Happy Father's Day 2013!

It's Father's Day today, and I'd like to share some pictures that express the love of two sons for their dads:

First, from Adam. As you will know if you have been following this blog, Adam is a young adult with autism who has limited verbal language. He expresses his more complex and detailed thoughts through his drawing. The following pictures were drawn in 2001, after he took a trip to Disney + with his dad. You'll see that in Adam's world, "Dad = Fun":




Adam and Dad head off on the airplane to begin their adventure

They can't wait to get to Disney

They also go to Epcott and MGM

Of course, no trip is complete without a stop at McDonalds

It's clear that Adam connects his dad with good times

Second, from Kevin. He is also a young adult with autism who has limited verbal language and uses drawing to communicate. His favourite drawing subjects are Mr. Bean, Teddy and his dad, mom and brother. Here are a couple of pictures of Dad from recent months:

Music is one of Kevin's favourite things, so he puts that together with Dad (one of his favourite guys)

Here's Dad keeping himself fit

... and here's Dad admiring Kevin's artistic talent (he is one of Kev's biggest fans)

When you're the dad of a non-verbal person, they may not be able to tell in conventional ways how much you mean to them ... but if you expand your view, you may be able to see the subtle and unique ways they are trying to say "Dad, you're the best - I see all the things you do for me and I love you for it".

 

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!!!

Drawing out Emotion in Autism

The other day I was asked this question:

Do people with autism understand love? How about emotions in general?

And this was my answer:

Yes – I’m actually just in the process of writing a blog post about this topic. It is a common misconception that people with autism lack emotion. In fact, they tend to have very strong emotions that can overwhelm them. Often emotions are not well categorized and sorted, and one of the important things to address in intervention is understanding, sorting , naming of emotions, as well as defining degrees of emotion – this helps the person deal with their own emotional responses (and those of others) in a better way.

Emotions can be hard:

 

 

..... especially if: when you feel like this inside .....

 



.... THIS is the only answer that comes out when someone asks: "How are you?"

Note to all parents, teachers & therapists: PLEASE do not teach a child to automatically answer "I am fine" to this common question (this response is incredibly difficult to un-teach, and results in sick/injured/hurt/distressed people telling you they are just "find")

Think of a time in your life when your emotions overwhelmed you - when events in your life were so "big", so unmanageable, so unfathomable that you were swept away by a tide of emotion that rendered you speechless, thoughtless, disorganized and discombobulated - perhaps to the point that a pathetic word like "sad" or "angry" or "scared" just wouldn't begin to encompass the experience. I really want you to clearly recall this time and state before you read any more .... ready?

This is often what emotion is like for those on the autism spectrum. Not too little feeling, but far too much. With no automatic system kicking in to name and sort and process, every feeling can become overwhelming - a "happy" surprise can lead to a meltdown just as easily as a negative or sad experience.

Emotional education is important, but it's challenging to directly teach a subject that is not usually taught - if you're a "Nypical" (love this term from John Elder Robison), you may think of yourself as very skilled in this area, but it's all automatic processing for you, so you don't actually know how you know what you know (if you know what I mean), and you probably won't be as good at explaining and teaching it as you think.

 

Drawing is a great way to approach the direct teaching of visual cues that connect to emotion:

Here is a quick overview of the small drawn figures I use to teach body language and facial expression:

With a few simple lines, you can "explain" the visual cues of emotion much more effectively than you can with verbal language (in this instance, a picture really is worth a thousand+ words).

This type of teaching results in a gradual learning process - the skills involved in seeing, processing, integrating and understanding the transitory subtle visual cues that code human emotion are incredibly complex, but they are teachable.

Kevin and Adam are both low verbal adults on the autism spectrum, and they have been learning about people and emotions for many years now. See some of their recent drawings:

Happiness for Mr. Bean is a trip to the condo.

Being "shushed" makes Adam feel a bit sad and uncertain.

Sadness for Kevin is an unexpected closure of a favourite store.

Adam draws the unhappy shock of a boy blown back by a lion's roar.

Raymond (Kevin's brother) is excited about graduating from university.

Loving bond between a seal pair.

Dad shows the universal reaction to computer malfunctions.

Being able to freeze one moment in time, through drawing, allows it to be examined and understood. And recently, the beautifully simple drawing animation programs on the iPad have the extra benefit of letting us put these transient emotional moments in the context of a visual timeline:

CLICK HERE FOR ANIMATED VERSION!!

Understanding and taming emotions is a critical step in developing self-confidence and self-control ... and art is a powerful way to reach and teach when human emotion is the topic.

Pick up a pen and give it a try!

 

Video drawn by Adam on the iPad using FlipBoom Cartoon





Through the Eyes of Autism - part 4

 

How many little kids are "too many little kids"? What follows is a story of autism and spring-time, love, respect, understanding, and family ties.

 

 

 

 

To understand the events of this story, you first need to know that spring is a very difficult time for Adam. He has allergies to multiple substances that appear as soon as the snow starts to melt. He suffers traditional allergic reactions (sniffling, sneezing, congestion), but also experiences multiple sensory and cognitive changes in the spring-time months. His sensory hyper-sensitivities increase, his ability to process language and new information drops, and his tolerance for dealing with the challenges of everyday life out in the world is sharply reduced.

 

For more background details, take a look at this previous blog post:

Seasonal Allergies and Autism - April 2011

Here's the story: 

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of the spring-time melt in Ottawa, Adam's sister Laura and her boyfriend Ryan took Adam out for a "fun" afternoon. Adam loves McDonald's, and on previous outings, starting off with lunch at McD's had worked out really well .... but not that day.

I have written previously about Adam's views on "babies" - a category that includes "little kids" (see blog post: ... of babies and monsters for more details). They are too short, too loud, too active and too unpredictable for Adam to feel comfortable and safe when they're around.

They get to McDonald's ... the moment Adam entered with his sister and her boyfriend, they all realized there was a problem. The restaurant was full of little kids. They were loud, they were active, they were everywhere. Laura and Ryan did what they could - helped Adam find a table that was less chaotic, tag-teamed at the counter to order the food - and Adam did what he could, distracting himself with his iPad. They managed McDonald's, but it cost all of them energy and sanity.

Adam entered the book store (next on the "fun" afternoon agenda) with few reserves left. What had been envisioned as a long relaxed browse through one of Adam's favourite stores instead became a "dash, grab, buy & leave" mission. Laura and Ryan understood this and were totally prepared to go with Adam's altered agenda.

And then they got to the cash ...

Problem ...

 

 

Laura had forgotten her wallet, and Ryan didn't have any cash either .... Adam was on the ropes, but he held it together.

 

Thinking quickly, Ryan suggested that he could go next door to Walmart and get some cash with his bank card:

 

 

 

When Ryan and Laura were relating this story (post-trip) to Adam's parents, they described their state of high panic in these moments, knowing that Adam was feeling stressed and very close to the edge of what he could manage - they had tried to present a calm exterior, and were hopeful they had not broadcast their distress to Adam. But look at Adam's drawings, the facial expressions, the hand-waving .... he knew their emotional state, he absorbed it, dealt with it and later drew it quite accurately ....

 

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending:

 

 

Ryan was able to get some cash (and chips) at Walmart. Laura and Adam waited in the car (the chips and iPad helped Adam to stay calm) while Ryan ran back to the book store, paid for the items Adam had picked out and brought them to the car. Then they drove home and all separately collapsed.

 

Whew! Triple whew! (one for each of them)

I said at the beginning that this was a story of love, respect, understanding and family ties.

From the earliest days, when Adam was a small, non-verbal, incredibly complex, medically fragile boy, his family has always treated him with respect - seeing him as intelligent with his own view-point and perspective, following at times the faintest of clues to figure out what he needed and wanted, paying attention to his reactions to decide what was tolerable and what was not, giving him choices and power over the direction of his own life, apologizing if they accidentally took him over the edge. As a result, Adam has developed a cool confidence - confidence that he will be heard, that "his people" won't intentionally ask him to do things that are beyond his ability or desire to manage, and that they will understand and help him out when the world coughs up situations that are not reasonable.

Great story, great kid, great family.

Love (and true liking), respect and understanding are the best gifts that families can give to their ASD relatives ... when the world gets tough, it helps to know your family has your back

P.S ... oh, and humour, the story is about humour .... finding comedy in the chaos .... the picture of "there are too many little kids at McDonald's" took over an hour to draw, with Adam periodically pausing, sitting back, reconsidering and adding more and more kids to the picture .... Adam's mom and I were laughing (so hard I had tears in my eyes) and Adam was looking at us sideways and smiling and drawing more kids .... then Adam's dad came in, saw the picture and burst out laughing too .... and when that picture was done, it was scanned and immediately sent out via e-mail for Laura and Ryan to enjoy ... humour is the other key tie that binds this family together ...




note: the concept of ASD individuals having a finite amount of energy to spend daily is well-put by Karla, an ASD adult who is an advocate and a mentor for others on the spectrum (click the link for more information on her "Token Theory"):
Karla's ASD Page - Token Theory

ASD Adults and Life-long Language Learning

One of my strong interests when I went through graduate school for speech pathology was the connection between the brain (neurology) and language learning.

At that time (early 1980's), conventional wisdom in the field of neurolinguistics was that there was a defined window for language acquisition. Scientific studies of people who lost language skills because of acquired brain damage (resulting from something like a head injury or stroke) showed patients had a different capacity for language learning, depending on their age - pre-puberty the brain was plastic and had a good ability to relearn language skills, but post-puberty that learning window seemed to close.

I never really questioned this until several years later when I started working with adolescents and young adults on the autism spectrum. Everyone was post-puberty and many had severely limited verbal language skills, with some completely non-verbal. I found myself mixing my clinical experience with stroke victims (including the use of non-conventional communication means like drawing) into my language development therapy techniques. And I learned an interesting thing: the neuroplasticity necessary for new language learning that was not supposed to exist in this population, did exist. Many of the students desperately wanted to crack the code of conventional communication, and their brains were capable. The limiting factor was more me than them - I could see the potential, but was only beginning to discover the tools that might be effective to bridge that communication gap.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I have more tools in my therapy toolbox - my ASD students have been my teachers, and working with the same individuals over time has taught me some very important things about language learning and ASD:

1. The early years may not be optimal for language learning because neural pathways are developing in a different way at a different pace - if the world is a screaming wall of sound, you can't pick out the words.

2. Written words can help to sort out the string of sounds at the ear, so the person can begin to make sense out of auditory language.

3. Drawing can be a clarifying communication tool that helps therapists/teachers/parents to explain and highlight important information about everyday life, and that can help ASD individuals to explain their perspective and experience of the world.

4. Most importantly, language learning is a life-long process and significant language learning can happen in the adult years, so don't give up trying to reach and teach.

And so for today, an illustration of point #4: 

Adam (age 23) has started writing complex sentences in the past couple of months. We begin with a picture (one of his favourite topics is animals):

Adam then uses Word Mover (iPad app) to write a sentence about what he sees (I love this app because it lets you create sentences like a puzzle). After that, he writes the sentence out and illustrates it with a cartoon drawing:

In this instance, he has spontaneously and purposefully made a lengthy compound sentence (using a clause introduced by a preposition "under ....") to express a complex thought. His picture is a projection of his thoughts about the animals and their feelings - he gives the animals personality and connection (it's not copied, it's "inspired by").

I love to see errors in the sentence construction - they show me that I'm looking at meaningful language learning rather repetition of memorized language "chunks".The spelling error in "hideing" indicates that he's using his own grammatical rules to change verb tenses (add "ing" to the verb for present tense), and the missing word "of" in "family (of) elephants" shows me that he's using a rule he's made about modifying nouns with adjectives (he's used the same structure as "baby elephant").

And that's what gets this speech pathologist excited! Especially when this level of language development was not predictable from his language level in his childhood or early teens. It means that I don't know the ceiling on his learning potential.

.... here's a few more recent sentences and pictures from Adam for your enjoyment:

I'm a big believer in life-long learning. My best advice to parents, educators and therapists would be to let go of any preconceptions about how and when things are usually learned, continually modify your teaching methods to match  the individual's learning profile, and never underestimate the power and plasticity of an intelligent brain ... SB




Note: Recently, someone asked me if there were any neurolinguistic studies connected to the type of therapy I do (using drawing/art to teach communication and language skills). I am not aware of any, but I think it would be an interesting thing to study. If anyone reading this blog knows of related research (or is connected to an academic institution and has an interest in this area), please feel free to contact me via e-mail.

iLanguage: creative language teaching using the iPad

The visual touch screen interface of the iPad brings many possibilities for creative language teaching - today I'd like to share with you a few of the ideas (and apps) that I've been trying out in recent therapy sessions with ASD individuals:


1. Action verbs:

Concrete nouns are relatively easy to teach using objects and static pictures. But action verbs are more complicated because they (by their nature) involve movement - so it's hard to be certain that what the therapist thinks they're teaching is what the student is actually learning.

Here's a short video showing Adam creating sentences using Word Mover (a creative writing app that works like magnetic fridge poetry). I would give Adam one or two words, he would add more and put a sentence together. Then we used Stop Motion Studio Pro HD (an iPad animation app) and small clay figures to "illustrate" the sentence meaning - because the end product was a film clip, rather than a static picture, it was easier to see what Adam understood and where he might have gaps in his interpretation of the language meaning:

CLICK HERE: Using iPad apps for Language Teaching

Here's another video showing Kevin using Word Mover, traditional pen-paper drawing and FlipBoom Cartoon (a different iPad animation app) to illustrate the meaning of a short story he wrote (using one of the words he had just spelled in Montessori Crossword, another app I really like for the structured way it connects written letter patterns to the word sound patterns):

CLICK HERE: Kevin's Jogging Story

And here's one more video (from Kevin's session today) where I would give Kevin a verb (in Word Mover) and then he would write a complete sentence using that verb. He uses both pen-paper drawing and the FlipBoom Cartoon animation app to illustrate the meaning of the sentences he's written. (note: I am a big fan of grammatical errors - they show me that I'm getting original generative language rather than rote language chunks):

 

CLICK HERE: Kevin Writes & Illustrates

2. Creative Writing:

The Word Mover app is also useful for writing "starters" and inspiration. You write one or more words and then let your student write additional words and arrange the words into a sentence. I'm finding that the "puzzle" nature of the exercise and the ability to modify (add/delete/rewrite) without visible "errors" at the end is encouraging more risk-taking (trying out words that are not well-known, trying to write sentences that are more grammatically complex).

I gave Michael the words "boy" and "horse" - he changed "boy" to "cowboy", and added some more words to make the sentence "A cowboy needs a horse". He drew an illustration by hand (marker on paper) and then he made an entertaining animated short (using FlipBoom Cartoon) of a cowboy unwillingly transforming into a horse. He was calm and focused and expressed a complete (and funny) original idea. Watch the video:

CLICK HERE: Cowboy & Horse by Michael

So go ahead, get creative, use the iPad technology to its best advantage - it is a wonderful direct visual interface that can help you make the world of verbal communication less mysterious and more accessible to your students with autism.

What's it all about?

Life is short. I know that ... and sometimes life is too short and people leave before we're ready to say good-bye to them, before they've done all the things that they hoped to do.

A friend died this week. Too young ... my age, in fact pretty much exactly my age (we used to joke that we were "litter mates", born in the same month, same year). I met him almost 25 years ago when we both worked at a school educating teens and young adults with autism. A good man with a wicked grin and a kind heart.

His loss leaves a big hole in the local autism community, and a far bigger hole in the hearts of the friends and family who loved him.

And today I'm once again thinking about how short life is ...

... my daughter died of cancer when I was 29 and she was almost 3. I couldn't make sense of it, couldn't see how to go on past that point. All of the things that had seemed so important - employment, income, professional standing - were blown to dust in this new shockingly clearer view of life and death. My only regrets were the times that I had let my fears and worries stop me from fully living, loving and laughing in the moments I had with her.

My work with individuals on the autism spectrum came after this point. When I deal with an ASD individual and their family, my primary goal is always to maximize the enjoyment of the present moment - it doesn't matter that things are not perfect, they rarely are, and really (as I frequently tell my students) perfect is a bit boring. There's always something that's going right, something that's funny and endearing and quirky. It's not naive or silly to focus on the positive, it's essential to helping people blossom and reach their potential. And you just don't know how long you have.

And so with this in mind, and in honour of my friend Roc, here's a cartoon drawn by Adam a few years ago featuring a baby and a skeleton (I think Roc would appreciate the humour):

Live your life fully with an open heart, laugh until you snort tea out your nose, let tears fall when they want to and leave your legacy written in people who count themselves better for having known you.

Blending hi-tech and low-tech for optimal learning

The world of technology is developing at the speed of light, and the advent of good touch screens and affordable well-written software that takes advantage of the direct visual interface brings new and wonderful possibilities into classrooms, therapy rooms and family homes. Putting an iPad (or android tablet) into the hands of every child seems like a great idea. But there are challenges: how do you choose good apps? how do you integrate the use of a touch-screen device into your current programming? how do you develop practical aptitude on devices that only existed in the imagination when you were growing up?

Today's post addresses the second challenge: "How do you integrate the use of a touch-screen device into your current programming?" I will give some examples (with illustrations from recent therapy sessions with Kevin and Adam) of how you can use both iPad apps and "real world" tasks together in language learning activities.

First a little background:

Comic Strip stories allow a visual person to create coherent narratives (see blog post ... it's all about stories ). As my students become adept at drawing stories, we use the visual story format as a "scaffold" to teach traditional written language (initially the picture is drawn first and then a sentence is written to go with it, some students have moved on to writing a simple sentence first then adding extra details in the comic illustration).

Scrambled Sentences is another general type of learning activity that I use to teach grammar without the extra challenges of spelling and fine motor (see blog post Scrambled Sentences - using drawing to support language development and teaching video Drawing as Communication - Scrambled Sentences ).

Recently, I broadened both of these learning contexts by adding in some iPad apps.

Comic Strip Story:

Word Wizard is a spelling to speech app by l'Escapadou. On the "movable alphabet" function, you can drag letters to the board and the program will sound out both the individual letters (as you select them) and the letter combinations that you spell. You have the choice of several voices, and you can have the entire phrase/sentence read aloud when you touch the speech bubble icon:

I started Kevin out with the words "mister bean" and he wrote the rest of the sentence (his own words and ideas). Then we switched from high-tech to low-tech, and Kevin drew out the meaning of the sentence to start his Mr. Bean story. Subsequent story events came from sentences spontaneously written by Kevin using the Word Wizard app:

 

 

 

all pictures drawn by Kevin 2013

I'm not concerned about the grammatical errors in Kevin's written sentences, since the point of the activity is for Kevin to express his own ideas using a combination of written language and drawing (I actually like to see grammatical errors - it's an indication that I'm getting novel generative language rather than phrases and sentences copied verbatim from another context)

(and on another note, this looks like a pretty good plan for a post-secondary learning program!)

Scrambled Sentences:

Word Mover is a creative writing app by ReadWriteThink (National Council of Teachers of English). It works on the same premise as magnetic poetry for your fridge. You have the choice of starting with a pre-existing "word bank" that provides you with a collection of words that you can use in your writing, or you can start from a blank screen ("My Own Words"). Additional words are added with the "+" function.

During the same session as Kevin wrote his Mr. Bean story, I set up a traditional "scrambled sentence" using the Word Mover app (I selected and wrote the words, Kevin unscrambled them into a sentence):

 

 

Then Kevin drew out the meaning of the sentence using markers and big paper. (the second sentence "Kevin and Raymond are making an art project" was independently written by Kevin, using the Word Mover app, based on the structure of my initial sentence):

drawn by Kevin 2013

The benefit of adding the apps into both of these language activities was an increased ease and flexibility in the writing process for Kevin. I'm hoping that this will stimulate further development in his functional expressive written language.


Two more quick examples of "Scrambled Sentences" from Adam's recent work:

1. Adam's mom gave him the words "boy", "girl" and "snowball" on a Word Mover screen. Adam added more words and unscrambled the sentence to read "The boy and girl is fighting in the snowball.", then he illustrated his meaning using markers on paper. With the picture making his meaning clear, his mom was able to show him (using Word Mover) some minor changes that made the sentence grammatically correct.

drawn by Adam 2013

2. Adam's mom started him off with the words "baby", "dragon" and "fire" on Word Mover. Adam added more words and created the sentence "The baby this is fire the dragon". With the support of the picture Adam drew to illustrate his intended sentence meaning, his mom was able to help Adam modify his sentence (on the Word Mover screen) so that his written words matched what he meant to say.

drawn by Adam 2013

(love the expression on the baby's face)


Technology is a great tool that can be used to enhance the learning environment - it works best when you use it to augment your current effective techniques, rather than using it to replace traditional play and hands-on learning.