The Loudest Girl In the Room Podcast, Hosted by Lauren Ober

 

Over the last few days, I have been listening to a podcast which tells the story of a woman who is newly diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Lauren Ober.  Lauren is a professional journalist and story teller, and thus, this may partially explain why this podcast is excellent. She has story telling skills.  She builds emotional tension, then relieves it with humor but follows this with data points and personal disclosures. She masterfully combines narrative storytelling with live audio interviews from her own life,  giving one the feeling of being right there with her, experiencing her grace, her awkwardness, her empathy, her excitement of discovery.  The quality of recording and editing is also well done and this podcast is an auditory treat. The content is well-researched but is also original because it is the story of her journey as she explores the science and the wider world of ASD.  I found myself moved, informed and just happy to get to know Lauren Ober.

For me, a Speech Language Pathologist who provided communication therapy for children with ASD exclusively for many years, this podcast brings back memories. I remember the girls specifically, each one unique, funny, frustrating, and surprising.  One after another, children age two to eight would come in to the clinic where I worked in the early 2000's. Some were not yet using words and others spoke but atypically.  Parents were concerned about the preschool-aged late talkers.  They were very confused when their preschool child communicated in a highly unusual manner.  I remember parents who wondered if their daughter might be a genius mathematician, a future historian, or a born actor because their child could compute numbers before learning hold a conversation or had memorized all the Kings and Queens of the British Empire or could carry on an amazing conversation but exclusively spoke in memorized quotes from Disney movies.  I remember many parents who were concerned about their child's social isolation at daycare, the park or family gatherings.  I was often the first professional to recommend an evaluation to rule out autism spectrum disorder or sometimes I never mention ASD but I knew what I was seeing.  Since many pediatricians, child psychologists, even neurologists at that time would entirely miss the early signs of autism, I remember working long and hard to write a detailed report.  I wanted to let the professional reading my report know what to look for, what I had seen and what it meant.  It felt like guiding a horse to water but just hoping the horse would drink. It usually worked, and many children were provided with a diagnosis of ASD.  However, many young girls were not given a diagnosis of ASD.  In truth, I was not sending girls with such clearly spelled out reports because I was unsure about what I was seeing. 

I certainly might have failed to identify a preschool aged Lauren Ober as a youngster with ASD had she come to the clinic where I worked.  I remember several little girls who did not check off enough of the lagging social skill boxes to fit my understanding of the diagnosis. The diagnostic criteria was developed based heavily on how ASD looked in boys so in retrospect it seems obvious that girls might not look exactly the same. At the time, I understood that ASD was much more common in boys. But we saw a fair number of "autistic-like" girls and if there were delays in language development, we talked to their parents about lagging social skills when these were evident.  We put these girls in social skills groups, when we could, with the explanation that "while your daughter does not fit the criteria for autism, she has some developmental needs that are similar." Young Lauren Ober may not have demonstrated obvious delays in language development and subtle differences are often perceived as quirky and, honestly, families are wonderful in how much they tend to enjoy quirkiness.  At the clinic, we also enjoyed quirkiness and our goal was to not see every difference as a pathology. 

If Lauren Ober had attended the elementary school where I worked and come to my attention, I would have been concerned and I would have considered the possibility that she might have a form of ASD   By the time I left the early childhood clinic to work in a school, I was aware that girls were being identified as having Attention Deficit Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and various behavioral disorders when the most educationally supportive diagnosis would be ASD.  I saw some of the same girls that I felt were just quirky as preschoolers and realized they were seriously struggling with the social demands of school.  Lauren Ober described her school experience in a way that was very familiar to me.  At that time we were at least trying to make school life easier for girls with social challenges.  Our success was mixed.  I teamed up with a social worker or a school counselor and ran many social skills groups.  I spent time in classrooms explaining what was making it hard for many youngsters-boys and girls. We tried to provide educational support and sometimes students benefited hugely.  The challenge was that each child pieces together an identity in a unique way and intervention strategies that are helpful to one may feel insensitive and hurtful to another.  The other issue, beyond matching the right support and intervention strategy to the right student, was finding the right staff member to provide support.  Many times, classroom assistants are charged with carrying out intervention strategies in the classroom and while some are amazing insightful professionals, but others are learning about ASD for the first time as turn over in staff is problematic. 

Many fascinating, challenging, heart-warming and heart-breaking stories came rushing back to me as I listened to "The Loudest Girl in the Room" podcast.   Thank you Lauren Ober, should you run into this blog post, for your efforts, your honestly and your vulnerability as you create this podcast.    It is a pleasure to listen to your story. 

 

Halloween Games to Prepare Children with Autism for the Holiday

Halloween is coming and like all Holidays, it can be a delight or a stressor for children with Autism.  Wearing a mask or costume may be your child's favorite thing or may be a sensory challenge.  Seeing other people in masks and costumes may be fun or horrifying.  Going in the evening up to a house and knocking on the door one house after another is a behavior that children may find interesting or may, with some justification, flat out refuse to do. Then there are the houses decorated with all things frightening.  Even if a child is willing to knock on doors for the sake of getting candy, who in their right mind approaches a house that moans and groans?   Who walks across a lawn filled with flapping ghosts and skeletons?  And finally, there are the parties, usually loud events where many people look, and sound and act differently than they normally do. So if Halloween is hard for your child, well, this is easy to understand. 

However, it is an interesting idea to have a community evening devoted to pretend play and visiting and candy.  This is an opportunity, not just for your child to learn how to cope with an odd American cultural phenomenon, but an opportunity for your child to engage in intellectual, social and language learning.  The ideas below are, of course, more or less appropriate depending on your child's age, language skills and emotional regulation skills.

Halloween is an evening where anyone can don a costume and imagine themselves with a different identity- as a tree, a movie star, or a goat.  Not only is this fun, but learning how to imagine and then act out a different identity is an important skill to develop.  We change, or at least adjust, our identity many times in a lifetime.  We go from single child to big brother, from first grader to second grader, from single woman to wife, from student to employee.  Each change requires that we imagine ourselves differently and then act differently.  

I am not a fan of all the candy that is consumed but the excuse to greet neighbors at their front door or our front door is a wonderful opportunity. Learning how to prepare for or attend a party is also a life skill that, if mastered, will make your child's life socially richer. 

The trick for making the experience of Halloween positive for children with autism is preparation.  And then letting your child engage in the festivities and enjoy them to the extent that he or she is able each year.  

Starting in early October is just about perfect.  Here are some ways to help your child prepare and get the most out of Halloween: 

• Use social stories to help your child understand Halloween.  Click Here for Free Social Stories.
• Help your child look for a costume that delights them and is not a sensory challenge.  
• Let your child try on Halloween masks and see you in masks even for brief moments. See Trying On Noses on my website, Autism Games.Org
• If you plan to go house-to-house, pretend to do this in your own house, knocking on the bedroom door, for example, and having a friend or family member on the other side, perhaps wearing different masks as they hand out candy.  Play the whole skit out multiple times.
• Let your child play the part of handing out candy if that is what he or she will be doing for all or part of the evening.
• Walk the route you intend to take if you intend to go out in the evening.  Walk the route in the daytime and point out interesting things and maybe do it again in the evening so that this route is familiar.   
• If you are going to a party, find out who will be there and what they plan to wear and what activities will happen.  Make a social story for your child explaining as much as possible about the party in advance.  Use the social stories written above as a model for how to write the story.  Practice any upcoming party activities ahead if possible. 
• Don't stop the pretend playing Halloween Games on November1 because once your child has experienced Halloween and the experience is fresh, pretend play can get even better.  It is not preparation so much after Halloween as it is a way of learning more of the language and social skills that are featured in the celebration of this Holiday.
• Finally, if you need a good resource to help you keep your child's teeth healthy, what with the uptick in candy consumption at this time of year, here is a good link.

Resuming Autism Games

Hello Again.  It has been a while! Since I last posted, I spent a decade working in an elementary school, still seeing many children with autism in the school setting.  My head fairly swirls with possible posts related to working in this setting as I found many wonderful ways to teach students though play in the school. Modifying games that I had used in an early childhood clinic setting and creating entirely new games was the most enjoyable part of being in an elementary school. 

I retired the summer after Covid.  I was still happy working with children and loved my profession as a Speech Language Pathologist but the working conditions were pretty hard with Covid. It felt like a good time to see what other adventures were waiting.  

I ignored my website and blog for another couple years as my husband and I moved, downsized dramatically and explored our new city.  We also traveled as we were able, and the travel adventures continue. We are still putting together our lives as free agents--not centered as we alway had been on our careers.  I guess I am not ready to let this aspect of my career go, though--the work I have done on play and children with autism.  I updated my website, Autism Games at www.autismgames.org. Go check it out!  

So, a warm hello from Autism Games.  I am happy to be here.  Tahirih

What I Did This Summer

My summer began late in May when my parents came back from their annual winter trip to California.  They stayed longer this year because my dad was not feeling well enough to drive back across the country.  He and Mom visited with all of their grandchildren in California but it was hard for him and he rested more than he visited at each home.  Finally, my parents decided to come back to Minnesota despite his illness, but Mom, who does not drive ordinarily, did almost all the driving.  I saw my father, the first day that he returned, and I knew he was seriously ill.  When he finally agreed to go to the doctor, a few days later, I went with him to the Veteran's Clinic.  After few minutes, the doctor told my father that he was dying.  No tests needed.  Just a look.  A week and a half later, my father was gone.

An event like having a parent die, becomes a catalyst for change for many people, I suspect.  I don't think it is just me.  When I took time to reflect on my own life, I knew it was time to do something different.  I decided it was time to practice my profession in a different setting.

I have had kind of a personal mission for about the last fifteen years.  I remember the exact weekend that I suddenly felt compelled to try to make things better for children with autism.  I had seen a child with autism in a very unhappy situation and I saw that the people responsible for him, even the people who loved him, did not know what to do.  I had lots of ideas on how things could be better for him.  So, I set out to be a source of inspiration and practical knowledge, and to advocate with bulldog persistence on behalf of children with autism.  The clinic where I worked, The Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders, supported me in every possible way.  I might have long since given up without that support.  Happily, the world of knowledge and skill related to autism has changed dramatically.  I think I helped to make this so, but plenty happened beyond my reach and influence.  There are still so many needs, of course.  There is no real end point on a mission like "making things better", but sitting next to my dad in what suddenly became our hospice living room, I reflected on the possibility that I had actually done what I set out to do.

So, I resigned from a job that I have loved at the beginning of the summer.  (I want you to know that that is really a hard thing to do.)  I took the summer off.  As fall begins, I will start a new job and see what else I can accomplish.  I am not finished with my service to children with autism, by any means.  I took a position in a school where there are many students who have this diagnosis.  But, I took a job as the school Speech Language Pathologist, not as an autism specialist.  I don't know yet if I will continue to write Autism Games blog posts.  It feels like I aught to either say goodbye here or say I will be back with more.  But, I really don't know.  So, that was my summer.

Making Choices with Interactive Musical Video

   The underlying principle for how I choose or create games and activities is:

I pick/create some activity that has a lot of predictability about it (this is the hook that snags the attention of a child with autism) and then teach a single concept by varying some aspect of the activity.  

In addition, I am always looking for a sensory payoff for the child to make the activity interesting--some cool experience involving one or more of the senses:  visual, auditory, tactile, balance, pressure (think Temple Grandin's Squeeze Machine), taste, smell (theoretical since I don't use this).

So here is an interactive music video which has a great auditory and visual payoff but varies depending upon the choice that the audience makes.  How cool is that?


Keep Your Head Up Interactive Video

Use it to teach:

1. making different choices (cognitive flexibility)
2. story telling
3. predicting
4. reading
5. writing (make your own script with different branches)

Playing in the Dirt

I am a gardener now but I began a happy relationship with dirt as a child of dirt tolerant parents. This week I watched children playing in a park sandbox and thought "this is a pale imitation of the experience a child can have while playing in good rich black dirt".   I was transported back several decades to the yard where I grew up and to the summer when my dad bought a big mound of rich black garden soil.  My brother and I  quickly claimed it for our own, spending hours each day on the hill moving dirt around.

We played alone much of the time, engaged directly with the dirt and whatever imaginary world we were creating so it is odd that I clearly remember that I was playing close by my brother.  We were companions.  He was very involved with trucks and transporting dirt from place to place while I was more involved in building cities.   I packed the earth into buildings, fences, tunnels and roads.  I imagined details that I could never have created.  At some point, together, my brother and I decided to make a gully for transporting water.  We tried to make a route for water that ran from the top of our hill of dirt to the bottom in a zig-zag pattern that we thought looked like  a river.  One of us was trying to keep the water running where it belonged while one of us poured the buckets of water carefully into the gully.  We could never get it to work as planned and ended up with nothing but a mud puddle, much to our disappointment.  Failed projects on the dirt hill never deterred us from trying the next thing rather through our successes and our failures we learn important things about dirt and about life.

We did not know it but we were actually studying art and design, physics, chemistry, architecture, and social skills.  There was a lot of constructive play where we were building our worlds and just as much pretend play where we were creating imaginary people and their imaginary lives.  Within these two frameworks, there was constant investigation, observation, and discovery.    We studied how the mud dried overnight and how it broke up when we walked on it the next day.  We studied the properties of different kinds of dirt--the rich earth on our hill as compared to the paler dirt that was already in the yard.  We studied how water soaked down into the garden soil and how it traveled across the top of the hard packed dirt in the yard where we walked every day.  We thought about town planning including transportation routes,  location options for schools and police departments--especially the jail which we needed because we created a lot of bad guys who needed to be locked up.  We created social conflict and then managed it. Our dirt houses were reinforced with straw, sticks and rocks--rather like the Three Little Pig homes.  We studied systems for adding mud to almost everything.  Even if I could not remember that summer of playing on a hill of dirt (and I can remember it remarkably well) it was a summer of intense learning that I now believe far outpaces any classroom summer program we might have been attending instead.

I am also aware, now, that not all children would love playing in the dirt.  I can't remember my introduction to dirt but I have seen some children fall into dirt from the beginning with gleeful enthusiasm and I have seen other children who work hard to avoid any contact with dirt at all. It is easy to understand why it is a sensory challenge for some children. It sticks to the hands, the toes, the knees and the clothes. Still, I think all children aught to have the opportunity to develop a happy relationship with dirt--even the reluctant children.  Most children can learn to enjoy playing in the dirt with no more encouragement than a good pile of the stuff and a shovel.  Other children might need a little more encouragement.  I grew up with my grandmother gardening vegetables in our yard and she was never happier than when her hands were in the earth. It was a form of play for her although she called it "working in the garden" but as I think about it now,  she provided me with a positive role model for enjoying the creative possibilities of dirt.  In my childhood, grown-ups did not play much with children.  I don't remember any grown-ups playing with me, period.  But, as a child my brother and I were both told every day, weather permitting, to "go outside and play."  All that was out there was my grandma's vegetable garden, a few "outside toys" like trucks and balls, a swing set and a big yard that was not landscaped. There were plenty of bare spots of dirt.  Well, actually there were more things out there but when the truckload of rich brown earth arrived, we really noticed it.  Luckily, whatever they intended to do with that black dirt did not happen for a long time. I think the key to getting most children to play in the dirt is pretty much what happened to me-- opportunity and not too many alternatives.

I forgot to mention that playing in the dirt  or doing anything for hours outside is a lesson in biology.   Just think for  a minute about all the living things that one can find in a yard.  There might be mushrooms, earthworms, beetles and bugs, seeds and sprouts, roots and tubers, sticks and leaves, snakes and moles.  The birds are apt to be close and and smaller winged creatures are everywhere.  The dog is liable to be rolling in the dirt.  The squirrels may be digging and hiding things in the dirt.  Chipmunks are curious and likely to come investigate whatever changes are made to the dirt--sometimes while you are still making the changes.  Plants and trees are likely to be sticking out of the dirt in endless interesting configurations, textures, smells, and size.  Every living thing that is associated with earth is a world to be observed and studied for a minute or an hour or a lifetime.

Time, in fact, passes differently while one is playing in the dirt or investigating the worlds in a backyard.  I notice this now while gardening and I experienced it as a child creating worlds on a mound of garden soil.  Time can almost stand still.  Moments can stretch into hours.   Watching a ladybug  stumble and tumble while trying to climb a little mound of loose dirt is theater on a different scale and the play may last seconds but those seconds stretch out and stay in the memory forever.  Seeing a bird pull an earthworm out of the earth and then feed it to one of her new born chicks provides an momentous experience of wonder.  This kind of timeless time calms the mind and eases anxiety.  Perhaps it is this state of well-being that makes learning so easy.  Playing in the dirt allows children to experience life in a way that is hard to replicate in any other way.

Cross Posted on FunDaMental Play

Dirty Fruit and Naked Babies: The Dark Side of Toys

I once heard that the pretend play area in most daycare centers was a collection of "dirty plastic fruit and naked baby dolls".  This description brought to mind the toy basket in my living room when my children were young.  We had a large plastic laundry basket filled with toys.  That basket always caused me discontent.  My children spread them around the house daily but rarely played with this collection of toys that ranged from cartoon-like stuffed critters to disassembled Fisher-Price-Primary-Colored-Plastic-Everything. I liked those toys less and less over time as they seemed to cause a lot of trouble but provided little joy and were ugly to boot.

I don't remember having plastic toy fruit but I remember the naked babies.  Some were scribbled on with magic marker pens and at least one had hacked off synthetic yellow hair. They miraculously procreated at night I think because the collection continually grew and I don't remember buying any of them.  They all had clothes that were easy to remove but it was nearly impossible to dress those stiff little plastic bodies.  My children often fought over who had beheaded a doll or scribbled on one.   When they were little the laundry basket where the dolls lived with assorted other toys was more popular than the toys. My kids loved to climb in the laundry basket and getting a grown-up to push them around was as much fun as a carnival ride apparently.

I thought of the naked babies and many other toys as The Useless Toys.   If I tried to get rid of any of The Useless Toys, my children protested vigorously but I could sneak one or two into the Goodwill bag when they were not looking and these toys were never missed, but still the collection grew.  The Useless Toys were a seemingly insurmountable problem.

One day, in preparation for moving to the other side of the world, we sold most of my children's toys in a massive garage sale and they got to keep the money.   We kept and hand carried a collection of Lego blocks in a suitcase when we moved.   We shipped books and art supplies.  If I remember right, that was all.  I played often with my children on the other side of the world where I did not know anyone else and it was a lovely time in our lives.  We often played outdoors but I also loved building with them on the floor of our new, furnitureless house and we became a Lego obsessed family for years after that.

If my children and I had loved dolls, as some people do, we would have kept the babies and I would have dressed them.  A pretend kitchen with plastic food, even fruit,  would have been a good toy if they were younger at the time and if I had liked pretending in a small kitchen. We made choices based upon what we enjoyed as a family and the satisfying success of the new, drastically reduced toy collection was due to both a new orderliness and to my involvment.  After the toy purge, I bought new art supplies often to entice them to do art because I thought I should but I did not draw with them and so art supplies were the least used part of their toy collection. They played on their own with things that I taught them to play by example.  Books were central to our family play life because I loved books.  I read to my children often and we went to the public library every week.  I used the skills that I had learned in my one High School drama class (minimal skills, in other words) as I read books aloud and they appreciated my theatrics enough to make me feel like a movie star.  Over time, we just enjoyed the companionship of reading together in the same room. I came to believe that less really is more when it comes to toys.  It is probably true for grown-ups too.

New useless toys crept into our house over the years, but I treated them like the weeds that grew in my vegetable garden and removed them quickly.  I should have been more ruthless at times than I was but generous grandparents and moments of parental weakness created new toy problems from time to time.  Generally, though, I was successful to the extent that I kept the purpose of toys clearly in mind:  Toys are meant to promote play and should only live in a home if they honestly contribute to family happiness.

Cross Posted on FunDaMental Play