Wednesday 11 June 2014

The Autism Gardener


HOLE IN ONE! Hit a ball into the future, you'll be glad when you get there
My kids are the subjects of a series of little ideas and trials, snippets of inspiration to help make life a little easier.

My philosophy is very similar to any gardener's. Always nip any behaviour that you think might become troublesome in the bud. If you see it before the bud stage, so much the better. Whatever you do, don't wait until it's in full ruddy bloom with a never-ending maze of roots.

That doesn't mean to say that you should focus on every tiny thing that isn't quite to your liking either. The trick I've found is to know the plant, or in our case, the problem. This little shoot you've got here...Should it grow into a bigger plant with stronger roots, what will it look like? A bloody nightmare? Then deal with it now.

Bobby is now ten and so I'm a pretty keen gardener right now. That's because I'm mindful of the fact that in a year's time, his little problem plants will be re-potted into secondary school. Without his terrific teaching assistant all over them with her secateurs, we may get into trouble. Plus, teenagers are typically resistant to intervention. Better get in there with a hoe right now!


Quite a lot of what I'm tackling with Bobby is impulse related. Like many people on the spectrum whose executive functioning is a little off-track, he finds it really hard to sort out the necessary and important tasks and do them before the stuff he likes. He's not alone here, by the way. His neurotypical friends are very similar. The difference is, they will naturally learn impulse control as they mature. Bobby may need some help in developing it, so getting in there early is a good start.

One idea that Tori came up with has been a massive success and I'd highly recommend it. Simple as heck as well. He has a laminated list of the six things he needs to do in the morning in order to get ready for school. After he's ticked all the boxes, he can do what he likes until it's time to leave. The advantage for him is that whereas before I wouldn't let him play on the computer before school (too absorbing), he now gets computer time providing he's done first what he needs to do. To help make it more attractive, the jobs each have a Mario figure by them.

Bobby loves ticking off his little list and the morning nag has stopped altogether. I can actually trust him to get ready without constant verbal (highly verbal!) reminders.

The interesting thing about this is that what started off as quite a mechanical operation - tick the boxes, get what I want - has actually engrained itself into Bobby's thinking to the extent that he now sees the point of getting the unwelcome jobs out of the way first. Any extension of that idea in the future will probably be welcomed. So, to coin a gardening phrase, it is as well to sew the seeds early.

The second little snippet of inspiration came after finding that Bobby continually failed to understand what was expected of him at school and why.

On some days he does next to nothing and doesn't worry at all that he's falling behind with the week's work. Increasingly, he's using the 'autistic' card as a Get Out of Jail Free card! He is special, he's very special and he's lovely, but he's not beyond using autism as a tactic in his growing quest to do as little as possible.

Bobby, like most autistic kids, doesn't respond to any kind of pressure, so it's not a good idea to suddenly tell him that he has loads of work to do, or to make him feel as if he's failing. Instead I've come up with a little chart (see below). It's designed for him to fill in with his teaching assistant and it lets him know exactly where he needs to be in order to complete his work and get the rewards he wants. Instead of Bobby seeing his schoolwork in terms of either outright success or failure, we have defined the grey areas in between. Exactly what is enough and what is not enough? To complete this key task, what is it that we expect you to do? And also - an extra added by Tori - what is the learning objective behind this? Why is it important that we're doing this?

In autism, if it causes confusion, nail it down. Make it visual, give an explanation.  So much of the time I see Bobby floating in uncertainty. Verbal explanations just aren't enough  - he'll ask the same thing a few days later. "Why do I need help?" Well, now we can point to the tasks on his chart, where he's up to and show him where the difficulties were.

IMPULSE CONTROL: Bobby's daily task list for school
Day one and the news is that the chart is going well... Once Bobby grasps the concept of priorities, it'll enable him to define his own in later life. I'm not going to assume that it'll suddenly come to him when he's 21, so every tiny bit of gardening that we do now will reap rewards in the future.

How can I be so sure? Because for every bit of gardening we did when he was five, I've witnessed those encouraging results now he's ten.

ps Today, a couple of happy faces, one neutral face and one sad face. 'I can't remember what the sad face was for,' said Bobby. Yeah, right.




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