that other parents and autistic people have found helpful. The main US list is the last post on this page (keep scrolling until you see it), http://www.wrongplanet.net/postxf66842-0-45.html
 - but there are providers from other countries (I saw some from NZ, Australia, Canada, and the UK, but there may be more) interspersed throughout the rest of the thread. I actually consulted the list to find a therapist in my area to shadow and when I did, I found he was every bit as awesome as he'd been presented as. I hope you all also have luck with it!

-Creigh
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On Celebrating and Kernels of Joy

6/25/2014

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Today was an awesome day. Seriously, I was just BRIMMING with joy when I came home from working with the children I care for today. There were some things today which, had I focused on them, could have made it a bad day. (Let's just say stubbornness is not a trait confined to neurotypical children.) But overall it was so awesome!

The degree of this feeling is out of the ordinary for me (today was awesome, post to come will explain the other half of why), but the attitude of celebration itself is not abnormal for me, because every day I do find something to celebrate, some small gain or good effort. I'm not making them up, either. They're there. But I actively look for them, perhaps a bit harder than most, and when I find them, I celebrate them. Because in all but the very worst no good very bad day, there are kernels of awesome which can be celebrated. (And even in those very bad days, they're probably still there, I'm just not in the mental space to be able to find them...I'm only human!)

For example:
WOW that was an improvement in transitioning between activities!
WOW that was good communication!
WOW that was some impressive effort towards social interaction!

You get what I mean. And it doesn't just have to be autism related, either; in fact, celebration is not limited to autistic children (or, for that matter, to children as a whole). Sharing, hugs, beating a video game level, a game of catch, I would classify ALL of these as awesome moments to be celebrated.

Value. Support. Celebrate. Jess at Diary of a Mom really got the formula right when she put these three together. I know, especially starting right out of the diagnosis gate, it can be so hard to see how this could apply to your life, whether you're Autistic yourself or know someone who is. But these three words I really think are the key to everything, to self-love and inspiring that love in others, and going to bed at night lit not by doubt or worry, but by those kernels of joy.

And tonight, I'm celebrating.

-Creigh
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On the Cause of Autism: Curb Your Enthusiasm

6/23/2014

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There's another 'cause of autism' in the news today. Maybe this is the kind of news other people get excited about - news channels never look the other way at something that will grab viewers' attention. Me, though? I wait before I react. The media tends to overblow things (as they do everything, and with them correlation miraculously makes the leap into causation, hence the reason for the quotes) and seriously, every few months it feels like there's a new 'cause of autism'. They are all presented to be 'equally damning evidence'...and yet, they are also all presented as the sole cause.

For this moment, we absolutely know there is at least a strong genetic component to autism, so if it stems from the environment, that claim of a supposed 'sole cause' is not going to be correct no matter what. For the other, there have got to be a hundred correlations that have been studied, each pointing in a hundred different directions. (For instance, men, did you know that your preference in women's curvature could cause your child to be autistic? That's the way the media presented a study...) 

There's only so many "we've found the one true cause!"s that one can take before becoming a bit skeptical about the whole matter. I generally wait for there to be a systematic review, or something close to it, before starting to take a proposed 'cause' more seriously. I would recommend others do the same.



Edited to add: Read this article, and then you won't wonder why I'm skeptical when a new 'autism cause' is announced. The author (Emily Willingham, who rocks) put together a list of a lot of the claims that have been linked to autism. As you might imagine, there are a lot of them (I lost count), but Willingham has a sense of humor about them. There is a lot of sarcasm in here (and some mild salty language), this is NOT intended to be taken as evidence supporting any of these claims, simply to show the sheer number of them and, quite the opposite, highlight how ludicrous some of them are. As the claim about refrigerator moms should point out...

-Creigh
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On the Stigma Autistic Parents Face: Caley's Experiences

6/23/2014

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Many of you, reading this title, may think I’m going to write about the stigma that parents of autistic children face. While this is definitely material for a great many posts on its own, the population I’m writing about is the opposite side of the coin, who go unspoken of; Autistic people who want to have children in the future. You may think I don’t have enough material to write about this. After all, I’m not Autistic and Caley’s not a mother. I really, really wish you were right.

The not so subtle hinting started, I think, when Caley was in middle school and discovered how adorable babies were. She’d coo at them and play with them and openly admire them. She even declared that she wanted her own someday*. That’s where the ‘nudges’ began. First it was warnings. “You know, babies are a lot of work.” Then it came out into the open. In the years to follow, pretty much any time she expressed liking a baby, Caley was reminded repeatedly that because she was Autistic she shouldn’t have children. Why? Well, she wasn’t competent enough, they said. And besides, Autistic people are well known to have fill-in-the-blank problem(s) which would make it so she couldn’t handle having a child, they said.

Suddenly, Caley stopped liking babies. In fact, she started acting like she wanted nothing to do with them and saying that she hated them. What had happened, my mother and I wondered, to cause such a dramatic turnabout? Now, all these many years later, she told me. Since she was told she couldn’t have babies, Caley says she decided to try to convince herself that she didn’t like them, to reduce the pain. This period lasted for years – all the way until this past year, in fact.

What changed? Well, in this past year, Caley has come into her own and has finally told us her dream, which despite the work of those many years of denial, never died. She wants to have children. Not now, of course. She wants to graduate, get married, and become financially stable first. But she definitely wants them. And now that the family understands autism a bit better, most members support her.

Society, however, still does not. And so it was that Caley called me in tears four months ago. She’d stumbled upon a post online where the person was arguing that Autistic people would be terrible parents. The full post tried to rationalize why autistic people shouldn’t be parents, through “logic.” I think the first sentence of the post – “I am not saying you would be an unacceptable mother and compared to having no mother or having a violent mother a mother who simply does not care about their kids I think a loving, autistic mother is a good alternative.” – kind of says everything. Maybe if she hadn’t been told growing up that being Autistic would make her an incompetent mother, this wouldn’t have hurt so much. After all, this is the Internet and people make highly offensive claims about subjects they know nothing about all the time.

But to someone who grew up exposed to the narrative Caley did, this hit home. So instead of brushing the author off as a troll or typing out an angry reply, she turned their words inward. “Is it true? Would I really be a bad mother?” she asked me, voice trembling. “Because if I would then I need to know so I don’t have children.” We were spiraling downward, and Caley was right back on the path she’d trodden for so many years, the one where she was going to try to convince herself, again, that she didn’t actually want or even like babies. Far better to believe a lie than to feel the pain of reality.
“No, babe,” I told her. “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” And then I proceeded to rip the poster’s “argument” apart and show it for the farce it was. “Oh, good,” she said. “But why was he so mean?” The answer to that, of course, is ableism. 

The commenter wasn't trying to be mean, of course. He thought that was a perfectly rational and acceptable argument, and presented it in a very logical manner, citing the damning “facts” that autistic parents can’t tell the difference between tones so they won’t know why a baby is crying, or when their teenage children tell them their day at school was “Fine” autistic parents won’t be able to read their tone and tell how it was. (If this disqualified one from parenthood, there would be a great many fewer parents in the world…)

The people who told Caley she shouldn’t have babies didn’t realize it, either. They were just following common sense. Everyone knows autistic people shouldn’t have children (it will never fail to surprise me how many of the things “everyone knows” are patently false). Caley is Autistic, and therefore, following their logic, she should not have children. To remind her of this fact was difficult for them to do, but it was their duty to do so and it was all for the best. Or so they thought.

What these people don’t realize, however, is that there are plenty of autistic mothers and fathers all over the world. In fact, that seems to be one of the greatest routes through which autistic adults are diagnosed – their children are found to be autistic, and the parents realize, in turn, that they are, too. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, autistic people have filled all these roles, and done quite a good job of it, too.

When ableism really sneaks up on you is when you don’t even realize it’s there. It oils its way in under the guise of ‘common knowledge’ and its claims are never questioned. But, once you realize its presence, its foolishness becomes apparent and you can fight back against it. And that's exactly what most of the people who once warned Caley she shouldn't have children have done, now that the ableism involved has been made clear to them. But they had to have it pointed out to them first.

That is why I write this post. To show it to you. To warn those of you who are parents of autistic children to make sure you don’t accidentally reflect this attitude or allow others to reflect this attitude onto your children. (Because it starts young.) To show those of you broader members of society that this outlook really is a problem, so that you, too, can combat it where you see it.

For my part, all I can say is this. If and when Caley decides to have a child, or even multiple children, I will be right behind her supporting her. And those children will be some of the luckiest children in the world to have Caley as their mother.

-Creigh

*Though I focused this post on the Autistic experience, about the same time that Caley was warned about her love for babies, to highlight the plight of siblings, I would like to add that I was warned, too. As a sibling of an Autistic person, I am more likely to have an Autistic child, I was cautioned. I should strongly weigh this when I was deciding whether or not to have a child, and I needed to warn my future husband of this possibility and “be prepared for the worst”. Though my competence was never questioned, there was definite hinting that I may wish to consider not having children. 

For years afterwards, I worried about this, and though I never went quite so far as Caley did, I thought that if I ever got married, I would have to marry someone who was okay with adopting, because having children who shared my genetic material was too risky. If someone tells you the same thing enough times, particularly when you’re as young as I was, you’ll believe them. Now that I’m older, funnily enough, I still think that if I have children (that is a big if, mind you) I’m going to want to adopt. The difference, however, is that now I would purposefully want to adopt an autistic child. It's ironic that the very thing I was warned to fear is now the very thing I would seek out.

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Autistic Support Group Announcement

6/14/2014

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ASE is teaming up to start an online autistic support group!

Yes, you read that right. This is going to be an autistic support group, not an autism support group, which means it's going to be a space just for autistic adults. We're REALLY excited about this, although we can't claim credit for the idea - Colin, the soon-to-be founder of the support group came up with it and I still say it's one of the best ideas I've heard! 

Getting to a local support group for autistic people is pretty rarely feasible - not only is transportation often an issue for people on the spectrum, but more than that, most support groups are set up for parents of autistic children, not autistic people themselves. An online support group means no matter where you live in the world, your transportation status you can still attend. More than that, the group will offer both typing and voice modalities (with the option of video), which should expand the people who can participate comfortably.

This is still a work in progress, in part because we want to shape the group to fit what participants are interested in. What we want to know now is, what would those of you who are autistic adults like to see out of the program? Let us know in the comment box or take our survey at the website. And neurotypical allies, please share with this those autistic adults that you know!

Interested in learning more about the group? Read our article with more about the group and check out Colin's introductory video! 


-Creigh
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In Caley's Own Words: On Sensory Overload, Losing Words, and Staring

6/14/2014

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Today I took Caley out, at her request, to go grocery shopping. We were out of a bunch of food, so we needed to stock up - which meant we went down each and every aisle. It was a long trip, in a grocery store we hadn't gone to before. Moreover, since Caley's learning to drive, we'd just come from about 20 minutes of her practicing with me, which is hugely anxiety inducing for her, and the decision to practice driving was a last minute change in plans. As you can imagine, going into the store she was already stressed out. Here's Caley's story of what it was like (I typed, she dictated):

"Okay, so I sometimes lose my words when I'm stressed. And one of the places I lose my words the most is the grocery store. It has a lot of sensory stuff going on and there's a lot of people. Everything was beeping and there were lots of smells and sounds and people and the intercom was evil and there was lots of unexpected loud noise. And it didn't help today that I'd just driven and I'm scared of driving. I was stressed because of it and when I get stressed it's easier for me to have issues with sensory and pretty much anything. 

While I was there, it didn't help because it seemed like everybody was staring at me and Creigh. I couldn't figure out why they were staring at me, but it made me uncomfortable and it made me lose my words more. Later, me and Creigh (well, mostly Creigh) figured out that the people in the store probably thought we were a lesbian couple. I just needed a squish. But one, that didn't help, and two, you shouldn't be staring mean-like at anybody. It's very sad that people don't know siblings that are all cuddly with each other."

So as you may have noticed, there were a lot of layers to her experience. Let's start with word loss. When under stress, even Autistic people that can normally speak completely fluently can 'lose their words' - either completely or partially, as happened to Caley. Her word finding ability is impaired. She compared it to what happens to some peoples' words when you have a migraine with an aura, for those of you who have those. It's a very frustrating experience for her. Losing words in these circumstances isn't a permanent thing, and it doesn't mean Caley's "regressing" or anything like that. It just means that under a lot of stress her word finding abilities can get impaired, but when the stress is gone, they return.

Two, the 'lesbian couple' thing. As I've mentioned before, people mistake Caley and me for a couple decently often. Because of Caley's sensory dysfunction she can get overloaded. When she is in danger of overloading, there's one thing apart from reducing the problematic sensory stimulation, that consistently helps: bear hugs ("squishes"). No matter where we are, if Caley's overloading I will totally give her a bear hug at her request. It provides a soothing sensory input for her, which helps. In addition to the bear hugs, I will also hold her hand, link arms, or do any other physical shows of affection (and positive touch) that help her. To top it all off, remember, one of Caley's stims is saying "I love you." Between all these physical shows of affection and love, people get the idea that we're a lesbian couple.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a terribly accepting area. Hence, the staring. And yes, I'm quite sure that we're being mistaken for a couple and not simply being stared at because people think we're odd. I know this because we've actually been spat at before. (I know, the area we live in is such a bastion of acceptance. [sarcasm]) 

Two things here. One, so what if we were? Caley and I are thoroughly pro-LGBTQ rights and acceptance, and it makes us both sad that dealing with this attitude is a lot of people's daily realities. And, two, as you might imagine, glaring daggers of hate being pointed at you don't really help when you're trying to avoid sensory overload.

So, what did being in that store with all of those sensory problems aggravated by stress feel like for Caley? Well, Caley herself said, "In some ways trying to explain a sensory overload is like trying to explain what it's like not wearing glasses when you need them. Very blurry." We both still maintain that (apart from the spots on her vision, she doesn't get those) this video does the best job of explaining it. If you haven't checked it out when we posted it before, watch it now.
Impressively, Caley made it through the whole store, but it was a really rough experience. This is just one small snippet of what every day aspects of life can be like for Autistic people, a walk in Caley's shoes, so to speak' and Caley and I shared this in hopes of helping others understand sensory overload.

-Creigh
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On Therapy, Friendships, Arcade Tickets, and Acts of Kindness

6/11/2014

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When Caley was in elementary school, like most children on the spectrum, she received physical and occupational therapy. (That is, until our insurance refused to cover the sessions. Frustration with insurance companies was something I learned very young...) As you'd expect, the therapy was great for her...but it was also great for me.

You see, as her sister, I was dragged along to all of Caley's therapy appointments. You'd think I would have hated it, but it was actually hands down one of the best and most enriching experiences of my childhood. You see, on top of being fun, it normalized disability. In the waiting room, I hung out with autistic kids, kids in wheelchairs and on crutches, and kids with countless other disabilities. I didn't think 'this is a disabled child who I'm playing with'. I just thought, great, a playmate! Disability wasn't weird. It just...was. 

While we were at therapy, Caley and I became good friends with a whole host of other children who were about our age and received therapy there for various disabilities - K*, V, C (V's twin sister), and A (another autistic girl Caley's age). K and I were best friends, since we were the same age and clicked, and Caley was best friends with V, who was the very definition of ebullience and joy. Therapy was a sanctuary of acceptance, and we had more friends there than either of us did in our classes at school.

One day, when I was in fifth grade and Caley was in second, one or both of our parents** came to school and checked us out early. Any kid would love that news, and to top it off, they took us out to eat at our favorite restaurant. It was too good to be true, and we both knew something was up. At the end of our meal*** they told us they had some bad news. V had suffered a particularly bad seizure and had died.

We were shocked and upset, to say the least. It was one of the first deaths either of us had experienced, and moreover, it was of someone our age who we'd been friends with and was generally an awesome person. Even remembering this now, so many years later, my heart still fills with sadness at her loss, and Caley was hit even harder by the loss of one of her best friends. 

After some time had elapsed since V's funeral, which we all attended, the therapists took me, Caley, and C out to Chuck E Cheese (an arcade). I only somewhat realized it at the time, but looking back I think it was their way of expressing support for V and C's parents and helping us kids feel better.**** Not to mention, they, too, were grieving. 

C and Caley and I had a blast playing, but one moment from that day sticks out at me. We were playing Skeeball and C, as expected of a child our age, wasn't doing so well. Suddenly, tickets started POURING out of what appeared to be her machine. She was overjoyed! It made me happy to see her so happy, knowing her recent loss. 

Suddenly an adult woman snatched the tickets away from C, with a possessive glare. The slots for the tickets to come out were located mere inches from each other, and understandably, C had gotten confused. I don't remember C's reaction to this (it was definitely at least disappointment), but I do remember mine. Even after the woman had reclaimed her tickets (and was still shooting C dirty looks), I couldn't help thinking to myself, why couldn't the woman just give C the tickets? It's a kid's arcade, not one for adults, the confusion was understandable, and that little thing had made C SO happy amidst what I knew to be a hard time for her. Was it really so much to ask? After all these years, those thoughts have stuck with me.

I give you all this back story to explain my reaction to something that happened present day. Today, I took the autistic child I care for and his big brother to a local arcade, very similar to Chuck E Cheese's. As I was desperately trying to watch both children in a sea of a serious recipe for sensory overload*****, which was definitely impacting the child on the spectrum, a man approached me. He had some tickets - would the child I care for want them?

Think what you like, but I feel like the universe just redeemed itself.

-Creigh
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On Our Autism Evolutions

6/9/2014

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I was going back through the ASE website this morning, looking over an article that I probably wrote six months ago, and was taken aback by the kind of language I used and things I said.

WOW, you guys. My understanding, not only of autism but also of the Autistic perspective, has evolved so much in the past year. To take that one page for example, I had to go back and switch everything to identity first language, get rid of functioning labels, and completely eliminate some things I'd said about empathy - and that was just in one short article! I have little doubt that the rest of the website is in dire need of editing, too.

I knew I had grown in my understanding, but I had no idea how exponentially I had done so until I went back and looked back at the words of my past self. And I'm not the only one who has experienced this. Those of you whose were diagnosed or whose children were diagnosed a long time ago will understand what I'm talking about with this rapid growth of undersanding. If you go and look at the early blog posts of Ariane at Emma's Hope Book, or Jess at Diary of a Mom, or even The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, you'll see a huge change between their thoughts then and now, as Ariane wrote a great post about. Those of you whose diagnosis experiences have been recent may be just starting on this curve. Believe us when we tell you, it is steep, but it is well worth traveling.

I will not deride my past self for having held mistaken beliefs. Two years ago, despite having grown up with an Autistic sister, I knew next to nothing about autism. Now, Caley and I run a Facebook page and website explaining autistic people. The growth I have gone through in that time is incredible, and I hope it never ceases, because I am always going to be willing to learn and the moment that we think we know everything there is to know about autism and have found "the one Truth" is the moment we cease to know much of anything at all.

-Creigh
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A Piece of My Heart

6/5/2014

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As most of you know, I am a caregiver for an autistic child and, to a lesser extent time-wise, his neurotypical sibling. As others of you know, I'm going to start a Master's program in Speech Language Pathology in the Fall (with a grant to get autism specific training). What you may not know, however, is that starting this Master's program in a different city necessitates that I leave my job as a caregiver.

And knowing I'm going to leave in less than two months (in fact, tonight I'm going to help look for someone to replace me), I find myself relishing the little moments with more intensity. Watching him squeal with glee at the sensory beauty of the water park, or asking me to chase him around the room and tickle him, or his surprise attack raspberries, or story time (scripting) in the car.

I'm going to miss this, you guys. When I leave, I'm going to leave a piece of my heart behind* - not only with him, but with his entire family and with all the other amazing children I've cared for here. And it's going to hurt. But in the meanwhile, I'm going to keep relishing what time I have left.

-Creigh

*Yes, Mom, you can say "I told you so!"

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On Hugging and Behaviorism

6/4/2014

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Sometimes people can take behaviorism a bit too far. When I told someone* this past week that after time outs the child and I talk about what happened, say sorry, and hug, she had one question for me.

Isn't that hug a reinforcer? If you hug him, you're rewarding him for doing something wrong.*

This is just wrong on so many levels. Life is about more than just behavior; you have to take feelings into account, too. After all the frustration and anger contained in a time out - the screaming, the crying, the anger and sadness - it's important, or at least I think it is, to show that there are no hard feelings. To show that, yes, that was a bad decision which was accordingly dealt with, but you still love and care about the child.

Hug or no hug, that's not what bothered me about what she said. What bothered me was her priorities, or lack thereof. We have to make sure that in our rush to "fix" behavior, we don't discard other aspects of a child's well being as well.

-Creigh
Mother hugging child (who looks like he's been crying)
A hug can make anything feel better.
Note: I'm not a behavior therapist either, but since the hug happens after the apology, even if you were trying to come from the behaviorism point of view, it seems in my very unprofessional opinion that you'd be rewarding the child most directly for apologizing, or maybe for sitting there and finally completing the entire time out (I don't know what you guys do, but I'll reset a timer if the child leaves the time out spot and staying for the entire time out is something we're really working on). Again, in my unprofessional opinion, the hug would be a positive thing here.

This anecdote is not a reflection on actual behavior analysts, the person involved here is not trained as such.

*There was a lovely [sarcasm] subtext of "you terrible caregiver" here. Even though I'm not his parent, because of this experience my heart goes out to those who are parents. Because WOW I have really felt judged and I know that's the daily reality for so many of you autism parents out there.
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    About Creigh

    I'm a college student who grew up with my Autistic younger sister, Caley. I've got a bachelor's degree in Psychology and I'm currently studying for my Master's in Speech Language Pathology.

    Neither of those, however, have given me an understanding of autism. All of my understanding comes from learning from the many autistic people that I know. As a result, I have a very different outlook on autism than most, and a burning desire to tell the world what I've learned. This blog is one of the many areas in which I attempt to do that.


    *Note, none of these make me a professional, so advice I give is not professional advice.

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    Starting about in March 2014, all of these posts are originally published on Autism Spectrum Explained's Facebook page, and later reposted here for archiving purposes and easy access for ASE readers, including those who don't use Facebook. 

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