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My Last Day

8/13/2014

I'm too emotionally drained at the moment to write more, but it was my last day with the kids I care for today. It went well, and the transition went amazingly and I know I'm leaving the kids in amazing hands, but saying goodbye was SO hard...

With every child I work with, my heart grows, an expansion from my love for them. But with every child I leave, a piece of my heart gets left behind, and it hurts.

-Creigh

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On Bullying: Teaching that no matter the type or the target, it's never okay

8/8/2014

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School can be absolutely terrible for kids on the spectrum. I'm sorry, I wish I had better news (although unfortunately this is not news to most of you). And for most kids on the spectrum it's not the education or the teachers that make it so, although bad teachers can certainly contribute.

It's the other children.

We think of children as good and innocent and pure. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep many of them from bullying, whether socially, virtually, or physically, to the point of pure physical beatings. Have a strange name? Solution: bullying! Look different from other children? Solution: bullying! Act differently from other children? Solution: bullying! You get the idea. Difference is to be punished.

And we, as in society, teach them that this is okay. Have you ever watched The Disney Channel? Or Nickelodeon? In almost all their shows, they have one core message. Normal is good. Different is bad. Caring for many children over the years, I've been exposed to a lot of these television shows. Jessie, the Disney G-rated show which so many of the kids I've cared for love, has that exact implicit message. Mean characters, like "Hagatha" (which is the nickname they give her in the show, based on her appearance) are ugly. Good characters are pretty. Weird characters, like "Creepy Connie," a huge Harry Potter fan and nerd stereotype, are bad and you shouldn't be nice to them because you'll give them ideas and they'll be creepy. Those characters who are made out to be bad (as in unattractive or weird or different in any way) are bullied by the 'good characters' and we're taught that the 'bad characters' deserved it.

Most any non-Y rated programming has this 'normal = good, different = bad' formula at its very core. And it's not just a television issue. It's learned at home, it's learned at school, it's learned from other children, it's learned all over. It is a social message that pervades our world, one that kids pick up and act aggressively on. And though schools are better now than when I was growing up, I'm sad, because the knowledge of the fact that this world we live in is "better" doesn't mean that it's a world where kids who are different live free of beatings or verbal cruelties (and though sticks and stones may break your bones, words still can cause deep and lasting wounds). It just means that happens less often.

Well, "less often" isn't good enough for me, and I'd hope it's not good enough for you, either. We can do a whole lot better than we're doing now. Though we may not be in a position to stop bullying directly and there's no magic switch in a child's head that will erase this formula that they've been taught, the messages that we choose to send to children are important, too.

Almost every single child I've cared for (I've cared for neurotypical children, too) knows that I am a proud nerd, and that I was bullied for being 'weird' growing up. They know that I wasn't bullied with fists, I was bullied with words, because, as I teach them, that's bullying, too. A lot of anti-bullying messages fly straight past kids because they're taught bullying is a physical thing (by those same shows I referenced), the one where a kid picks you up and steals your lunch, or pushes you in the hall. Teasing and taunting with words, on the other hand, they think of as a completely different thing, and they need to be taught that it's not.

More than that, we have an even stronger message, which many parents unapologetically send their children (not realizing the potential for harm), which is this. It's okay to bully a bully. Actually, it's more than okay, it's heroic. It's the little guy standing up to the big guy. It's David vs Goliath. Fighting back against a bully is a Good Thing.

Only, here's the thing. It's not. Because that bully isn't always a bully.

Case in point? This incident:

<<"A 13-year-old autistic boy has been punched, teased and had his condition mocked in online videos by his peers. But the parents of the accused children say they were justified in bullying the Iowa teen.

...“I would say three-fourths of this stuff he brings on himself and probably a fourth of it is bullying that shouldn’t be going on,” said Levi Weatherly, father of the teen accused of posting the video online.

...“He called my nephew a nasty name, and my nephew Cole cocked (sic) him in the mouth,” resident Jamie Harrison wrote to the station. “I’m proud of my nephew for doing that.”

- Iowa Parents Defend Bullying of Autistic Teen>>

This is just one that made the news. But there are so, SO many more. I've seen them, you guys. I've seen people on the spectrum, in an effort to fit in or re-apply things they've seen in one social situation inaccurately to another or just plain not reading the social rules of a situation say "mean things" without even the slightest intention of cruelty. And all it takes is one incident. One incident and you're branded a Bully. One incident and it's open season to bully you, because if society's implicit message that different = bad leads to bullying...well, you can imagine what an explicit message does.

The results are pretty horrifying.

So I teach the kids I care for. I tell them, you know how you and your friends like to call each other silly names just for fun? Like your friend calls you Paul-poo-poo and you call him David-doo-doo? (Yes, kid sense of humor there.) What would happen if you called a kid who was not your friend that? Would they still think it was funny? Or might they think it was mean?

When we've established that it's the latter, I'll ask them how they know that it's okay to say that to friends joking, but not to non-friends and teach them about unspoken social rules.

Then I tell them that autistic kids have trouble reading unspoken rules. I ask them, if an autistic kid called a stranger the same names you can call a friend, could the other kids think the child was being a bully, and be mean to the child? A: Yes. I ask, but was he really being a bully? A: No.

And it's an aha! moment. A moment of horror, to be sure, as the child thinks back through the times when they may have inaccurately been mean to a child, but a moment of realization. This one talk isn't likely to change their behavior in the real world - that takes more than one talk from more than one source. But it plants the seed, makes the child slow down a bit and try for accuracy more before deeming someone a bully, and that's more than worth the three minutes it took me to walk them through the scenario.

These are my contributions to try to reduce bullying in the world. I'm careful with the television shows I let the kids watch. I'm open about my own experiences with bullying. And I teach them that any type of bullying is wrong, no matter what form it takes or who the target is.

Here are some resources to use to help teach kids in your lives about bullying and monitor the messages they're learning from television:
-Common Sense Media reviews kids television shows for appropriateness. Don't pay attention to the ages they give, read the actual review and decide for yourself if it's sending the right messages to your children. -https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews

-Cartoon Network has a Stop Bullying: Speak Up webpage, with a pledge and game badges you can earn. It's ironic, I know, considering that they host one of the TV shows I'd list as encouraging the attitudes that lead to bullying, but it's actually a pretty good webpage to refer your kids to.http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/promos/stopbullying/

Having given you those resources, what works for each individual person and each case is different, and I can't claim to have all the answers. So I'll poll the audience. What do you guys think would help reduce bullying? Because I think we can all agree the status quo is unacceptable.

-Creigh

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On Black and White Categories and Self Determination

8/6/2014

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I should be studying for finals right now (I have one tomorrow morning), but instead an incident keeps sticking in the back of my mind, and given that it's been a month since it occured and it's still staying with me, it may be worth writing about.

I was paying my bill at a restaurant, wearing an autism understanding t-shirt as I frequently do, when the cashier said, "I love your shirt! My brother's autistic." Well, I thought it was the coolest thing to find another sibling so randomly and I told her so. And then our conversation hit a rough patch:

Her: "So is your sister high or low functioning, then?"
Me: "Well, actually, she doesn't like to use functioning labels. She and a lot of autistic people say they oversimplify."
Her: "So she's high functioning then."

The rest of the conversation was great, but that little sticking point has stayed with me. We as a general population LOVE to put people into either-or categories. You're either male or you're female. You're black or you're white. You're an introvert or you're an extrovert. You're high functioning or you're low functioning.

The problem is, the world doesn't actually work like that. And by forcing people to try to fit into our contrived categories when they're clearly telling us they don't fit, we are doing them a serious disservice. So when I tell you that Caley doesn't like functioning labels, that's not a fact point to use to justify putting her into one. It's a right to self-determination, and a stance against a practice that she and so many other autistic people have spoken out against.

It's time for us to listen.

-Creigh

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Miss Creigh is Moving

8/5/2014

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I spent the morning making a story that I never wanted to read - the one explaining that I'm leaving the child I care for. I'd tried explaining last week, saying that Miss Creigh was moving away to a 'far away land' (I tried to keep it fun), but - perhaps because of the abstraction - it wasn't clicking for him. So I made it visual, in a social story.

I spent hours working on this thing. Finding the exact right pictures to use. Making sure that he knew I loved him, even though I was leaving. Piecing together a picture of the map, including where the child lives and where I'm moving to, to make the abstract more concrete. Figuring out a coping mechanism to incorporate into the book that he could use if he missed me too much. (Looking at a picture of me and calling me.)

But despite all that work, when it was finally done I was scared to read it to him. What if he got upset? What if it wasn't the right time to say? I was extremely worried about it, to say the least.

Ultimately, though, I felt I couldn't put it off much longer, and, using the iPad as a bribe, got him to sit down with me and read the story.

Not only did he not react badly, which is what I was so, SO afraid of, he actually LIKED the story! I'd incorporated lots of cool pictures of us doing fun things together (in the introductory part of the book), and he loved going over them as I asked him questions to keep it interactive. (Q: "What are you pretending to be in this picture?" A: "A ghost!" Or, my favorite part, as I read the page with "Miss Creigh loves you!" he responded, "Love you!")

And he UNDERSTOOD. After we were done reading, I asked him some questions to ensure comprehension.

Q: "What's Miss Creigh doing?"
A: "New house!"

Q: "Is Miss Creigh's new house close or far away?"
A: "Far!"

Q: "Who is going to be your new nanny now?"
A: "That one!" [Pointing to the new nanny who was standing next to us.]

Q: "Is Miss Creigh going to visit?"
A: "Yes!"

He got it, you guys. I'll keep going over the story to ensure comprehension, and the new nanny and parents know where the book is, but HE GOT IT. Another reminder that we don't give kids on the spectrum the credit for understanding things that they deserve. And, whether because he actually did understand last week when I told him and just needed time to process, or because we'd already started transitioning in the new nanny who he loves, or the comfort of the story or whatever reason, he was okay with it.

This is better than my wildest dreams, you guys. I am so INCREDIBLY relieved right now. Leaving will still be hard, intensely so. But this makes it so much better.

-Creigh

Photo is of the first page of the story, appropriately titled "Miss Creigh is Moving." On it is a clipart picture of a little red Volkswagen towing a huge rolling box of belongings. It couldn't look any more unrealistic or different from my actual move - which required a U-Haul - if it tried, but hey, whatever works...

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Transitioning

8/5/2014

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The transition to a new caregiver for the children I'm leaving (including the child I was concerned about transitioning) is going really well! We did day one yesterday, and he kept saying, "Miss Creigh, alone time!" which I taught him to say as a more appropriate alternative to "Go away!" ...only, in this case it meant I should leave the room and the new caregiver should stay. It's been a better transition than my wildest dreams and I am so relieved. I don't know if being told to go away has ever made me happier!

That said, he doesn't know I'm leaving yet. I tried explaining last week and he didn't quite understand, so I'm making visual aids to help explain and a social story type thing to show him today that I'm moving and can only come back for holidays from now on. All in all, though, while I'm willing to extend later if It turns out we need to, I think we'll have made a smooth transition in just a week, instead of the two weeks I thought we might need.

So it looks like I'll be all moved up sooner than I thought! I have absolutely LOVED this chapter of my life. I love the children and families I've worked with here, I've LOVED spending time with my sister and my mom, and it's been great being so close to most of my extended family, too. I will dearly miss every single one of them. I spent this year well, getting my post-bacc in Communication Sciences and Disorders and caregiving experience with children on the spectrum. (Parents, I have infinitely more respect for all you do now!) But I'm ready to become a full-fledged autism professional now and I cannot wait to get the training as a speech pathologist that awaits me on the other side of my move.

-Creigh

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My Last Day

On Bullying: Teaching that no matter the type or the target, it's never okay

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