Acting Antics

I attended a delightful workshop by Cindy B. Schneider called Acting Antics this week.  My colleagues Tamara Pogin, fellow Speech Language Pathologist and two Acting Teachers, Ali Finstrom and Kate Horvath and I all took the hazardous journey three hours south to St. Paul, driving through a snow storm, slipping and sliding our way along, looking on anxiously every time we saw another car that had slid off to the side of the Freeway.  Our trip was worth the effort.

We read Cindy's book,  Acting Antics before we started our collaborative program, Stage Play Acting with our colleagues from the Duluth Playhouse Theater. We are already using several of Cindy's games and activities in Stage Play Acting Classes but as Cindy's experiential and highly active workshop got started, we immediately started adding activities mentally to the Stage Play curriculum.  One of the things that we liked particularly about the workshop were the many games that Cindy demonstrated which involved many kids at one time.  It is hard for our five to eight year old acting students to watch rather than participate and so we needed more games that involved only a little bit of watching and a lot of doing. 

We did not need to be convinced that this was a good way to teach social skills--we were already convinced that acting classes may very well be the most effective context ever created for teaching social skills, at least for children who love being on stage.  However, it was affirming to hear all the reasons why Cindy believes that this is a great context for teaching social skills.  We intend to use everything she provided as we work to find funding for our program and sell the program to parents and other professionals in our area.  It was also nice to hear how she adapts activities for a wide range of abilities since we have thus far only created a program that is appropriate for children who are verbal and who have some pretend play skills.

I invite readers who want to know more about using acting and theater to visit the Acting Antics Website and of course, you can watch our progress class by class on the Autism Games Website where we post what we are doing week-by-week at Stage Play Week by Week.

Jane Ballou

My friend Jane Ballou passed away three hour ago. A life of great service has been successfully completed.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.  Seneca

I was honored to be with her often over the last thirteen years and tonight as she finished this journey.
              Tahirih

Follow Up to Whole Brain Teaching

I got such passionate responses (both negative and positive) from readers of this blog and especially  my colleagues here at the Scottish Rite Clinic that I think if might be interesting to continue the discussion. I thought I would link a video of the system being used in a Kindergarten class where there is a slightly more natural interaction style and it is easier to imagine how a real class would respond to this style.

My feeling, however, is that some teachers and students would love this system and some would hate it and not very many would be neutral about it. Another important issue, of course, is whether it would work with any particular child with ASD with appropriate modifications. Would it be better or worse than other teaching styles?

Power Teaching

Here is a video demonstration of a way of teaching which could be modified somewhat and work with children who have ASD.  I use the strategies of movement, emotion and Key Phrases already.  I think the speed might be hard on some kids with ASD but there is virtually no time for a child to lose attention.  I think I will give this idea a bit of a try.  Watch this video and let me know your thoughts on this.

Green is For Talking Time!

Guest Post
by Tamara Pogin MA
Speech Language Pathologist

I have never met a parent who has NOT at one time or another had a child pulling on their leg and interrupting an adult conversation.  It is hard for children to learn how to NOT INTERRUPT.  These skills involves learning to WAIT and NOT TALK.  Here at the clinic, we are often teaching children how to WAIT.  Every therapist here can be seen holding two hands out, palms up, and wiggling all ten fingers while saying Wait, Wait at some time or another.  Kids almost inevitably imitate this sign for wait and signing the word gives the child something to do while waiting.  With children who have autism or ADHD we play a lot of waiting games to help children learn how to control the impulse to act as soon as a thought occurs.  All this is still not always enough to help a child who is waiting to talk.  If parents are on the phone or talking to a friend over coffee,  the waiting goes on for quite a while sometimes and it is helpful for a child to know how long he or she will need to wait.

I have been working with a family whose 8 yr. old child with Asperger Syndrome is really struggling with interrupting while a parent is on the phone or talking to another adult.  This child is old enough to know the parent does not want him to interrupt and old enough to help in a brainstorming session where we thought of things he could do while parents were in conversation.  However, in the moment, this child often decides that he really needs to say something "real quick" so he "does not forget". 

Below is the visual support that we made to help him know how much longer he needed to "Keep it in his head".   Red means "I can't talk for a while so I should go do something to keep myself busy" Yellow means "I will be able to talk very soon, so I can wait right here" .  Green means "I should talk now because my parent is ready to listen."  This visual support is kept next to the phone since this is the most likely spot where the visual might be needed.  Mom or Dad move a clothes pin up or down the the visual support to tell the child how long he needs to wait and when he should talk.

This child can write, so if he wants, he has been told he has the option of writing a note to give silently to his parent so he "won't forget" what he was going to say.  If he is pretty sure he can remember, he has decided that he will go play with a toy when the clothes pin is on red.

 

A Black Shadow or a Beautiful Reflection

Almost every day there are moments with kids that give me pause.  Something happens that elicits a sudden curiosity--where I know that something important has just occurred but I need to think and feel about it for a little while before I begin to understand. If I take the time to think about these moments, they yield insight.

Yesterday, a moment stood out when a little boy, Nathan, ran to my big therapy room mirror several times to touch his face and watch his own facial expressions.  At one point he went to his mother, who was sitting at the top of a short flight of steps. She asked for a kiss and he kissed and hugged her but from those steps he could clearly see himself reflected in the mirror and he watched himself hug his mother with grave interest. At another point in the therapy session I had a Smart Board going and Nathan went in front of the board and saw his shadow, black against this white board because a Smart Board is like a movie screen, an illuminated picture that comes from a projector.  Nathan found his shadow upsetting and became agitated when he saw it was like a reflection but there were no details; only his shape in black shadow moving as he moved. I got him away from the Smart Board before he got too upset but he was near tears.

Smart Board

I got thinking about a saying I heard once You can never see your own face. It was said metaphorically, with the point being that we not only can't physically look about our own face and must rely on a reflective surface to see ourselves but more importantly, we can't know our own selves but rely on the reactions and feedback that we get from others to know ourselves.  Nathan is discovering his own face in the mirror at three years of age and he is not keen on seeing himself as a black shadow.  He is also discovering himself as a person who kisses another person (his mom) by both experiencing this loving moment with his mother and by watching himself experiencing this moment. Nathan captured my attention because he was so seriously studying himself and trying to use the mirror to know himself better.

I have been spending many evenings and weekends with a friend who is living now in a Hospice Home.  If I am not writing so much here on Autism Games, this is the reason. She is a few years younger than I am and therefore I feel she is facing the end of her life much too soon.  As our children grew up together, my friend, Jane and I spent many hours together and got to know each other as mothers.  We talked about our own lives as wives, as daughters, as educators; and we discussed our spiritual beliefs, our pets, our other friends and we talked a lot about cooking.  But, the hours that I have spent sitting in Jane's room at the Solvay Hospice Home have deepened my understanding of Jane in a whole new way.  Perhaps more to the point, Jane is also learning about herself in a way she could not have before.  Friends are flying across the country to visit Jane. Locally, friends come every day and chat for as long as they can spend and as long as Jane's strength will allow. Everyone who loves her is making darn sure she knows this.  Each person visiting is telling Jane what part she played in their own life and the cumulative picture of Jane that Jane is being shown is impressive and a bit overwhelming to her at times, I think--in a good way. 

A child with autism has a great deal of difficulty knowing him or herself.  Problems with  sensory processing may even make it hard for a child to understand that the physical reflection in a mirror actually is a reflection and so a child like Nathan discovers this much later than other children would.  The sense of self that develops as a child engages in social interaction is even more problematic for children.  A child may have less total social opportunities, less ability to interpret social feedback, and less ability to reflect on the information received.   It is not just a lack of information, however, it is also the case that children with autism may receive much more negative feedback than is healthy.  They may live in a world of  No!  Don't! Stop that! Make a better choice! Do something different! I told you....! 

So, why was this moment with Nathan important to me? Partly because I feel I need to keep providing feedback to the children that I see that allows each one to learn more about him or herself.  There are so many ways that we can explicitly communicate important information--which we know is necessary at a time like the end of a person's life, but we all need to realize is important at the beginning of a child's life as well. E.g. I think you are musical because you sing so much! or Nathan loves mommy. We need to beware of intentional and unintentional negative feedback that we may be giving.  Even therapy, which is meant to be a positive experience, often has a subtext that can communicate to a child that he or she is not good enough. We judge so many things that a child does in therapy and simply being judged can give a child a sense of being inadequate.   Watching Nathan, I vowed (again) that I would find a way to reflect a positive image back to every child that I see in the same way that everyone seems bent on reflecting back the best of Jane to Jane.

Explain Yourself, Tahirih

Every time a new graduate student starts an internship with me, I begin by explaining what I do.  A new Intern started today.  You will meet her, I am sure, since I always twist their arms and get Interns to write a guest blog post here.  I actually didn't do much more than that one hour explanation today, as I was not feeling well and went home to sleep and feel sorry for myself the rest of the day.  And write some Treatment Plans. And think about how darn convoluted the job I do is and how I never explain it the same way to any two Interns.

A child comes to see me with someone--usually a parent and from the child's perspective, he or she comes to play.  That is the perspective I would like the child to have.  This, you'd think would be an easy sell but the kiddo's who come to me are tough customers to convince so my job involves selling and then playing. 

The parent who comes with a child usually has a different perspective on my job and is hoping that I will, somehow, do something that will help that child communicate better. Parents see my job as teaching.  They are partially right.

I am keenly aware of all the possible issues that might be preventing a child from learning to communicate, but I never know what the specific issues are for any particular child and so I see my job as listening, observing, thinking (evaluating) and then sharing, what I heard, saw and thought with the important communication partners in a child's life--usually the parents.

Since the parent is usually not as aware of all the possible issues that might be at play, my job is also explaining and teaching parents.  The Interns come to learn from me but actually, while explaining myself in dozens of different ways to Interns over the years, I am learning more and more about how to explain communication and autism.  I learn in a whole different way because the expectation here is that the Intern should walk away being able to do my job.  It is clear to me, and I hope to everyone involved that at many levels, my job involves learning.  Every one involved, parent, Intern, child, (who ever shows up), is in the process of learning.

Playing with a child is just an efficient way to coax a child into showing me what he or she knows or wants to know about communication. Since real communication always comes out of a desire to communicate--I need to know that or I won't know what to teach.  Parents too, show me what they know about teaching communication by playing.  In this sense, playing is just a means to learning and then teaching.

But, getting all the parts of my job flowing as I like it to--the selling, listening, watching, thinking, learning, evaluating, encouraging, showing, speculating, experimenting teaching,.... getting all that going simultaneously--that makes my job feels like playing to me.  It is a serious and important game that I try to host hour after hour put it has the quality of a great game--always challenging, focused, creative, structured, and fun.  So my job really is playing.

That is how I am going to explain my job next time I have a new Intern--my job, and the job you are learning is playing but the rules of the game are complex.