My Autism Insights

Do audio books help individuals with auditory processing disorders to strengthen their listening and processing skills?  It would seem that they do.  According to Christie Berry, Ed. D., in her essay “Reading with your Ears ,” “Listening to unabridged audio books while following along in the book improves language skills, auditory processing, and contributes to an increase in overall cognitive abilities.” This was heartening to find as it validated 2 things I’ve been thinking about.  First, I’m noticing that Gus has a greater ability to focus on something auditory when he’s being read a story and following along (as opposed to listening if I’m asking him or giving an instruction).  So I started wondering if audio books might start to increase the length of time that he can sustain listening. This question was brought about by a second observation I recently made,  this one about myself.

I have terrible listening skills - always have.  Unless I’m very interested in what someone is saying, I zone out pretty quickly.  You can see how that might have been a problem in school since I often didn’t pay attention to what my teachers were saying (except the especially interesting one).  Fortunately, I’m a much more visual learner and a combination of reading and writing things down allowed me to excel, at least through high school.  College was a different story.  I had one teacher, my accounting professor, who droned on so badly that I could not stay awake in his class no matter how many coffees I had beforehand.  Only class I ever flunked.  When I became a teacher years later, there was always a running joke between my co-teacher and myself because neither of us was ever able to listen in the professional development meetings. We’d always say, “we don’t do extended listening.”

Then a few years ago, something incredible and completely unexpected happened.  Harry Potter on CD.  I was already a crazy obsessed fan, so I figured I could listen to them while driving and even if I missed a bunch of stuff, I knew them almost verbatim anyway.  What a surprise to learn that Jim Dale is a wonderful narrator and that I actually did have the capacity to listen to something for a long stretch - if it was interesting.

I’ve since become very fond of audio books and listen to segments of books almost every day.  Even the books I find less engaging to read (Jane Austen) hold my interest with the help of a good reader.  I’m fairly certain I’ve increased my capacity to pay attention to auditory information.  I’m thinking of trying some audio books for Gus (not Harry Potter - my kids don’t share my enthusiasm).  Perhaps they might help him to be able to focus in the classroom a little better over time.

For additional information on how audio books can help with auditory processing disorders, check out “Improving Auditory Processing - Listening to Language” by Sharon Hensley.

Have you had any success with using audio books to develop auditory processing skills?

Tomorrow: guest post from the author of General Hysteria on art projects for special needs children.  Don’t miss it!

This morning, Gus - the second grader - woke up with a question on his mind: How many zeros in a billion?  How the heck was I supposed to know?  So we tried an experiment.  I had made the suggestion to his teacher that he might be able to focus a little better during independent work if he had a laptop to work on, and I said I’d try letting him do some work on his own at home.  This morning seemed to be as good a time as any.  So we logged on to the Internet, I wrote down the question for him and told him how to do a web search.  Our Kidzui search was fruitless, so I told him he could use the grownup Internet.  Very exciting.

Sure enough, we found a site with the answers - more answers than we could have possibly even thought to ask for.  It was like Christmas morning.  We talked about why anyone would need to use such big numbers, and even a little about how scientists  don’t bother writing all those zeros, but use a special way of writing how many there are (because you’re never too young to know about scientific notation).  And that’s not even the most interesting thing to me, that my second grader now knows how many zeros there are in a quintillion.

At school, his behavior was different.  He wasn’t bouncing off the walls, but instead was just zoning out in his own little world.  It was such a pronounced difference that his teacher wrote me a long note about it.  She seemed perplexed.

But I have a pretty good idea what he was thinking about.  I’d be my last dollar that he was envisioning all those zeros in a centillion.  Wouldn’t you?

Vitus Bering - the real discoverer of Alaska

A day off from school can be a very enlightening thing.  Gus was home yesterday, and although I always do homework with him after school, it was a different experience doing it earlier in the day.  He absolutely did not want to do the work when I wanted him to and there was a good deal of acting out: rolling on the floor, loud talking, purposely filling in incorrect answers…I was frustrated, he was annoyed - actually this sounds like a typical day, except for what happened next.

Gus was (has been for several days) fixating on geography: who discovered ____; what’s the capital of ___, that sort of thing.  So, instead of doing his reading assignment or his math problems, he was going on about that.  Finally, as he was rolling around on the floor asking about who discovered Alaska, I said, “Well, I think Admiral Perry started out with 3 ships and then 5 more ships followed along.  How many ships got to Alaska?”  Booyah!  Instant transformation!  We got through a sheet of 3 digit addition, 3 digit subtraction, the stupid reading assignment about how to meet a dog (he hates dogs) and then he asked for, DEMANDED, a third math sheet.  He did not want to stop working.  Amazing how such a small shift completely commanded his attention.  Each problem became a made up story about some exploration to some country.  By the way, I stink at geography and I was spouting more crap than a newborn, but he didn’t care - I was working with him on his terms and he loved it!

So this begs the question, “Why can’t his teachers do the same thing?”  First of all, why is what they want to teach more important, more significant than what he wants to learn?  Does he really need to know the proper way to greet a dog?  It’s totally irrelevant to him - he’d be running in the opposite direction.  However, Admiral Perry having to fight off a team of sled dogs because he approached them the wrong way is pretty darned entertaining.

I looked back at some of his assignments, and aside from their irrelevance to his life except for the fact that they were readings about animals and he likes animals (I like chocolate chip cookies, but too many and I will still get sick to my stomach), there was no context.  For example: there was a booklet of geometry questions.  Across the top, he had written, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”  That was a hint right there that he wasn’t interested in the assignment.  But I wonder, if the teacher had sat him down and said, “Pikachu is battling Paul’s Electabuzz and the only way to make his volt tackle work is if he can bounce off a tree at a right angle.  Find the right angles.”  I bet he would have found them all in a matter of seconds.

I’ve been told on a regular basis that my son can’t or won’t focus.  He’s not the problem here, I’m starting to think.  He can focus just fine - on the things that interest him.  Is it his job to shift his interest to what the educational system thinks is relevant and important, or is it their job to present the information to him in a way that will engage him?  I won’t even dignify that with an answer.

The point is that we have to stop laying blame against people who are just being who they are, and as caregivers (parents, teachers, administrators, therapists, physicians) we need to get over ourselves.  What we think is significant ain’t necessarily so.  If we are going to have any hope of helping individuals on the autism spectrum, or with ADHD, or any kids for that matter, we need to start allowing for some creativity and flexibility in thinking.  We’ve got to think out of the box a little and stop being so draconian - let’s at least meet them halfway.  Can it really be that hard?  I somehow don’t think it is.

P.S. Rear admiral Robert PEARY discovered the North Pole(this is disputed); Vitus Bering discovered Alaska; Henry Hudson did discover Manhattan, but Peter Stuyvesant did not discover New Jersey.  Pikachu did in fact kick Electabuzz’s butt.  Fat lot of good that traditional education did me.  I’m sure Gus will figure out the truth about all these guys, I doubt I’ve done irreparable harm.

zen garden image from nationalgeographic.com

I read a lot about autism these days, and one thing that tends to raise my hackles is when people talk about autistic children as broken, kidnapped, lost, or insert bemoaning term here.  When Jenny McCarthy released her latest book, I pretty much ignored her, because I just can’t take her seriously.  Then PETA decided to try an ad campaign exploiting autistic children.  They had billboards with a bowl of soggy Cheerios making a frowny face that read: Got Autism?  This was to imply that if you give your child milk, they’ll become miserable autistics.  That was bad enough, but when I looked at PETA’s website, there were comments applauding the ad campaign from parents of autistic children and blaming the loss of their children on milk.  That was the last straw for me.  There has been more and more evidence to support the fact that autism is not caused by vaccines, mercury, or diets, but that it is predominantly genetic.  So it seems to me that the conversation should be about what to do to help those individuals deal with and environment that poses constant challenges instead of remaining in this false loop of logic.

Raising autistic children can be, often is, hard.  Raising any child can be, often is, hard.  Regardless of what each child’s challenges are, it is a parent’s job to do all they can to prepare their child to function in the world.  As a parent of an autistic child it is my job, to the best of my ability and to the highest capacity he has to learn, to prepare my son to function in this world-not the world I wish we lived in, but the one that actually exists.  And notice, I don’t mention anything about making him “normal.”  He’s perfectly normal-for him.  (And honestly, some of what is called “normal” in our society is pretty despicable and scary, so let’s leave that word alone.) Yet, I do have to help him to be able to go out there and co-exist with others.  Yes, it’s hard, but that doesn’t negate the need or my responsibility.  I absolutely get tired of repeating things thousands of times.  Of course it’s frustrating to feel like he might never “get” what I’m trying to instill, but I still have to try.  And I don’t feel bitter or robbed or any other sort of loss that so often seems to be be the stigma of life with an autistic child.

“You get what you get, and you don’t get upset,” is an appropriate line from one of the dozens of kids’ programs that rule my television.  That’s what you sign up for when you make the decision to be come a parent.  There’s no menu selection tab for “easy child.”  Okay, so my child is autistic…things will be different than I expected, probably a lot harder…move on and deal.  It takes time to get there, but ultimately, for the sake of the child you love, you have to.

When Gus was little, he had a fascination with the bottom kitchen cabinets, where I always kept cleaning supplies.  I tried a child gate to keep him out of the kitchen, but he was pretty wily and always managed to get around/through/over them.  Clearly, he was not to be thwarted, and why should he?  At some point, he’d have to be allowed in a kitchen, and he should be able to do so safely.  So I moved anything remotely dangerous to a high shelf, and made the cabinet under the sink my place for Tupperware storage.  Being allowed to play with the Tupperware was a safe compromise.  I still had to redirect him from other cabinets, which he was not always happy with, but eventually he stuck to his area.  Lots of repetitive, unpleasant redirection that paid off.  He’s asked more than once to take cooking classes.

A more current issue is that Gus has always tended to run around after dinner (in the past it was all during dinner) and unwittingly, he touches anything in his path.  The problem is that 90% of the time, his food has to be covered in ketchup or some sort of sauce.  For a long time, the walls and curtains always looked a mess and I couldn’t see a way to get a handle on the situation.  He’s learned to sit at the table most times, but as soon as he’s done, he goes for a couple of laps around the room.  He should, and wants to, respect his home.  Finally, we just make him stop in the bathroom to wash his hands before going on his circuit.

These are two pretty minor things we’ve had to deal with.  There were bigger lessons that took years to teach Gus like not running into traffic, potty training, or writing his name.  Tough challenges, but things he needed to learn.  They took patience, creativity, consistency, and faith that he’d do it eventually.  There were many days I wanted to just give up, but we just kept re-evaluating where he was at any given time, and working from there.  We have to keep looking at our childrens’ strengths and adapt to them.

I’m not suggesting that I know what the future holds for us, or that there aren’t those parents whose children’s autism is so severe that their only choice is to make the hardest decision to honor where their child is by having that child live in a residential care facility.  All I’m saying is that our attitude at any given moment, the way we view our autistic children, will have a direct impact on the way they view themselves, and that in turn will greatly effect their ability to navigate the world around them.  If we look at them with love, acceptance, and faith we offer them a much greater service than viewing them as damaged or as burdens.  By working with their strengths, we give them the confidence to know that they can interact with an environment that isn’t always so attractive.  By accepting the reality of the present moment instead of lamenting what we wish it would/could/should be, or worse, looking for scapegoats, we ultimately make things a little better for everyone.

Weeks like this, when everyone is feeling awful and communication is essential, make me truly appreciate just how far Gus has come over the last few years. He’s very verbal now with his main speech issue still being pragmatics. But there was a time that I remember quite well when he stopped developing language.

From around 12 to 18 months, he was acquiring words at a fast rate. Then around 18 months, he didn’t exactly regress, he just sort of stopped. And instead of starting to put those words together to communicate, he fell into a pattern of constant tantrums. The winter between 18 months and 2 was the worst we’ve ever had. I was pregnant and home bound with a child that I didn’t understand.

Fast forward five years and we have a child who can tell me exactly how he’s feeling.  Last night, he had a stomach ache, but didn’t feel like he was going to throw up.  This morning, his head was hurting a little bit, and his cough was “50% better.”

All his progress was a direct result of intensive education from the time he was 2 and a half.  Speech therapy, a brief time with PECS  and ABA for 2 years  all helped Gus to be the boy he is today.

I just came back from a school trip to an apple orchard with MM and that has inspired some gratitude in me today.

1. I am thankful for living in the Northeast where the change of seasons is always breathtaking.  Gus usually gets at least one apple picking trip in,which I’m really looking forward to and I’m sure he is too.  Last year he was fascinated with Cortland, Empire and Rome apples.  MM was invested in finding Golden Delicious andEmpires.  Tomorrow we’ll be making apple pie, of course.

2. I am thankful that my family instilled a real passion for learning from the time I was a child.  It makes class trips so much fun!  I mean, even when I learn things that seem like meaningless facts, they’re still interesting to know.   Today I learned how apple pickers get the apples out of their buckets without bruising them. (There’s a sort of chute at the bottom that gets held closed with 2 ropes.) And I also learned that for every day an apple sits unrefrigerated (like in a fruit basket) it ages about a week.  That is pretty useful information.

3. I am thankful that my kids are as invested in learning as my husband and I are.  It’s awesome to hear some of the questions they come up with and to see that spark of excitement when they discover something new.  That spark was always the best part of teaching for me, and it’s probably the thing I miss the most.  So I’m glad that I’m fortunate to see it at home.

Please, feel free to comment and share your thankfulness below!