Makes funny sounds in assembly - help

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im going to expand further on what i said, as it seems i did not do an adequate job. i did not say the onus is on them to change. however, in a classroom setting, we as parents cannot expect all other parents to allow our children to make it impossible for their children to learn. i am not talking in any way about embarrassment, because i dont think that is a valid reason for modifying behavior, unless the embarrassment is on the part of the autistic who wants to modify their behavior. making others uncomfortable or embarrassed, to me, isnt a reason to force a change of stims, but rather a reason to work to spread acceptance and understanding. but there is a line where behavior goes beyond uncomfortable or embarrassing and enters the territory of interfering, or even unhealthy or dangerous. at that point, yes i think we all need to know when our behaviors are negatively impacting other people.

an example is my own son who is very tactile. he is constantly touching things, including people, and this can be very distracting and disrupting for the other children around him. my goal is to teach him how to avoid being disrupting with it and provide and help him discover other ways to get his sensory needs met. that could be by an adjustment to his stim, redirecting it in another direction, or simply sewing fidgets into his pockets. but he does need to learn that it can be inappropriate to lean on people, play with their clothes or hair, or walk his fingers along their body parts, and i cannot expect other children and their parents to just lump it if he does.

i do think this is an important thing for all people to learn, not just autistics. its why we teach our children not to hit, not to push, dont run with scissors, etc. but i think it is especially important for a group of people where egocentricity is an almost universal trait. they have to learn to evaluate whether their behavior is a disturbance or danger to others, just like we all do.

i completely agree that stimming should be respected, and i always advocate that we should work to understand the function it serves for the person doing it, and the details as to how it achieves that function. we quite often call it "self-calming" behavior, but there are a lot of details as to how it achieves that effect that we could learn from to help us understand it better.

First of all, I am not idolizing Temple Grandin. And I don't do "everything" that she suggests. Just because she is a celebrity autistic doesn't mean that she hasn't faced many of the struggles that our children have, and she does have valuable input from the perspective of a person who is autistic. But I don't "idolize" anyone!

Next, if it came to an assembly, and my son's verbal stimming was a big problem, I would ask that he not have to be a part of it. But my son's verbal stimming is interfering with his learning. Am I supposed to just allow him to verbal stim all of the time he is in a classroom? And right now he is in a special needs class, so it is not that he is mainstreamed into a class of 20 kids. He is in a class of 4 kids with 2 teachers. The methods they are using to help him control his verbal stimming are not harmful to him, and they are helping him to be able to pay attention better so that he can learn.

At home, he is allowed to do his verbal stimming until it gets really loud. My husband is part Aspie himself, and he is very sensitive to the noise level. He does the best he can to tolerate it, but there comes a point where we have to let our son know that it is bothering his dad. Even then, we don't force him to stop, we tell him that he can do this in his room all that he wants.

I really like Azure Crayons relating it to her son's touching everyone. I am all for letting my son be who he is, but there are things we have to teach them, such as no hitting, no pushing, and not being too loud in certain situations.

Ominous, I am a strong believer in homeschooling too, and I will pull him out of public school at the first sign that it is too much for him. But he is enjoying school, and is learning a lot there. I am fortunate,that financially, we will be able to manage if I homeschool. But, not everyone has the luxury of homeschooling.

Thank you to you all for replying. I am sorry if I offended anyone, you see I'm new to this and really unsure what's right and what's wrong when making decisions about my son.
I have done a lot of research, but am learning everyday about my HFA son. Honestly in all I can say that my son is much easier to take care of than my NT older son. My son is so amazing that he surprises me all the time.
I don't want him to be bullied or picked on at school, so I'm trying to help him with the behaviours he has that might attract some kind of negative attention. People are cruel and children can be crueler. If he is happy with it, and if it is possible I would like to help him reduce his verbal stims. Thanks all for the good advice.

I appreciate the responses to my points and I know that what I said may have pushed a few buttons, but I've learned that where bridging the gap between neurotypicals and autistics is concerned, sometimes you have to be willing to challenge assumptions and ideas head-on. Sometimes that means getting people a little bit riled up but I think, in the process, we end up with a more thorough and meaningful discourse.

angel bear, I apologize if my comment read like a personal accusation that you are idolizing Temple Grandin. That was not my intention. My point was more to do with the large number of comments I keep reading all over the place about 'Temple Grandin's parents did this so therefore we should too". Your comment was just one of many and so my concern was not with yours specifically but with the tendency to put the limited number of autistic role models we have, up on pedestals. It's just another reason why we need more autistic individuals who have been raised to be proud, healthy, and unashamed, so our kids have a wide variety of role models to choose from, because what worked for one won't necessarily work for ours.

I was hoping that my comments would challenge others to think more carefully about the assumptions we make as neurotypical parents. I completely agree that everyone, autistics included, deserve to be educated about the needs and feelings of others. But it can often be a fine line between needs and wants. Other people may not want to see an autistic stim, but in an assembly situation, I really don't see how there is a need for them to not see it. There is nothing being said in an assembly that is going to make the difference between a good education and poor one.

We need to challenge our self-conscious reactions about our kids causing distractions. It's important to remember that not so long ago, women weren't allowed in male dominated careers and one of the most common arguments against their presence was that it would be too 'distracting' for the men. Sometimes, when we say something is distracting, it's really just another way of saying we aren't used to having it in our environment. The solution is not always to eliminate the 'distraction' - sometimes the solution is for others to be given the opportunity to simply get used to it.

No harm done Caitlin. I do appreciate your views, and sometimes I do realize that some of my sons behaviors are not harmful or bothersome to others, but it may be my own issue that he is drawing attention to us, and I am usually the type that doesn't want attention brought to myself. I know these are my own issues, and it is a work in process to overcome this. But his verbal stimming has been so problematic for us, I know how difficult it can be to find an answer.

I guess as parents, we all are trying to do the best for our children, and we have to make choices that are going to be the best for all parties involved (to the best of our abilities)

TV, Welcome to Wrong Planet, and I hope you will keep coming here as you journey along this road with your son. We may not always have all the answers, but I think you will find a good support system here.

I want you to post where you feel comfortable, so it is your choice if you wish to post on this board or not. What I want to address is the assumption I'm reading in your paragraph that those of us with children in institutional schools have made that choice so that our kids can learn about the "real world." That is 100% NOT the reason my AS child continues in public school. I fully support homeschooling as a choice, and have suggested it to parents here many times, and have actively posted to de-bunk the idea that an institutional education does anything to teach AS kids real life social skills. In fact, the regulars on this board pretty much all reject that concept.

So why IS my child in public school? Because HE feels it is the best place for him to learn. Since fourth grade or so, we have given him the full plate of options on how and where to school, and have made it clear that we will do whatever it takes to affect HIS choice. When things get rough, I remind him that we can home school, and he has given it serious thought. But, here is the thing: he is also well aware of the dynamics between him and I, what he trusts me to be able to teach him, how and when he respects my authority (and when he doesn't), and so on. He has basically concluded that we would both slack off too much and he wouldn't be able to meet his own goals in education (he has pretty lofty career ambitions, and has a sense of the path it will take to get there). Plus, he's already passed my ability to remember math and other complex subjects; he knows that I would be re-learning with him (I was a very talented student, but 30 years of un-use do take their toll). He has told me things would have to be really, really bad before he would choose to home school.

Before fourth grade we didn't put it on the plate because there didn't seem to be a need to. I have done part time consulting for many years, and before fourth grade there was never enough on the scale to make me consider abandoning the work and income. In fact, it was the school that brought the AS to our attention. I would never have known about it without them. Every time an issue arose, they addressed it, and my son has consistently felt that they are on his side. I truly saw our elementary school as a valuable partner who did much to bridge the gap between what I saw my son needing, and my ability to provide it.

Middle school has been rougher, but my son wants to stick it out. HIS choice. I was ready to pull him, like it or not, but he was quite persuasive as to why it wasn't going to work.

Not all parents can home school. Just as we have to recognize when it's time to hire a mechanic to fix our cars, we have to recognize when it's time to ask an institution to teach our kids. That does not make us bad parents, and it does not mean that we value institutional education for false reasons like what it can teach our kids about the real world.

Sorry for giving that impression, that's not the case. My son started out in a Montessori school for a few years and he knows that he is welcome to attend school anytime he wants to. It wouldn't work for him and I am fortunate enough to live in Australia where I can not only home educate him, but I can do that a a single parent. I was being more tongue-in-cheek about 'real world' because the greater society pushes that schools teach our children about the 'real world' and how to be 'social' when institutionalised education is really nothing like the real world.

I think our kids miss out either way we go, whether we home educate or go to school. Mine is missing out on the school environment and sharing that common bond of what most kids do. Kids in school are missing out on totally individualised education that works for them. There are positive and negative aspects to both paths and honestly I often worry that my child will be missing out and have to work very hard to make sure we get out a number of times per week to local social outings, etc. That's been one of the biggest challenges of the homeschooling for me, as I'm not a very social person at all and it has forced me into situations in my son's best interest that I would never imagine doing otherwise.

I often fantasize about having him back in school so I can have a sauna, pursue my education more fervently, or just to have a moment to myself. It looks like I'm eligible for some in home care so will be taking advantage of that fully! I'm definitely not anti-school. We all have to make individual choices that work for our families and our children. I made the individual choice to home educate when literally everyday became a struggle and my perfectionist child refused to learn how to read because 'not being able to read means I'm an idiot".

Last edited by ominous on 19 Sep 2010, 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ominous, your son sounds very much like mine, at least where reading and perfectionism are concerned. I homeschooled for Grade 1 because the school could not address his social, emotional, OR academic needs. I taught him to read last year, gradually, and overcame the "I quit because I can't master this immediately" issue.

I am really pleased with how we are all clarifying our thoughts, assumptions, and intentions in our comments on this thread. Communication takes a lot of work, but it is (almost) always worth it

I read some of your blog last night, I appreciate you sharing what you have! If you have tips on how to overcome the "I quit because I can't master this immediately" issue, I would love to hear them. My son is ahead in maths and honestly "anything he sets his mind to", he does still struggle with writing (he's year 2) but we've tweaked enough now that he is writing legibly and regularly (not without prompting). Even so, whenever we work on any new concept, be it maths or otherwise, we have meltdowns. I am VERY gentle and encouraging, not at all punitive, it just seems to be whenever his brain has to make that stretch forward he shuts down from stress. Once we work through the meltdown, with a lot of reminders from me about how we all have to learn and nobody knows everything, how he's excellent in maths and capable, lots of breathing and calming down, he picks things up faster than I ever did.

This is one of the main reasons I home educate. He was turning into the class clown at school (at age five) because he couldn't handle the stress, and I wasn't willing to watching him use that as an escape for the rest of his life. He's incredibly intelligent and really can be anything he wants to be, it's just probably not going to happen in a school setting at this point, at least no school I can afford.

I agree about clarification here. It's certainly hard to read tone on the internet, the mix of NT/autism only makes that more interesting!

Any tips either of you can give on this one, please let me know. It's our biggest roadblock, and I have no idea how the mechanism works - so when we get past it, it seems like magic.

I still have that one. As in, *I* have that one. And my NT daughter. I've tended to attribute it to the fact that so much IS easy for me, so that figuring out how to think through something that is not easy for me seems like a waste of time. My mind tends to go to, "find 10 work arounds that are easy, and you've solved the problem!" Lol, OK, by my age, I know that isn't an effective answer all that often, and that I DO have to sit down, focus, and figure my way through it. But, your kids haven't really figured that out yet; theirs lives are still full of safety nets, and ways they can run around a problem. Once they do understand they've got to dive in, remember that the first dive is always the hardest. You want to turn completely away, because it didn't grab you, it didn't make sense. But ... you can't. Although, I still do ... half the time you see me posting, it's because something didn't go right in my work, and I'm avoiding the next dive.

You have to find the part that does make sense, and is easy, first. You also have to convince the child that the effort will be worth it, that they will want this skill, and it won't be something they will eagerly abandon as soon as life lets them (just why did I have to learn to play volleyball?). Reading is really that one skill that they will use over and over, and that will act as a key to help them access all sorts of other information they will need as they get older. Writing is another one. Our AS son wanted to get away without working at either, figuring as an inventor he wouldn't need them, but with an engineer for a father and a CPA/tax specialist for a mom, we had no trouble bebunking that one fast.

Still, desire isn't enough when it makes your brain hurt. Things that do not come naturally to me DO make my brain hurt. I need lots of charge up time, motivation, and breaks. I do it in intense spurts. Back away, clear, dive back in.

I often still think in the back of my head, "isn't there some easy work around so I don't have to do this?" Some of my best solutions have come out of that avoidance mechanism

Oh, and recognize that just because the child turns away, does not mean they've totally stopped thinking about the problem. For me, it moves to a back burner, where I actually often think better, albeit mysteriously, until I eventually I get an "aha!" idea, which I will be eager to try out (or realize that life is just fine not having solved it ).

Anyway, don't know if that helps much. I haven't been all that succesful at breaking down the pieces for my daughter; my husband does it much better. I did get my son through a lot of his resistances, however. But, he is a little different, in not having the level of perfectionism she does. The perfectionism is it's own problem, and I think separately building self-confidence is the main way to help with that. It takes a lot of seasoned judgment to know what should be perfected, and what should be let go of.

ominous, glad we're understanding each other better

Home schooling isn't an option where I live. It's against the law.

ominous and momsparky, I would sum up my approach as Persistence, Flexibility, and Fun:

As much as my son wanted to give up, so did I on some days, because he was such a wall of refusal and negativity and perfectionism. But I really made a commitment that I would not give up, in the hope that he wouldn't either. For us, a persistent routine was key.

So from a homeschooling perspective, that meant that reading (and skills that are needed for reading) were practiced the same time every day - and I planned that time based on the time of day he was most alert and happy and regulated. I negotiated a plan where he would choose 2 books for me to read to him, and I would choose a group of books that he could pick 1 from to read to me.

Along with persistence, flexibility. An example of this would be judging those days when your child is already on a negative path, and making sure you don't drive him farther down it with your Persistence. Persistence meant we did it every day, but flexibility meant we did it only for as long as it took to either feel successful at something, or until I could tell he had had enough. We also kept lessons on the tough stuff pretty brief compared to lessons on the stuff he enjoyed. I also was flexible in sharing the work with him to make him feel like he was getting away with doing less, but really I was getting him to read more than nothing - which was what he wanted to be reading. For example, I would ask him to read a page, he would say 1 paragraph, and I would say 3 paragraphs, then he would counter with 2 and I would "give in". Over time, I gradually increased the amount I would settle on, and the cummulative effect was that he was reading entire books.

And Fun - I sought out fun activities and online activities that helped him with reading (and math operations - he's gifted in mathematics but has a gap/asynchronous development in simple math operations). Discovery Toys (www.discoverytoys.com) has a lot of great, fun games and activities that are designed to teach. We bought the Think It Through complete set, Brain Quest game, Whiz Kids game, and Mosaic Mysteries and used them often for math and reading work. For math, check out this site: http://jmathpage.com/ and also consider the Scholastic computer game Race to Spectacle City. For reading, this is the best site I've found to encourage reluctant readers: www.starfall.com.

Hope that helps

Hi tv,

My son is now 14 and the random vocalising has lessened over the years. It used to be quite intense all through primary school and now he'll make his random noises only rarely. So, take heart, chances are that will be the case with your son too.

There were the teachers who had a big problem with it and, him being a great master of resistance, the more they got on his case, the more he felt the need to do it.

Then there were those who over looked it most of the time, but addressed the issue with me. I would then address it with him, always choosing a time when I knew he'd be open and responsive. He seemed to try harder for these teachers because, for the most part, they let him be himself.

He doesn't feel comfortable in silent crowds/groups of people. He doesn't make random noises as much as he used to. That doesn't mean he now feels more comfortable in silent crowds/groups. It means he's learning to control the urge to break the silence.

Once, when he'd just started high school (a school of 700 students), there was a call for applause. He was so glad for the opportunity to break the silence, that his clapping was the loudest in the hall. He was promptly told off by the principal who was at the microphone addressing assembly. He was so mortified that, to this day, he hasn't joined in with applause at assembly and probably never will again. And that's his choice. No one's ever got on his case for not clapping...not so far...

I've noticed, these days, that when he's amongst silent crowds/groups (assembly, classrooms, meetings) he covers almost his entire face with his long hair by hanging his head more than he needs to.

He tells me that hiding behind his hair helps him cope and assures me that he sees all he needs to see. That's good enough for me.

There has to be a mid-way point where we meet the school. A give and take, if you like, from both sides.

This is valuable information for me. You've put this into words quite well. I have difficulty with what I perceive to be "unnatural" silence (especially social silence in a group of people). This also speaks to the 1.4k walk I just took with my son, where he chattered (or sang) the whole way home and why he is constantly speaking (to the point it's actually an assault to my brain at times ). Even as an adult, I find myself "talking to myself" to break the uncomfortable silence, during long walks alone in nature I have been known to have conversations aloud with "myself" (when you're an adult you're not allowed to say imaginary friends anymore ). It's a positive I've learned to only do this when there is nobody around.

Thanks for posting Luvmyaspie---that gives me encouragement, as this is the biggest struggle we have with our son right now.