All posts in category Teaching Out of Autism

Intensive teaching, not necessary ABA, is what mostly helps my son. Intensive in time, difficulty, scrutiny.Teaching is imposing my way of thinking on my son. I know that. The problem is he cannot teach me, so I have to teach him.

Not So Lazy Summer

I didn’t write much during these  summer months that come to unfulfilled end. There were reasons  why I couldn’t focus on writing.  Many of them are not related to the main theme of that blog. But one certainly is.  Robert was attending a  summer program.  It was a so-called “collaborative” with 14 or 15 children and 6 or 7 teachers or teachers’ aides.  The speech therapist was in the classroom 4 days a week.  The children seemed a little higher functioning than Robert. I am not sure if that could be clearly assessed as Robert’s extremely poor expressive communication clearly taints the picture.  In my opinion, Robert has relatively (RELATIVELY!!) advanced skills, but because they cannot be easily accessed, they -sort of- don’t exist.  Still, Robert was not treated as a special case in a special education classroom, which had been, has been and probably will be the case in his regular program.  Robert  felt he belonged.  He longed to go to the program.  He jumped and skipped joyfully when I assured him he was going there the next day.  It did help that there was a swimming pool included in a daily lesson plan but the pool  alone wouldn’t make a difference.  After all, in the past, Robert had attended  summer camps that included daily splashes in the pool, and those camps, good as they were, didn’t evoke the same feeling in Robert.

So what exactly made Robert so deeply happy in this program?  He doesn’t explain himself, and my conversations with teachers were rather brief, although frequent. Nonetheless, I am guessing…

1. For a part of a daily routine Robert sat at the desk placed among 14 other desks. He sat among other children.  He observed the children. That allowed Robert to discover who he was and where he belonged.  I am not sure if in any of the  previous classroom settings,  Robert could  come close to understanding himself and create his own image of himself. (Maybe with one exception.) As he was watching other children, he also noticed differences.  Maybe that was a reason why, during the time he was going to this program, he was extremely eager to learn more.  Maybe he noticed similarity between what we were doing at home and what the children were doing at the class.  Maybe he wanted to learn more to catch up with his peers.  I don’t know what were his reasons, but every day Robert wanted to study for hours. Every day this summer we studied together for 2-4 hours a day.  I was exhausted.  Robert was not.

2. He did not have 1:1 aide, so he had to rely more on what other children were doing and not on constant directions from an assigned to him teacher’s aide. There is no doubt that changing from his regular class where three students had help of three teachers or teacher aides, to this collaborative program required a lot of adjusting on part of Robert and on part of his teachers.  It would be helpful if Robert had a part-time aide whom he would share with other student or with the whole class.  But being relieved of constant shadow was an experience in growing up.

3. For a short part of the school day he was sitting around the table with very talkative students and was immersed in the verbal exchanges among those children even though he probably didn’t participate. Being exposed to “chatty” peers was one of the most motivating experienced.  He couldn’t join the “chat” but he certainly had a chance to understand the social function of speech and its importance.

4.He worked one on one with speech pathologist on issues related to his apraxia and application of language concepts in simple conversation. I suspect that he was in one way or another practicing speech – concepts and articulation almost every day. It was important, as I understand from learning more about apraxia therapy, that he worked one on one, because that allowed the therapist to set the proper pace and  increase the frequency of responses.  At home, Robert wanted to work with me.  In the past, I tried to use, for instance, the time in the car to encourage Robert to talk more.  He didn’t want to talk. He  asked to turn on the radio. He wanted to listen to music, not talk.   Now, he wants to talk.

5.His  notes home were not sanitized by close teacher’s supervision but were results of Robert’s independent efforts, his real struggles to come up with words that would carry the information.  I got a few notes written by Robert.  I had difficulties understanding them, but I figured them out.   They were clumsy and not without errors. However, the fact that Robert wrote them without help or with a very little help had an important benefit.  He remembered the written message so well, that he could tell me what the note was about without reading.  One note, for instance,stated that he said he should bring chips to cookout, and that was the thing he told me, repeating message a few times to make sure that I understood. I did.
Never before, he carried any message from school.
Many times I asked him what happened at school and he didn’t know what to say.  With the help from his teachers he made a list of daily activities, which I read and used it to  force conversation about the school. But he has never carried even one message home in his brain. Always on paper.  He had never told me what the teacher did or asked him to do. This was the first and the only time he carried home the message from school.

6.  I also wonder if the number of students and varied activities were not  factors in Robert showing less OCD’s (Obsessive compulsive disorder) behaviors.  As if being exposed to richness and complexities of other students, their varied behaviors, different personalities  resulted in more tolerance for changes.  This is something which had already struck me the previous summer, but I dismissed that as a coincidence.  Now, I think there is a connection….

Robert had a busy summer.  I had a busy summer as well.  Robert wanted to learn more, to know more, to talk better.  He was the force behind our studies together, not me.  So we did a lot of work.  Robert kept me busy and so I didn’t write much.

Every day, Robert puts some of the worksheets in the red folder. He places the folder in his backpack.  He expects to go to the collaborative again.  The red folder is getting ticker and ticker.  I am telling Robert that the program is over.  He doesn’t want to believe me.    He found a place for himself.  How can he not go there again?

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by krymarh on August 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on August 27, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/08/27/not-so-lazy-summer/

Tricking the Mind to Use Itself

In many posts written before this one, I indicated that Robert gets a lot of cues  from his environment.  He believes it is his responsibility to maintain the environment as unchanged as possible.  In the last few years, however, he began accepting the fact that the words, when introduced  clearly and with advanced notice, have the power to alter the order in space around. Still, in his actions,  Robert relies heavily on what he sees and only slightly on what he hears. When he sees that the roll of toilet paper ran out, he immediately replaces it with a new one.  When I tell him to replace the roll, he takes time to process my request.  I have to repeat  it a few times, before he checks the bathroom to confirm that he understood me properly, and only then he fetches a new roll.

When we practice language skills, this problem presents itself in a dichotomy: written versus oral. I noticed, more than six years ago, that when Robert had to fill blanks in written sentences he couldn’t retrieve proper words from his mind.  When, however, he had a bank of words in front of him, he could fill the gaps by choosing properly with only occasional error.  We worked on his ability to make free associations by drawing webs of words associated with the main word.

It was very difficult for Robert.  We were sitting in the dinning room and Robert tried to name a few objects that could be found in the kitchen.  We got up and looked inside the kitchen, named a few objects, and came back to the worksheet.  Robert still had difficulties. As if he could not carry those words in his mind from the kitchen to the dining room table – seven steps altogether.  In the end, I wanted Robert to just memorize names of four objects found in the kitchen.  Except, he couldn’t memorize them.

I made a list. He read it a few times but did not retain any words.  I read with Robert all four words: sink, oven, table,and  spoon touching each word as we read.  Then, I covered the words with my hand, but proceeded to touch this part of my hand under which the word was hidden.  Surprise, surprise! Robert named all four words.  He didn’t see them! Still, he knew they were there.  I don’t understand this mechanism, but it seemed that as long as the words were somewhere on the outside of his brain (on the paper, under my hand), he could refer to them and remember them even when he didn’t see them. Just knowing their location sufficed to recall them all.

After we practiced this way many times, he was able to remember these words (and other) without any additional support.

Yesterday, I encountered another problem.  As we were practicing with No Glamour Vocabulary Card, Robert had difficulties choosing from four words the one which didn’t belong in the set.  I gave the verbal direction, “Which one is not a furniture: table, chair, pencil, or sofa?” Robert was lost.  He clearly couldn’t follow such a long chain of words and analyze their relationship at the same time.  Similar difficulties he exhibited with other sequences. This  and the following example are consistent with defective working memory, I believe.

I asked him to write down all the words as I was saying them.  When he did that, he was able without any difficulties to choose the correct word.  We did that again with a few other sets of words.  He was always right. When he saw the words, he was able to perform well.

In next step while I was reading the words I drew one horizontal line for each word but left all of them empty.  As I asked, ” Which one is not a vegetable: carrot, apple, spinach, onion”,  I touched each line as if I suggested the place where each word was supposed to be.

With slight delay, Robert touched the line assigned to “apple” and said ” an apple”.

I am not really sure what I was doing there.  I hope that  as I was drawing these empty lines, or was covering the list of words I tricked Robert to use his brain in a new way, as if I was helping to create  some new templates for thinking.

In one of my early post, I wrote how I used the fact that Robert knew how to add double numbers (8+8 for instance) to teach him add doubles plus one (8+9).  I got the idea from Saxon Math, but I went a step farther than the authors of the curriculum did and I used empty squares as the last step.   Those empty squares, just like empty lines might have helped Robert organize his abstract thinking and form concepts.

Maybe

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by krymarh on August 13, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on August 13, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/08/13/tricking-the-mind-to-use-itself/

Life Is a Therapy

During almost all ABA workshops I attended when Robert was younger, I heard the same message,” One should invest time, effort , and money in those therapies that have scientific backing of a double blinded research.”  Only ABA therapy withstood such criterion. Other therapies did not. There is in doubt that those  first months if not years of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy changed my son’s life, by providing some sort of clarity and orientation in the chaotically unapproachable world. There is no doubt about that. On the other hand all the complexities, variations, tastes, shapes, and forms of life cannot be addressed in even thousand discrete trails. Providing enriching activities outside the discrete trail format is even more important for children who, like my son, are more developmentally impacted as it is harder from them to “feel” the world without more or less systematic introduction to it.

Except, the world is not widely open to children/young people like Robert.  Robert,too, is not ready to jump into any program designed with “typical” children in mind.  We had to find adaptive programs, that would match Robert’s needs.  Moreover, just placing adjective “adaptive” in front of the name of the activity, doesn’t  make it suitable for Robert.

Not without problems we found adaptive skiing, adaptive swimming, and therapeutic horseback riding….

Did I say, “Therapeutic?”

Well, yes, because I  call an activity therapeutic if during its duration Robert’s behavior seems undistinguishable from that of his typical peers. I don’t look for the lasting effect as I wouldn’t be able to asses it correctly. I am only interested in the immediate outcome.

Because every activity that reduces or eliminates Robert’s self – stimulatory behaviors is already therapeutic.  Every activity that results in gaining new perspective and learning new skills has to be considered therapeutic for Robert.  The more often he does “typical things” in “typical” manner the more “typical” he becomes.  So for Robert not only horseback riding is therapeutic.  Swimming, skiing, biking, hiking, and many other activities are therapeutic as well.

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by krymarh on August 13, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on August 13, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/08/13/therapeutic/

King Sisyphus? Rather Not.

Last Sunday, I took from the shelf, filled with  used and overused teaching materials, the workbook Developing Receptive & Expressive Language Skills in Young Learners. Robert and I went through all the pages of that book 4 or 5 times in the past six years.  Every time we reached the end of the book,  Robert seemed to master  four types of language tasks:  answering “yes” or “no” questions, choosing one of the two words to answer simple question about the picture, finishing the sentence with the missing word, and answering “wh” questions. When, however,  some time later, we started again from the page one, Robert was lost.  Surprisingly,the task he had most problems with was related to  “yes” and “no” answers.  He also made many errors when he had to choose one of two words from the questions as in: “Is the boy pushing a tractor or a lawn mower?”  Having two options already specified in the question didn’t help him but confused him instead. Finishing sentences and answering “wh” questions went much better.

Still, the regress was clear and heartbreaking.  Robert’s  work and my work seemed to be in vain. For the fifth or sixth time we followed the same pattern:

1.Robert has difficulties with exercises at the beginning of the book.

2. As we continue going forward, the number of errors is  decreasing.

3. When we reach last page, Robert seems to pass all the verbal tests.

4.I put the workbook away convinced that Robert mastered the required skills.

5. When I  return to the book a few months or a year later believing it would be an easy exercise related to fluency and maintenance of the skills Robert was supposed to have, I  discover that Robert lost those skills.

6.We start re-teaching and/or re-learning.

This recurrent sequence of learning skills and loosing them is rather depressing.  For the fraction of a  second I perceived myself as Sisyphus, who despite many attempts, failed  to place a rock on the top of the mountain.  Only for a fraction of a second.  But although I dismissed that comparison quickly, I realized that my work with Robert might be perceived as completely pointless. One might think that since Robert kept loosing what he had learned, then there was no point in teaching him.

Such conclusion is not only morally reprehensible but also  utterly wrong.

Morally reprehensible, as it both reduces Robert’s status   from the conscientious participant in the process to the passive object of one’s educational efforts and, simultaneously, demotes a teacher from a person in charge of instruction to a helpless victim of a senseless job. Well, the teacher is NEVER HELPLESS. The teacher can observe, define patterns, learn from them, and adjust learning methods.  Presenting a teacher as a victim of his job damages him and his pupils.

Utterly wrong, as it misdiagnoses the causes of the problem.  It is not that Robert cannot learn.  Four or five times he has proven  that he could. It is the way he is /was taught that leads to loosing the skill.  Robert cannot maintain his skills for the same reasons an average  high school graduate, who never went to French-speaking country, is doomed to quickly forget his French.

Robert never had any opportunity to intensively and frequently practice his newly acquired (or reacquired) language skills outside the dinning room table where he was learning  them with me. I couldn’t assure that others – teachers, peers, community workers would help him practice his language across different settings.

Since Robert has never traveled to “France”  how could he retain his “French”?

Besides, Robert always remembers at least a part of what he was previously taught.

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by krymarh on August 7, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on August 7, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/08/07/sisyphus-rather-not/

Flying Dragon Therapy

Very often I heard a news, amplified through media and parents’ internet lists, about a new and exciting  therapy for autism.  Equally often, I heard members of scientifically oriented groups vehemently protesting the fact that some sort of activity has been called a “therapy” without any rigorous research to support such claim. On one side we have emotional, strong testimonials of alternative “therapies’ ” believers on the other side we have cold and sobering calls for proofs that expensive treatments deliver on their promise.

I never participated in such discussions because I  was not able to form a strong opinion on those issues that wouldn’t include many  conditionally tainted words such as  “if” , “but”, and “however”. Moreover, it  often happens that the things are not what they seem or what they are called.

Flying Dragon Therapy

When Robert was four years old, he didn’t know any receptive labels and used less than five expressive words to ask for juice, bubbles, and something else.  For his fourth birthday he got  a windup toy which I will call “Dragonfly” , as I had forgotten its name long ago.  It was a plastic dragon standing on a plastic rock. When you pulled energetically the string, whose end was sticking out of the rock, the dragon lifted its wings and flew across the room.    How fascinating!

Robert was hooked.  He wanted Dragon to fly over, and over, and over.  Yet he was not able to pull the string strongly and/or quickly enough to make it fly.  It is possible, that he was also afraid that the Dragon  might fly in the wrong direction and hurt him. He kept on bringing the toy to me so I would make it fly.  I did, but not before Robert said the word “fly” or his approximations of that sound. Robert kept saying “fly” louder and clearer and I kept on releasing the Dragon into the air.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Flying Dragon was improving Robert’s speech.  But of course it was the fact that  the dragon was used by me as a powerful reinforcer motivating Robert to “talk” that caused this development.  On the other hand, it might be that Robert  used the word “fly” as a strong reinforcer to motivate me to make the Dragon fly.  After all, he controlled this event. He prompted me into action by handing me the toy. He rewarded me with a word “fly” every time I properly pulled the string.

Of course, I would call it ABA therapy, but there are people who would keep on calling this ” Flying Dragon Therapy”  and for a good reason.

I wonder if some of the alternative therapies – like horseback therapy or sensory integration therapy do not use similar mechanism to the Flying Dragon Therapy.  And if so, how to interpret or evaluate them?

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by krymarh on July 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on July 27, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/27/everything-is-or-could-be-a-therapy-up-to-the-point/

It’s OK, It’s OK

Robert cannot always avoid confrontations with other people, but he  tries. There are things that Robert wants to keep in certain places and/or in a certain way. I don’t understand rationale behind his choices as he never explains himself. Sometimes I can convince him to do something differently, sometimes I cannot.

There were times when I kept Robert’s white T-shirts and his underwear in one drawer and all of his   pajamas   in another.  Yet at some point in time, coinciding with Robert’s learning to fold and put away  laundry, I started noticing that all the white shirts found their way to the drawer with pajamas while abandoned pieces of underwear enjoyed the extra space in an emptied drawer.  So, a few times I explained to Robert this problem and demonstrated where to place all the intimate clothes.  Every time I did that, Robert not only didn’t protest but softly and quickly repeated, “It’s OK, It’s OK”  and left his bedroom with me. Every time,  I felt a great satisfaction that  Robert’s  “irrational behavior ”  was suppressed under unbeatable logic of my arguments.

And yet, five-minute, an hour, or a day later  I found out that the white T-shirts were again suffocating  pajamas’ in their drawers while  the deserted underwear lingered  in an almost empty drawer.    I never noticed, Robert made sure that I didn’t,  when exactly he was able to change the content of the two drawers.   I switched them back  but so did he.   We played this game of switching for a few days. Finally I gave up.  I pretended I didn’t notice anything and Robert pretended to believe that I didn’t notice.
Neither of us had a stomach for confrontation….

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by krymarh on July 26, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on July 26, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/26/its-ok-its-ok/

Learning Through Observation

The sad truth is that I didn’t observe Robert carefully enough to list all the things he learned by observing other people’s actions.  But still,  quite a few things I remember vividly.

1. He learned to pour water for a neighbor’s cat, Louis.  The cat kept on crossing a dangerous parking lot with a road passing right through it, to visit our townhouse.  Once, I gave the cat a bowl of water.  The next time Louis came for the visit, three years old Robert immediately placed a dish filled with water in front of Louis.

2.Somehow, by the time he was 10 years old, he knew where to put the dishes from the dishwater or  in which closet or chest’s drawer he should place  clean laundry.

3.  As he observed our house, Robert came to his own conclusions about where many items should be kept. No matter where I left the car keys, Robert always put them in my purse.  The cordless phone and, later, cell phones were always in the same places as Robert made it his job to carry them to the locations he chose for them.

However, he never bothered with placing his sister’s items in  specific places.  Since Amanda always left her keys, wallets, and phones in completely different locations,  there was no way for Robert to learn a proper way of managing this chaos and finding a way to establish order.  So, as of today, neither Robert’s dad nor I have to look for our keys or phones.  Amanda, however, has to search the house almost daily in the most distressing circumstances to find needed items.

3. After assisting me with preparation of  his favorite food:  poblano peppers stuffed with cheese or  eggplant parmeasano, Robert learned to do most of the cooking of the pepper and all the cooking for eggplant. I didn’t have to teach him.  He observed.

So yes, children with autism do learn through observation. It is possible that they learn differently.  It is a pity, however,  that we do not observe them closely enough to learn how they observe and how they learn from their observations.

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by krymarh on July 26, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on July 26, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/26/learning-through-observation/

Relative Intelligence

Many parents of children with autism have difficulties accepting their children’s low scores on intelligence tests. Sometimes they hope that a different test might paint a “better”picture of their son’s or daughter’s abilities. For instance, if the parents attribute low quotient to the child’s lack of language they might insist on tests that eliminate or reduce verbal components.

I have to state, that I am not sure if there is an IQ test that doesn’t  involve language.These doubts are born from my increasing uncertainty of what language is. For instance: visual patterns, visual sequencing – how do they relate to language?

Although those “non-verbal” tests might not increase IQs, the parents are right when they reject abysmal scores as an indicator of child’s abilities.  Yet, the scores don’t lie either. What they, however, do is to measure the depth of a chasm dividing tester representing society at large and a child with autism (disability). They measure the disconnect of the two worlds.

And that is NOT an indicator of a child’s abilities but it is an indicator of how the society views the child.

Now we enter a tricky part. The way the society perceives the child’s abilities DOES affect that child’s performance and so the low IQ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I still cannot forget my son’s teacher in a school year 2009/2010 (I won’t mention her name.) who after learning about  low results of the neuropsychological testing, stopped teaching my son altogether.  From that time on she was giving him only packets of word searches.  She placed him in a separate desk and demanded that he worked alone on those while she was busy with other students or.her computer.  To make matter worse, she didn’t allow my son’s aid to teach him either!.  I think she didn’t see the point.

I had to add the sentence about the classroom teacher not allowing the aid to work with my son.  I know it doesn’t add to the chain of arguments, but the pain this teacher caused doesn’t go away.  She wasted many months of my son’s life.  She caused him to regress and she caused me a great distress as I watched helplessly my son’ s confusion. 

Since those low scores came in, every IEP started with description of my son’s skills  with the strong emphasis on their  extremely low “negligible” level..  For every teacher after this test, that description became an excuse not to teach my son.

And yet at the same time when at school  Robert  was expelled to the separate desk with packets of word searches, at home he was learning to find common denominators, to read various graphs, to count elapsed time, to find times in different time zones and much more.  He was learning at home while wasting his time at school.

I cannot help but wonder, how much more he would know today had he been taught at school at least half as intensively as he was at home.

 

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by krymarh on July 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on July 22, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/22/relative-intelligence/

Contradictions 1

Myth 1

Children with autism do not learn through observation.

  I am not sure if that was one of the ABA trained teachers or her clinical supervisor who told me that.   Most probably, it was a teacher quoting a very respectable clinical researcher.
 It might be that it was an argument against any approach to teaching that would not follow strictly ABA’s principles.  Maybe, that was an argument against inclusion even in limited format. Inclusion has a meaning if a child is capable of learning through observation from his/her peers.  If the child is not able to learn from members of the  group, then the  inclusion only separates that child even more. .  Unfortunately, it might be that a child is capable of learning from his/her peers but the well-meaning teachers do not realize that or are not able to provide  setting or support for such learning.  Instead,  they separate that child from other students and in many unsettling ways  reduce  learning  opportunities.  And thus they make sure that the above statement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In 2006 I was teaching Robert at home for over four months. The circumstances which forced me to do that are painful.  Describing them still brings up bitterness I am not ready to confront yet.   During that homeschooling time, Robert made a lot of academic progress learning things I never believed he could grasp.  His behavior also improved dramatically and that allowed us to  make many community trips.   We shopped together. We deposited cans and bottles. We frequented many restaurants.  We often went to movies, museums, and parks. Robert got his ATM cards  and was learning to write checks.  During this time, Robert started  swimming lessons and horseback riding lessons.   Yet, I was constantly told that to develop social skills, Robert needed to be at school with other children.   So,  in November of 2006, Robertbegan to attend a self-contained classroom in local High School for two hours every day.  Although I knew that part of his school day would be spent  with  his  one on one teacher’s aide,  I also believed that he would receive a short group instruction. First of all, that was what he had done the  previous year. Secondly, I always saw his pencil and wallet on one of the desks so  I assumed that he was sitting  among other students. Moreover, at least in mathematics his academic skills were not below the class average.

Next  year, we extended Robert’s hours in the classroom to three or three and a half.  Why shouldn’t we?  Everything went so well.  He was a part of the group. Although, I became concerned when I learned that Robert was excluded from the field trip to bowling alley. That would mean that he was NOT a part of the group.

It was in the beginning of his third year in this classroom when I finally understood that my son was ALWAYS working one on one with his aide and that he NEVER was a part of any group. He never received a group instruction.

What social skills could he learn from such a setting?  What concept of self could be developed in such arrangement?  That he was distinctly different?  That he didn’t belong to the group? What image of Robert was formed in other students minds?  That he was different, thus that he  should be treated differently?

Robert was in the classroom but there was no reason for him to observe other children.  He was NOT ONE OF THEM.  His days were filled with one on one work with his aid.  If anything, to be successful at school, he should have tuned out the rest of the classroom, he should have ignored his (?) peers and attend only to his one on one teacher.  How he could learn through observation if there was no reason for him to observe…Watching other children and the main teacher working with them could be only distracting to him, to the other teacher, to other students…

This arrangement didn’t allow the  teacher to observe Robert closely and learn about him.    So it was not surprising that when she planned a field trip to a bowling alley to give OTHER students the opportunity to practice counting averages of their scores, she didn’t include Robert.  She didn’t know that Robert was counting averages during the time he was home schooled.  Such trip would offer him a chance for practical application of the emerging concept, he worked very hard to learn.

But he didn’t go.

Robert didn’t learn any social skills through observation of his peers because he didn’t have a chance to observe.  The teacher didn’t learn much about Robert through observation, because she chose not to observe him to closely.  He had his teacher aide after all.

The new teacher that started working in this classroom the third  year,  changed the delivery of instruction. She  included Robert in many groups throughout the day.  Different ones for math,  reading, or science. Finally, that school year, Robert became a part of the class he had been attending for two previous year. That was the best year in whole Robert’s education. He started to learn through observation because  what he observed meant something for him.

Unfortunately, that teacher, who almost every day stayed 1-3 hours after school to prepare materials for next day,  was laid off, without any reason, by the end of the year, by the high school principal. A new, young teacher was hired and my son lost opportunities to learn through observation.  But that was already expected. The Myth was kept alive….


.

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by krymarh on July 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by krymarh on July 22, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/22/myths-part-1/

Glass

The first time Robert, four years old at that time, ran toward a glass patio doors I screamed hysterically .  “Robert, Stop! NO! Robert NO!. But Robert didn’t stop.  He bumped into the  door.  “No Robert.  You cannot do that.  NO! It is dangerous.  Never do that again!”  I was approaching him quickly, nonetheless he managed to take a step or two from the door and bump into it again.  I screamed again, “No, Robert, no” .  He turned to me to, I am sure of that, examine my facial expression. I reacted strongly to what he did and he did notice.

I moved the sofa placing it in front of the patio door. Robert found a replacement object for bumping: the front door.   He bumped into the door a few times.  I didn’t mind. It was  NOT made of glass.  Soon, Robert lost interest in bumping into flat, vertical  surfaces, so after a few weeks, when Robert was at school, I put the  sofa back into its old place.

Wrong.

When Robert came from school he took off his shoes and a  jacket and…ran into the glass door.  I saw him running, but my legs were no match for his. I couldn’t catch him.  Well, I  could scream.  But by then, I knew better.  My scream would not stop Robert.  If anything it would have propelled him and strengthen his resolve to bump into glass panel.  So I kept quiet and preparing myself for the next move.  Immediately after hitting the glass Robert, as I anticipated,  looked at me to check my reaction.

I offered him the most uninterested expression I could create.  As if I didn’t notice that forceful, energetic wallop.  I made a face which emitted dull indifference.  I think that for a fraction of a second, just a fraction, I observed a confused disenchantment on Robert’s face.

But maybe I am exaggerating my acting skills.

Robert never repeated that behavior again.  It helped that I kept the sofa in front of the patio door for another year.

Ten years later, when Robert was in the Collaborative Program, he was left alone in a large room.  He seemed to be in distress.  Maybe from pain.  Maybe from feeling like a big disappointment.  He bang on the window of the temporary, modular classroom.  He broke the glass.  He didn’t hurt himself.  Today, I think that he begged for help.  Then, I didn’t know what to think.  I knew that the teacher treated  Robert with exasperated exhaustion and that never bodes well for the object of such feelings. Oh, well…

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by krymarh on July 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Teaching Out of Autism
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Posted by krymarh on July 17, 2012

https://krymarh.com/2012/07/17/glass/

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