A flowchart of reasonable simplicity for dealing with aggressive children on the autism spectrum. Aggression can be a major issue with autism, especially (but definitely not limited to) nonverbal people on the spectrum. There's a lot of frustration involved in being so different, especially if you recognize it but can't do anything about it. There's a lot of frustration, mainly, in how other people treat you given that fact.
I highly recommend following your way down the entire chart, regardless of any YAYs.
Two things I wanted to note:
1. "Significant downtime, even if it looks like the person is doing nothing."
This immediately reminded me of a common gripe I hear from parents sometimes. "My kid spends all their time on the computer doing nothing!" Sometimes linked to, "Why don't they go play outside or something?" This is a perennial pet peeve of mine. There's a near-limitless number of things to do online, much of which is free. There's scads of music from hundreds of genres. There's online gathering places where you can meet and speak with thousands of people from countries you will probably never visit. And yes, there are pictures of cute animals and videos of cats doing stupid things. And y'know what? All of those are valid relaxation activities. Today's US is a very high stress one, and if your kid finds any of these things relaxing? Don't disparage that. Don't take that away from them. Even if it's something like sitting in the corner staring at nothing. Relaxation is immensely important. We're not meant to live at such high stress levels, all the time. Any relaxation your kid or adult on the spectrum can find is very important. Think at least twice before you get negative about it.
2. "Consider this. Frustration from either not being able to succeed, never having anything challenging, or lack of autonomy causes stress for any human being"
I have a case of the first of those three options. Also a case of high expectations, perhaps. In my defense, I wasn't diagnosed until I was in my early 20s. I'd assumed that someday, if I worked hard enough, people would accept that I was normal and stop treating me like an outsider. I hadn't counted on a diagnosis that rendered me permanently unable to be normal. Normal people have depression and anxiety, but they don't have autism. At least not right now.
Autism makes everything challenging for me. I got awkwarded out by every phone call I make, because often both sides talk over and through each other, and goodbyes aren't set, rote things with the same words every time, and the same closings to conversations every time. They're as different as the people you're talking to. And because of how I'm wired, I agonize over each of those calls for at least 15 seconds after they're done, unless I get distracted by that peculiar ADHD-like mentality work seems to be cultivating in me. The phone rings, and I have to drop everything to answer it. Someone walks up to the desk and I have to stop my paperwork or my phone call with insurances to address them. Or I realize I'm working on a lower priority thing when a higher-priority thing is sitting there undone. Or I lose my temper with being in the office and grab some recycling that needs to go to the dumpster.
I got a bit off topic. I've complained about how difficult things can be. You'll probably have to read more of it in the future, but hopefully I can also make it funny so you don't mind too much.
The main thing I like about this node in the flowchart is that it notes that frustration in these circumstances is very normal. You don't have to be special to be frustrated here. It often seems like once people have a diagnosis to pin on someone, everything that's weird or wrong or bad about them is automatically that diagnosis' fault. That isn't always the case, especially in something so poorly understood as autism. But if you let them, people will often grab that diagnosis, make a box of it, and shove you and your problems into it, where you may be relegated for all eternity. It doesn't sit well with me.
People are far more complex than that. All of them. There's a sentence mentioned repeatedly by advocates and special ed teachers and everyone who knows better: "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." It's dizzying and confusing for people to deal with that sometimes, but if you think about it, treating a person with autism like any other person is common sense. You might have to consider a few more things when you talk to them, like "do they understand sarcasm," and "is making jokes about developmental disabilities really a good idea right now?" but in the end, we're all people. I'm fluent in sarcasm and I'll bet you anything there's at least one person on the autism spectrum who thinks jokes about disabilities are the funniest thing ever. Maybe that person even collects them.
My happiest memories as a kid are outdoor solitude. When I was climbing tall trees or building a fort with garbage cans for pylons. I think it's harder in the city to motivate anyone to go outside because there aren't trees to climb and forests and creeks to explore. So I understand my nephews' insatiable appetite for looking at screens.
ReplyDeleteHave you read the book "The Reason I Jump", I saw it on The Daily Show, it's kind of an autobiography of a 13 year old with severe autism. At the end of the book is a short story he wrote that is fascinating.