A view of autism from along the spectrum

Every so often, I experience an epiphany and something with which I’ve struggled to master suddenly becomes intuitive and obvious. Over the past several weeks, I’ve had several, all relating to the nature of learning.

At the end of the past school year, a behavior analyst presented a suggestion to the school team for my ten year old son. He encouraged the team to try a completely positive reward system in which positive behaviors were acknowledged, up to two hundred times a day. A ‘token’ would be provided for each occurrence and the tokens could be used for a more tangible reward. We immediately implemented a system for both summer school and home.

The same son and I are currently taking an obedience class with our dog. I’ve found teaching an animal makes some aspects of learning more obvious. I can observe without the interference of emotions, judgments, and similar mental clutter that can cloud my view of my own, or my children’s, learning.

The epiphany was this: Aside from innate skills, all learning breaks down to repetition and reward. Forget about everything else, start with these two things and we’re on the path to success. It’s true for learning how to hit a baseball and it’s true for learning behavior appropriate for the classroom.   But please don’t think I’m comparing my children to dogs!    :^)

Of course, the type of repetition and reward must vary. Visual learners will need visual supports as part of the repetition. The amount of repetition needed will vary between persons and situations. The reward also changes. It’s amazing how positively my son has responded to the praise and positive feedback throughout the day. My initial thought was that several hundred times a day was too much and that the tangible rewards purchased by the tokens would become to important. I sure was wrong.

As I thought about it more, I realized that hearing so much positive feedback is exactly what my son needs right now to help him build positive behavior habits to replace some of the negative ones. I watch him closely as he ‘lights up’ after getting positive feedback. I can see the sense of pride building in himself. He goes out of his way to do things that both earn tokens but also earn the praise and feeling of pride. It’s obvious to me that the praise and pride are a bigger deal to him than the tokens.
We’re using the same token program with our six-year old, mostly to prevent sibling rivalry over ‘tokens’. The reward has much less impact on him as the reward (praise and tokens) don’t mean much to him. He’s a different child, in less need of behavior changes, and not motivated as much by positive feedback.

The cycle of learning gets to be really fun as I teach the boys how to teach the dog. Training a dog requires the boys to shift from learners to teachers. And I change to teaching them how to teach the dog and we talk about reinforcement and giving the dog positive feedback. It’s an interesting shift in roles for all of us.

The media continues to cover recent rise in autism prevalance. As a parent of two children on the autism spectrum, I follow this coverage closely. Most only touch the surface of the issue, and many appropriately admit that most of the questions about the causes and treatments are still unanswered. I’ve come to the conclusion that the increasing number of people diagnosed with autism is actually a benefit to those that are diagnosed as ‘on the spectrum’.

The media generally overlooks the fact that the definition of autism has not been consistent over the last 25 years. In the US, the ‘official’ source of the definition comes from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. There have been three versions published since 1980 and each one changed the diagnositic criteria for autism spectrum disorders. In general, the definitions became broader over time so that the label of autism or PDD now applies to more people.

The changing criteria can make it look like the experts can’t make up their minds. I view the changes as a sign that our understanding of autism is evolving. We now recognize that autism presents itself in a variety of ways. We also recognize that these different manifestations are related to one another. Thirty years ago we didn’t recognize the similarities between a child that was highly verbal, intensely focused on a special interest, and prone to trantrums may have many things in common with a non-verbal child who appears aloof to those around them. Now we do and the benfits to both are huge.

The benefits primarily come from the large number of interventions that have been developed over the past several decades. While there is currently no single intervention shown to help all, we now have many approaches to help develop language, socialization, and other life skills. We now know many strategies to help children on the autism spectrum succeed in the educational setting. We have also seen a large number of autistic adults come forward and share their life experiences, helping to pave the way for those that follow them. All this is a reflection of how our understanding of autism continues to evolve. It serves to help those on the spectrum, and society at large. Personally, it helps in my effort to raise my children to be happy, productive adults. And for that, I’m thankful.

I finally got the blog on-line! After, spending hours here and there trying to make it look attractive, meet the w3c standards, etc., it’s time to stop being a perfectionist with the software and graphics and start blogging. After all, that’s the point.