This was an unpublished entry that had been lurking with the other drafts.
A couple of years ago, when I was working with autistic children, I learned the versatility of using “head” as part of a compound word. The children were absolute masters. A small selection:
Kristina Chew at Autism Vox points out really disturbing language in state constitutions.
Seven months’ work with seven autistic children came to an end last Friday, the last day of school. “I feel I’m a better person for the experience,” I said to a colleague. So many daily lessons — as Elie Wiesel often says of his students, I learned far more than I taught.
I learned how to separate the behavior from the child. The child and the behavior — and I’m talking of crises: spitting, hitting, screaming, kicking, crawling under a table, self-destructive behavior, etc. — are not equivalent. Indeed, it is very seldom the child actually behaving that way, but rather the condition taking over and running things for a few moments, or minutes. You can see it in the eyes, and hear it in the voice.
I learned that there are far more difficult things to deal with as a teacher than a belligerent teenager. Countless times during the last seven months I was at a complete loss as to what to do, what to say, how to behave. This was partially a function of my lack of education in the EC field. When a child is in crisis, it’s a natural reaction to try to discuss it, to try to “talk him down.” In the world of autism, that seldom works. I learned to do so many things in exact opposition to my every instinct.
I learned what true student progress can entail. A couple of the students finished the year as completely different children than when they started. Gains in reading ability, social interaction, verbal expression, math skills, and general life skills left me simply astounded, and understandably proud that I had something to do with it.
I learned that even many regular education teachers feel they wouldn’t be able to work with such “difficult” children. “You guys are the saints of the school,” someone once told me, and a couple of others expressed an inexplicable admiration of “what we do.” What we did was not very different from regular education: try to teach children and minimize the behavior issues that impede learning. It’s just in special ed, the behaviors can be more concentrated. It’s sometimes a triple espresso to regular education’s thin, pale diner coffee.
As something of a correlate of the previous two points, I learned how to recognize true appreciation in the eyes and voice of parents. When I began working there as a substitute teacher, I was told that most subs last one day and refuse ever to come back. Full-time aides must be relatively difficult to find as well. Almost to a parent, everyone told me, “We really hope you’ll be back next year, though given the pay, we’d all understand if you didn’t.”
Finally, I learned that I have a patience I never knew I had, and it also has its bounds.
I leave with a greater understanding of autism, a greater respect for the parents of autistic children who live with “autism every day”:http://www.autismspeaks.org/sponsoredevents/autism_every_day.php.
Most of all, I leave with greater sympathy and respect for children with autism. They are the ones caught in a trap with varying degrees of understanding what that trap _is_, let alone how to get out. And yet they so often show those of us working with them things we never would have noticed because of the unique perspective from which they see every little thing.
I recently wrote about the disappearance of Federal funding for autism support programs.
To its credit, the Asheville city school system refused to let Bush’s tax cuts harm students under its care. They have hired several of the individuals who provided one-on-one support for more severely autistic children so that their education is not disrupted by Bush’s idiocy.
Children, it seems, sometimes like to have things _just so_. Everything in its place — as they deem it — and everything arranged just so. Perhaps that’s why Rudyard Kipling named his book of children’s stories _Just-So Stories_.
What happens when things are _not_ just so? If the child has autism, she might have difficulty explaining how things are not just so, and once that’s explained, might have further difficulties accepting the fact that things must remain as they are, just so or not.
Imagine a child — we’ll call him Samuel — is sitting in a blue chair at a table, working on an art project in his free time. Another child — we’ll call her Jen — is getting ready to do her math work with me. She starts heading over to the table where all the materials are laid out: the worksheet for answers, the manipulatives (in this case, plastic blocks) to help with counting, and a few horses because, well, Jen just likes horses.
But her blue chair is not there. Who knew she had a blue chair? I didn’t. When did she get an attachment to this particular chair? No idea.
Still, she needs her blue chair. The one Samuel is sitting in.
Who knew Samuel could so quickly develop an attachment to that _very same_ chair? I didn’t know, but would have suspected it’s possible.
Who knew this would all to amount to crisis for Jen? Once I saw where things were heading, I did.
The thoughts running through my mind then: Whom do I upset? If I leave the chair under Samuel’s bottom, Jen is not going to do any work and will in fact only scream at me for trying to work out a compromise with her. If I try to get Samuel to relinquish the chair, he’ll go ballistic because he’s having a go-ballistic-at-everything day. Besides, it really _isn’t_ fair. He was sitting in the chair long before Jen decided she had to have it. And it will be more difficult to work while he is in crisis than it will be to try to get Jen to compromise, so I left the chair there, got Jen to go to the quiet area for calming down, and waited.
“I’ll give you two minutes to calm down,” I said, then walked away, set the timer, and waited.
“Are you ready for some math, Jen?” I asked when the timer’s bell finished ringing.
“No!” came a shriek. “I hate math! Stupid math! I want blue chair!”
“The time is not ripe,” I thought.
Eventually, Samuel finished with his project and moved on to another part of the room to do more work. I grabbed the blue chair while I had the chance, put it at the table where I’d set everything up, and walked quickly over to the quiet area. Tapping Jen on the shoulder, I said quietly, “Look what I have for you over at the table.” She hopped up, virtually bounced to the table, sat down, and we had a truly delightful time working together on math.
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