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OliveOilMom
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19 May 2012, 1:31 am

For not being able to understand social cues, have a short presentation to them with several people acting the parts that they would see people doing in normal every day life. Responding in completely different ways that a person would think they need to respond. Also have the actors do this while either having no expression at all on their faces and a monotone voice, or have them use different facial expressions and different body language that doesnt match the expression, and tone that doesnt match, but all of those things being completely different than what a person would normally do.

An example would be if you wanted to make small talk about a band that you and they liked, in a friendly way, you could frown, use a very sad voice, and body language like you were scared. Send three different messages, all different from your intent.


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Atomsk
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19 May 2012, 1:32 am

Rascal77s wrote:
Isn't that the whole point; to teach them what growing up with autism is like autism is like (torture)? :P


You may or may not be saying that jokingly, but as a child I was -quite literally- wanting to kill myself, for much of the time from 1st grade to 5th or so. Multiple suicide attempts, not all of which were known of by my family.



one-A-N
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19 May 2012, 1:34 am

One possibility with sensory processing issues might be: give all instructions with a lot of echo and loud background noises, to make them hard to understand. Also, try making some sudden, very loud noises (like banging a gong suddenly and unexpectedly behind someone). Sound and visual hypersensitivity are very common.

With food, either make it bland to the point of tasteless, or maybe make it slimy, or else add too much of some ingredient (e.g. some herb) so it tastes too strong. The food should feel or taste unpleasant, without being dangerous - or be way too bland.

You could ask them to watch a video which runs fast, with too much movement and too much changing too quickly for anyone to take it all in. Ask them to count the number of persons or activities of some type in the video, so they became flustered trying to keep up with all the information overload.

Put up pictures of faces with bright LED lights (NOT lasers) in the eyes, so that when you show people the faces, they don't want to look at the eyes. Ask them to describe the person's eyebrows, or something which makes them glance near the eyes, then have to look away all the time ... because the eyes are too intense.

Bully them (yep - autistic children are three times more likely to be bullied than their non-autistic siblings).



Rascal77s
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19 May 2012, 2:02 am

Atomsk wrote:
Rascal77s wrote:
Isn't that the whole point; to teach them what growing up with autism is like autism is like (torture)? :P


You may or may not be saying that jokingly, but as a child I was -quite literally- wanting to kill myself, for much of the time from 1st grade to 5th or so. Multiple suicide attempts, not all of which were known of by my family.

It was dark humor. Dark because it's true.



aspecialspace
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19 May 2012, 6:44 am

These are fantastic ideas!! !! WOW. Thank you!

As far as torturing the children, well, my son is tortured every day. He is such a hero to me because he walks into that school every day with a smile on his face and tries so hard to do it all right. I honestly don't know how he does it. Around November he had been really self-injuring and then having a lot of suicidal fantasies and some homocidal ones too. Honestly, from my very limited understanding of what must be like in his head, I totally understand his actions and his thoughts.

That's why I'm opening the daycare that is fully tailored to people on the spectrum. I wrote about it here but they moved it to the parents forum or something. And that's why I'm doing Experience Autism. I just want teachers and students to "get it" in just a very small way since that is all we can do. But that understanding brings compassion and change. I know my son has to deal with and try to fit into my world so much. I think there should be equal attempts for me to fit into his world and adjust to him.

Anyway, I have done this for adults but I am doing this training for kids too....middle school so far. I am working with the school board and the state because I want to do this in every single classroom in my state and then figure out how to facilitate it nationally. The NT teachers and students need this. I have to be careful with the flashing lights not to cause seizures. But yes, I want them to be uncomfortable, frustrated, off balance, awkward, uncool, uncoordinated, etc. I want them to feel it and "be" it. How else can you really understand it? So thank you. I'm getting to work on these ideas right away!



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19 May 2012, 6:55 am

Rascal77s wrote:
I know this will sound strange but have you ever seen Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) starring Christopher Lambert? When I was watching this movie it occurred to me how much the character was like me in the he was brought into this alien 'NT' world only to be looked down upon for his differences. He tries to fit in and learn the normal customs and behavior but he is just too different and eventually has a meltdown of sorts and goes back to the jungle. If nothing else you should watch this for yourself. It seems odd to me that NT's can empathize with this character but have a hard time empathizing with aspies but I think if they can relate to this character they would understand the social difficulties of AS much better.

It's not that we don't want to be like NT's it's just that it's so foreign to many of us that we get burned out attempting it.


I often wonder about how humans can be so kind to animals or watch a movie about a chimpanzee and feel all kinds of empathy but then be so lacking in understanding of human beings. My theory is that NT's have anxiety too...and when we see someone with something different and therefore scary, we worry that it could happen to us and we avoid it. When my husband had cancer, no one came to see him. People realized that this could happen to them. They couldn't handle it . It scared them. So they avoided it completely. I don't know. Just my thoughts.



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19 May 2012, 6:57 am

Atomsk wrote:
Wow, I wish things like "experience autism" existed in more places. What you have is excellent, and would remain so even without changes.

However here is some input of things you might want to try including. Some of them I imagine would be quite difficult to replicate, but I'm just tossing ideas out there:

-simulating meltdowns (seems impossible since they'd need to actually be irrationally angry)

-something simulating the need to stim
For this you could give them some sort of stim, like a hand flapping movement or something that someone with Autism does. With one of the ones I do, I put the back of my hands to my face, and wiggle my fingers a lot - while this is going on I have no idea it's happening, until it stops.
When -I- was in school (diagnosed at early age), I was -FORCED- to stop stimming whenever I stimmed, which was really really bad, because it just made me need to stim more, and there was no stopping it. All it did was cause anguish - and to this day I still stim and do compulsive movements, I've just learned to always be playing with my hands to lessen the frequency.

So give them each a stim, and have something very unpleasant happen, which goes away when they do that stim. Then to help them understand how bad it is to try to stop someone from stimming, yell at them every time they stim to get rid of whatever unpleasant thing you come up with (maybe a loud harsh noise? maybe a whistle or something, some sort of signal?), or something like that.

- something to add to the "things to do with gloves on" list

Have them button shirts up while wearing these gloves. :twisted: This is one of the most annoying things for me, it takes me a while to button a shirt up, and it really irritated me when I had to wear a button up shirt every day for a job.
Another good one, folding socks and clothes with the gloves.

handwriting difficulty

Have them wear the gloves and write with a piece of pencil led. Just a stick of mechanical pencil led. The pencil led may be overkill, but I wouldn't know - my handwriting looks like a first graders (actually, worse than most 1st graders - I had a job as a teacher assistant for a 1st grade teacher in a German immersion school, so I saw their handwriting frequently).

Sensory issues

What you have for sensory issues is good, but here is a good idea:
Have them wear a blindfold or sit in the dark or something, to make their eyes adjust fully to the darkness. Then shine some really bright light on them. Perhaps, to prolong the time of discomfort, have them wear an eyepatch and just switch eyes once one of them adjusts to the light.

Another option, just have a room very, very overlit, to show how bright fluorescent lights common in classrooms can affect Autistic people.

Make a bunch of metaphors/idiomatic phrases, etc. that only you know the meaning of.

Then use them over and over throughout the training. Give them all a meaning that has nothing to do with their words, like "Oh, of course, the yellow cow cries at midnight." to mean "stand up" or something along those lines. Then get mad at them when they don't understand what you're saying, or act puzzled like they're all idiots.


I totally LOVE the stim activity. That will be AWESOME!