06 Mar 2018, 4:02 am
During the week of Presidents Day, we took our kiddos to Disneyland. They had a blast. It was the first time my son got on roller-coasters and other scary/dark rides. He giggled throughout the whole day.
One year ago, that would have been unthinkable. Sensory issues, I guess. He used to be afraid of the wristband, electronic blood pressure monitor at home, too. The noise from that device would spook him out. But nowadays he is able to touch it, and hang it behind my butt. He says, that'll measure my gas pressure. Ha ha.
Frankly we've never really done anything special to address the sensory issues of my son. One problem just goes away after another, on their own, along the years.
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So, my take is, like verbal and social issues, sensory issues also require zero attention from parents. Once the brains of these children are developed, all those issues get fixed on their own. The important thing is to get the brains of the children developed. Autism does not cause disability issues in adults... underdevelopment does. Underdevelopment comes from solitary confinement. The symptoms of autism are all consistent with extended solitary confinement. And solitary confinement happens because children are not communicated in the proper channel. As long as the children are communicated in the proper channel (visual-manual), once they reach the stage of being able to generate their own manual output (hence closing their "outer feedback loop"), all problems are solved. Once the brain starts to develop connections, they become verbal, social, and sensory issues disappear one by one.
My children just keep plowing forward. They are becoming more and more mature, by the day. Unfortunately, many of their peers are stuck behind. Some families have since become broken. I look at the manual output of their parents, and I look at mine, and to me it's like: isn't it obvious why their children are stuck behind?
I've posted about the "connected development graph" before: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=296628. Nowadays the brain connections of my children are so complex that it's no longer feasible to track all the pathways. But the graph still provides an idea on how to develop these children. The problem with our society's approach is we only want to jump to the final, top, leafy layers, without wanting to invest in the middle layers. So, if there is sensory issues, we use protect gears. If there is ADHD or anxiety, we use drugs. If the children are not talking, we bombard them with speech therapy. Of course, we start trying to socialize these kids from 2 or 3 years of age. By the time they become 20- or 30-year-olds, we are still trying to socialize them. In the name of love, we have turned our problem-free children into comatose, underdeveloped adults. While those parents were seeking all those therapies, I was building up the foundation for my children to succeed, layer by layer. Years later, guess who come out ahead?
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The other day I visited a boy on the spectrum. I observed how the ABA therapist was playing with the boy. The therapist made play-dough insects or animals, on the spot. It was fun for the boy. However, it was driving me nuts to see that no pictures or written words have been used in communicating with the child. I instinctively picked some blank index cards, and as the therapist made more figures, I drew pictures of them, and wrote down words or sentence, sometimes with speech bubbles. The boy responded well. The father saw me doing that, and jumped in and drew a picture and wrote down some words, too. So, at one point, the boy was interacting with 3 adults, at the same time. He did not seem to mind, he was having fun.
We have been molded by our neurotypical society that in order to learn, children must focus, and pay 100% attention. The visit to the boy's family told me otherwise. Hyperactive children have attention span of 2 to 3 seconds. Yet, in the case of the boy, he was able to interact with 3 adults at the same time. That is, as long as you are switch between multiple fun activities, you can take advantage of those chunks of 2 or 3 seconds, to teach the children new skills. It's not that hyperactive children cannot learn. It is simply that we have been wrong all along in requiring children to pay attention beyond 2 or 3 seconds. We focus on extending those dry, boring lessons/exercises, which drive both the children and the adults crazy. We probably find that chaotically switching between various activities insane. But that insane way is precisely how hyperactive children learn. We simply need to change our teaching method and tune it to a frequency and style that resonate with these children. The children are fine. We are the intellectually disabled ones.
