From rescue of miners, to rescue of minors
09 Nov 2015, 3:39 am
From rescue of miners, to rescue of minors
http://www.the33movie.com/
This movie is coming out, on Nov. 13th, in the USA. It was actually debuted earlier in Latin America (August 6 in Chile.)
If you understand Spanish, and want to see a real documentary without all the Hollywood fanfare, here it is:
As a person from the country, the mining accident touched me hard. Call me trans-racial (or trans-ethnic, to be accurate), but Chile is still home to me, at heart. Copper mining is part of the soul of the country, and I do have friends working in that sector.
I never shed one single tear drop regarding my children being autistic. Seriously, it's the truth. I scratch my head at other parents feeling sad about their children's autism. I've never felt sad for one single second about my children being autistic. All on the contrary, I've had plenty of laughter and joy with my children. When other parents tell me that they just found out their children's diagnosis, the first word that pops up in my head is "congratulations." And I seriously mean it. Being autistic myself, I know these children are special. As I always say: they can see things that no one else can see, and solve problems that no one else can solve. Autism is something to celebrate, to have fun with. It's all about happiness.
However, when I heard about the miner's story in the news, tears would just shoot out straight from my eyes. That was especially embarrassing at work, in front of my younger team members. They naturally asked me about the accident, since I was from the country.
Credit given where credit is due. The director of the movie is Patricia Riggen, who did a good job. When asked what was challenges she encountered filming the movie, she grinned and summarized it as “handling 33 men down inside a mine that had no bathrooms.”
I can't help but drawing parellels between the rescue of miners, vs. the rescue of minors (autistic children).
(1) The gender fact.
All the 33 miners were...men. The US engineer hero (Jeff Hart), who was drafted from his work in Afghanistan, and who headed the Plan B that successfully rescued the miners, was a man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/09/jeff-hart-chile-mine-dril_n_757060.html
This came out recently. Men, and people in STEM fields, are more likely to be autistic. Frankly, no news there. It's been well-known, all along.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Sex-career-choice-predict-number-autistic-traits/story-28105527-detail/story.html
Why do I even bother to bring up the gender fact, at risk of being labeled sexist? It's because I think our current focus to autism is very biased. To start with, the participation of men, especially fathers, in the raising of their autistic children is abysmally marginal. Also, the field of ABA therapy is still overwhelmingly female-dominated. To me, that's wrong.
Men can play a crucial role in interacting with children on the spectrum. Take the example of DieselDucy, whose YouTube elevator channel has 60 million views.
http://www.dieselducy.com/
My son learned almost all his skills from elevators, and in large part thanks to DieselDucy's elevator videos. I don't mean the elevator videos alone are sufficient for the development of autistic children, BUT, they surely have been instrumental for the development of additional skills in my son. I can't even enumerate all the skills my son has acquired from his passion with elevators (reading, talking, writing, drawing, typing, electronic circuits, math, etc. etc.), or all the sensory/tantrums problems that have been solved from his passion with elevators. DieselDucy (Andrew Reams in real life) is a hero/celebrity among autistic children. And it is simply hard for me to find a female equivalent that I could place at par with him. You can accuse autistic children as being sexist all you want. But the simple fact is a huge number of these children are fan of DieselDucy.
The boys-to-girls gender ratio of autism is 5:1 by some account (http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/04/health/mental-health/autism-sex-differences/). Interestingly, STEM college degrees are similarly male-dominated, with the same 5:1 ratio by some account (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering_in_the_United_States#Statistics_and_relevant_data). When I go to technology conferences, the gender ratio is closer to 10:1.
These are all facts. Ignoring facts is a dangerous thing to do. Because, statistically, men still are more technically/mechanically oriented than women. And knowledge and inclination to use technology makes a gigantic difference in the development of autistic children. And that is a place where we have failed, as a society. I have seen more than enough share of broken families, where fathers are nowhere to be found, leaving mothers to struggle all alone. Those are facts, too.
Again, statistically speaking, there is a gender imbalance in our approach to developing autistic children. Ignoring that fact, is dangerous.
(I do have a mother, a sister, a daughter and a wife. My daughter is autistic. Where I came from we've had a female president, twice. Those are all facts, too.)
(2) What you choose to believe, matters.
The movie has a corny line by Antonio Banderas: "I believe we'll make it out of here because I choose to believe it."
I choose to believe that autism is NOT a medical condition, because I choose to believe it. I choose to believe that autism is not a disease/disorder/disability/defect. I choose to believe that autism is simply being different. I choose to believe these children have a different way of growing up, a different way of development. I choose to believe that these children are totally problem free, and that the only ones with problems are us, the adults.
People get too hanged up about genetic "mutations." Studies have revealed that humans share 50% of DNAs with bananas (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/humans-share-50-dna-bananas-2482139). My question is: are humans "abnormal bananas"? Or are bananas "abnormal humans"? The fact is, the only thing abnormal about autistic children is that they are the minority. Nothing more than that. Bias against autistic people is pure and simple racism, to call a spade a spade. If autistic children can be developed, can contribute to the society, can get married and can have more autistic children, and can one day outnumber the neurotypical population, then where is the problem? To me, autistic people are simply a new species, a new way of life. That's all. (As for being a "new" species, I don't even believe autism is new. Currently I am inclined to believe that symbiotic autism got into human genes 50,000 years ago, and was instrumental in triggering the so-called "behavioral modernity" in humans.)
What you believe, matters. Because when you choose to believe autism is a medical condition, you choose to give up your parental duties. That's not a choice for me. While I literally worked my behind off making animation video clips for my children, I see other parents playing games, or going on wild goose chase after bizarre therapies. Their attitude is like: "I'll never stop finding something else or someone else that can cure my child." Those parents don't see themselves as THE solution. I sometimes racked my brain non-stop, even skipping sleep, trying to draw analogies from math and physics, to figure out approaches to help my children develop. Raising my children, to me, is my duty. Surely it's nice to have outsiders to collaborate and help, but first and foremost, the responsibility of raising my children lies squarely on my shoulders. Today, I can proudly say, I did not fail my children.
Autism is not a hard issue. Frankly, in my opinion, it's a rather trivial issue. You develop your children from their passions, by adding in the skills they need to learn. You don't solve their sensory/tantrum issues on the spot, instead, you start from a totally unrelated point and cut into the issues from the happy moments of the children. Visual manual skills first (including reading), postpone verbal skills until your child is fully competent in visual-manual skills, and postpone social skills until your child is fully competent in verbal skills. Build the foundations, and you'll have your Hallelujah mountain peaks. If you don't spend time building the foundational skills of your children, you can dream about your Hallelujah mountains for the next 10, 20, 30 years, and never turn them into reality.
Saying our children are not visual is a lame excuse for us to give up on our parental duties. We can start instead to draw pictures and make video clips for our children, and modulate our messages into their favorite video clips. If anybody doesn't know how to draw pictures or make video clips, well, it can be learned. There are an endless list of resources out there.
When our children are stimming and we are not taking the opportunity to teach them new skills, it's our fault.
When we waste infinite time in potty training instead of developing our children's foundational/intellectual skills, it's our fault.
When our children throw tantrums and we only want to apply behavior corrections at the moment, and lecture them about anger management, it's our fault.
When our children are happy and having fun, and we do nothing to connect their happy moments to their tantrum moments, when we let those golden moments slip away, and we then later complain about the recurrence of our children's tantrums, well, it's our fault.
For tantrums that have obvious reasons/causes, if we don't draw pictures at bedtime for our children, and explain to them what happens to remove their bad experiences, then, it's our fault.
If we are not using liquid diet to help our children adapt to new flavors and textures, then, it's our fault.
Instead of going on a wild goose chase for miracle cures from "experts" out there, we can choose to believe that autism is not a medical condition. And then take up our parental responsibility and solve each and every issue of our children's development, on our own.
Yeap, I've done things that no parents out there have done, ever, before. Who else do you know in the world that has drawn as many pictures and made as many "animated" video clips for their autistic children as I have? Yet paradoxically, everything that I've done, at the same time, has been done before. How can that not be paradoxical? You surely know that there are plenty of parents working in animation studios that have done animation video clips for their children. So nothing I have done is out of ordinary. I have invented nothing new here. I have simply done the right things, at the right moments. Nothing extraordinary. Because autism is simple and trivial, at its core. So so trivial. Yet, go back up and read the list of things that I have done, and chances are that you've never done any of the steps I have done with my children. How can that not be paradoxical?
In another 20 years, when people look back at all our "treatment" approaches to autism, they will feel ashamed. For looking at these children as "abnormal", people have failed to see just how "abnormal" the adults have been. Millions of children have become underdeveloped simply because of whims of adults. Adults have looked at autism as something complicated, something mysterious, something puzzling, and made a big industry out of it. When in reality, autism is such a simple and trivial issue.
(3) Don't go the direct route.
During the mining accident's rescue effort, it became obvious that it was impossible to reach the miners through the original tunnel. Instead, new boreholes were drilled to reach the miners first, and then widened for the final rescue.
Similary, for autistic children, the conventional way of developing neurotypical children simply doesn't apply. In particular, our society really ought to stop shoveling socialzation skills down the throat of our autistic children. Patience is needed, just like in the rescue of the miners. You build the foundational skills in baby steps, pretty much like drilling the boreholes first. Once the foundational skills are there (like the boreholes), you then go in with the bang, and achieve the full development (like the rescue shaft) of your children. It may take sometime to drill the widened rescue shaft, but once the borehole (foundational skills) are there, you know you are well guided, and that success is just a matter of time.
The direct route is what I often term as "single-bit machines." It's what in Chinese is known as 头痛医头，脚痛医脚 (tóu tòng yī tóu，jiǎo tòng yī jiǎo, "treat the head when the head aches, treat the foot when the foot hurts"), basically, a criticism on Band-Aid solutions.
The direct route is the wrong route. By developing our children the neurotypical way, we won't achieve our objectives. Yet all too many adults keep choosing to go the direct route. Children are not social, so we load them up with socialization drills. Children don't talk, so we bombard them with speech therapy. Children are hyperactive, so we medicate them. Children don't use toilet, so we spend countless hours in potty training them. Children have sensory issues, so we deprive them from stimuli, or don them with protection gears. Children stim, so we try to remove their stimming behavior. Children throw tantrums, so we lecture them to control their temper. When are we going to stop going the direct route?
If the rescue team had gone the direct route, the miners would have perished. Similarly, by going the direct route, we leave scars in our children that they will never be able to recover from.
How can anybody grow up normally, when their parents think of them as defective?
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Happy Holiday Seasons to everyone. As those that find my style odd, yes, I know, I am odd. Yeap, people say all kinds of things to me, ha ha. Controversy is daily bread and butter, in science. No harm done. I am still friend of everybody, any day, any time. That's the only way I can choose to believe, as the father of my children. I write each of my messages, for my children to read. Hope everyone is doing the same.
When my children grow up, I want them to remember all the fun they've had with my videos and drawings. I want them to remember that I have always treated them as equal-rights fellow human beings, from day one. I want them to know that they have always been perfect they way they are, from day one. I want them to know they are special, and feel proud about themselves. Yes, as a father, that's the only way I can choose to believe.
regards,
