I have been recently running into the justification that "we need to broaden his world or he will never talk about/do anything else" as a justification for "teaching new interests" (I consider myself a good teacher, but how am I supposed to teach someone to be interested in something???)
The other one that baffles me is taking a student not choosing the item identified as highly preferred out of the array as evidence that they don't know how to make a choice. Because students with disabilities can never be bored, fickle, silly, or, you know, change their opinion.
I fear it will be a long time before we make progress on this one because the DSM definition actively pathologizes it with the repretative and restricted interests criteria.
You are supposed to teach someone to be interested in something the same way I'm supposed to provide a pill to get someone more interested in something
( ... )
Movement-related issues and executive dysfunction cause me a lot of problems too. *Understanding* social communication isn't usually a problem for me, but there are a lot of things I physically can't do, or can't do reliably.
No amount of explaining socially expected greeting behavior to me will make my body cooperate on a day when I'm operating on a 10 second delay.
If you tell a soccer-hater that soccer is fun, that probably isn’t going to improve how they feel about soccer. It may, however, negatively impact how the child feels about you. It may possibly even impact how they feel about trying other activities billed as “fun” in the future.
Really good point, and well-said!
And it applies to a lot of things, too, though I'm guessing that many teachers of autistic haven't yet figured out that saying to them, "why don't you want to play house with the other kids?" is not terribly different from saying to me, "why don't you want to date boys?" People's experiences are not universal! Different people are different!
It's interesting. Went to the #whatisschool chat (which if you're on Twitter you should totally check out - Thursdays 7pm) About bullying a couple weeks ago. There was an early awareness of teachers as bullies to LGBTQ youth, but it was very hard to get traction on the challenges of neurodiverse youth.
We have a group of people who, by definition, have social communication disabilities. (Autism, NVLD, etc.) So they are going to have more difficulty learning social communication things. We then have a group of people, who, by definition DON'T have social communication difficulties. So they are, by definition, going to find it easier to learn social communication things.
Why do we spend so much more time trying to "remediate" the first group, when the second group should be able to learn "don't tease people for liking different things" very very quickly?
Grumble grumble medical model of disability seeking individual solutions grumble grumble.
That and also, only things autistic kids suck at ever get called social skills. Things that tend to be easier for autistic kids than NT kids *never* get called social skills. Even when they are about human interaction by any reasonable definition.
Understanding what it means when someone flaps their hand in a particular way isn't called a social skill. Neither is figure out how someone's using echolalia to communicate. Neither is sharing rocks or lining things up with someone. Or understanding why something is scary if the reason it's scary is normal for autistics and abnormal for NTs.
Things that tend to be easier for autistic people tend to be called "splinter skills." Which is not meant as a complement. Kid is reading at 3? Splinter skill. And I'm like, but the kid is reading! What a great skill!
So since the neurotypicals decided what is and what isn't socially acceptable, they decided that social skills mean skills to interact in ways that neurotypical people find more familiar and comfortable.
I keep trying to bring up the idea that, while learning ways to more easily interact with neurotypical people can be a useful thing, the peer group for an autistic kid may well be other autistic kids. The peer group for people with disabilities in general is often other people with disabilities. That doesn't mean we should all move to a commune and only interact with each other, and it certainly doesn't mean we should be forced to a commune, but it does mean that we should stop implying that the best goal for all PWD is interacting with and being like non-disabled people most of the time.
The other one that baffles me is taking a student not choosing the item identified as highly preferred out of the array as evidence that they don't know how to make a choice. Because students with disabilities can never be bored, fickle, silly, or, you know, change their opinion.
I fear it will be a long time before we make progress on this one because the DSM definition actively pathologizes it with the repretative and restricted interests criteria.
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No amount of explaining socially expected greeting behavior to me will make my body cooperate on a day when I'm operating on a 10 second delay.
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Really good point, and well-said!
And it applies to a lot of things, too, though I'm guessing that many teachers of autistic haven't yet figured out that saying to them, "why don't you want to play house with the other kids?" is not terribly different from saying to me, "why don't you want to date boys?" People's experiences are not universal! Different people are different!
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There was an early awareness of teachers as bullies to LGBTQ youth, but it was very hard to get traction on the challenges of neurodiverse youth.
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Which boggles my mind and has for years.
We have a group of people who, by definition, have social communication disabilities. (Autism, NVLD, etc.) So they are going to have more difficulty learning social communication things. We then have a group of people, who, by definition DON'T have social communication difficulties. So they are, by definition, going to find it easier to learn social communication things.
Why do we spend so much more time trying to "remediate" the first group, when the second group should be able to learn "don't tease people for liking different things" very very quickly?
Grumble grumble medical model of disability seeking individual solutions grumble grumble.
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Understanding what it means when someone flaps their hand in a particular way isn't called a social skill. Neither is figure out how someone's using echolalia to communicate. Neither is sharing rocks or lining things up with someone. Or understanding why something is scary if the reason it's scary is normal for autistics and abnormal for NTs.
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So since the neurotypicals decided what is and what isn't socially acceptable, they decided that social skills mean skills to interact in ways that neurotypical people find more familiar and comfortable.
I keep trying to bring up the idea that, while learning ways to more easily interact with neurotypical people can be a useful thing, the peer group for an autistic kid may well be other autistic kids. The peer group for people with disabilities in general is often other people with disabilities. That doesn't mean we should all move to a commune and only interact with each other, and it certainly doesn't mean we should be forced to a commune, but it does mean that we should stop implying that the best goal for all PWD is interacting with and being like non-disabled people most of the time.
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