I've been working with an autistic child for only a week now as part of a therapy program called son-rise, and in just that short time I have learned so much! Not only about autism and my son-rise kid (to protect names) but myself as well.
First let's take a look at ourselves; I know most of us who have never really been around autism or who grew up when I did look at autism with a stigma. You know, we kind of become a bit uncomfortable when the child starts doing their "ism's" or politely ignore them the way you would when a dog is humping their favorite toy. Or we get the "oh poor's" going on in our head while trying to convince the other person, that "maybe they will outgrow it." Wow, we really did grow up in a very conformist age eh? Working with my son-rise kid has made me realize that when people say their autistic kid is such a special person, they're not just talking out their ass. These kids are pure spirits, there is no other way to describe it. There is nothing bad about them, they are good energy all around, their vibes are amazing and even though they are withdrawn from their surroundings they are SO grounded and centered there's no way you can't help but feel it. And maybe that's why we feel uncomfortable around them. Because we recognize how connected they are to the earth and how grounded they are, and it makes us realize that we aren't. And when our energies recognize that something isn't in balance it feels uncomfortable to us, and our ego goes to work trying to convince us that we need to retreat back to what is comfortable, which is being uncentered and ungrounded.
Since working with my son-rise kid, I have been more aware of my feelings, when my ego is taking over and been able to check it faster.
Now for the kids themselves. Even though there is so much to learn, when you spend a little time with them, you can just see that they love what they do, and that they are thinking so much all the time, and that they are processing everything, they just can't express it yet. All those feelings and thoughts and actions somehow get stuck when trying to get expressed to the outside world. And for the longest time instead of trying to reach them, on thier level where they could connect with us, we tried to make them reach our level, or pushed them into the "will never advance" profile which is so terribly sad. These kids can be so sweet and so interesting to watch, we just have to come down to their place and hang there for awhile to really get to know them.
After reading and watching about the son-rise program, I don't know how anyone didn't come up with this sooner! Instead of just correcting a child into submission to try and "act" normally which won't do them any good anyway, we need to build relationships and interact with them. You have to interact with people in life, you can't just "act" your way through it, otherwise what the hell kind of life is that? Teaching these kids how to "act" is not doing anything, you do that and you will always have limited mobility, interaction, and independence. Teaching someone how to interact and build relationships with others will increase all that. I'm not sure how else to put this. We'll use a dog for example, as everyone knows there is "corrective" obedience training and then their is "interactive" obedience training. When you force a dog to behave by negative reinforcement all we do is teach our dog to be afraid of us, and then training will take longer, and their are bound to be more accidents and behavioral mishaps because the dog has nothing good to connect with them doing something correctly but has everything bad to connect to it. But if we try another type of "interactive" training such as clicker training, the dog learns that there is positive association with behavior, they are not scared to behave, and are not so scared of making mistakes that they make more. The dog is more willing to behave since they are not scared of their owner, nor doing behaviors out of submission. They are happy and willing to interact with us and do as we ask because we are paying attention to them, coming down to thier level to see what motivates them, and are celebrating with them. Whew that was long but I hope I got the point across!
I love my little son-rise kid already and am so excited to see what changes are in store for all of us on the team and his family, and with him!!
For more information: http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org/
Peace y'all!
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