Elevator Rides and the Three-H Factor

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The Three-H Factor

A netter asked me about how I used elevators to raise my son. Elevators … I don’t even know where to start … My son learned virtually all his skills from elevators.

From early on, my son found video clips from DieselDucy on YouTube. Google for DieselDucy (whose real name is Andrew Reams) and you will find his website and his elevator videos on YouTube. My son would memorize some passages from these video clips, and then recreate them at home. One day, I saw him open the toilet seat, flush the toilet, and I heard him say something like “The toilet is a Ger…” I had to ask my wife what videos my son has been watching lately, and I then scanned through a whole bunch of them, until I found the passage where DieselDucy was visiting a hotel and checking out the toilet in a room. The brand of the toilet was “Gerber.” I got so excited when I got the source video identified. However, because the toilets in our home were generic, they did not have brand names on them. So, I used a marker, and wrote down brand names like “Gerber”, “Kohler”, etc. Then, I would re-play the passage with my son on “… and for all your toilet fans, here is the best part. That’s right, here it comes …” and then let him flush the toilet. Note that back then my son was essentially non-verbal. So, he being able to say that sentence was a pretty big deal. From imitating passages from DieselDucy’s video clips, he gradually started to talk! I can still find the video clip easily. Here it is:


(Watch starting around 10:30.) Eventually, my son was able to recreate a fairly long segment, including talking about the sink, the spigot and the shower head.

So, elevators have helped my son to develop verbal skills.

- - -

I still remember, the first stick figure my son ever drew was… an elevator. The first word he ever wrote was… ELEVATOR. And the first word he ever typed on a computer was… ELEVATOR.

So, elevators have helped my son to pick up drawing, writing, and typing skills.

- - -

For one particular Christmas, my wife and I bought a snap circuit kit for an older nephew that was also on the spectrum. We got a second set for our son just in case. However, my son did not express interest in electronic circuits at that moment. So the kit sat in a corner for over a year or so. Around that time, he was getting more and more into elevators. At home, he would draw elevator doors with up and down buttons on the walls. We happen to have a walk-in closet in our place. So, I would let my son push the fictitious buttons, walk into the closet with him, then lift him up and down to simulate elevator motion. Then I would slide the door open for us to get out of the “elevator.” It was fun play. One day, I was visiting an electronic store, where I saw these dirt-cheap pushbuttons. I bought a few of them. Then I glued one onto a small piece of cardboard, and mounted the cardboard using painter’s tape to the wall. (I usually use painter’s tape as make-shift double-sided tape.) My son absolutely loved the pushbutton, for now the button felt real. All of a sudden and to my surprise, he started to realize what electronic circuits were all about. He then started to play with snap circuits. I also bought some basic circuit components (including a “breadboard”) and assembled some basic circuits with some LEDs, a pushbutton a switch, and a buzzer. I further made a few video clips.




So, my son learned about electronic circuits, from his passion for elevators.

- - -

My son also started to assemble complex objects with Mega Blocs (just like Lego blocks, but much larger in size.) He made some pretty cool elevator models. I used one of his elevators models to make a stop-motion animation video, and merged in pre-recorded voice from him and myself. I used the video to introduce the concept of addition to him.


My son’s pre-school/pre-K teacher further used a board and some brass fastener

to make an elevator in school, to teach him addition that way. Basically, people or animals would go in or out of the elevator at different floors.

One day, while taking my son to elevator rides in a shopping plaza, we stopped by a movie theater, not to watch movies but just to get some popcorn. From there, I made a silly video on multiplication, by using popcorn.


So, I am certain that my son learned beginning math, from his passion for elevators.

- - -

On the summer when my son was still 5 years old, we spent a vacation in San Francisco, because we wanted my son to visit a 100-year-old elevator there. He saw the elevator from one of videos on YouTube. To make a long story short, because of the trip and because of his birthday, my son got rid of some of his sensory and rigidity issues.
The following is a poster that I made for my son the night before his 6th birthday. I made the poster so that he could bring it into school to celebrate his birthday in class. My son was happy to see the poster when I rehearsed and went through the content of the poster with him. I did not know the poster would have an interesting side effect. See, before his birthday, he totally refused to switch to the larger car seat that we have bought for him. His new car seat sat in the garage for a few months. However, after I made the poster, the next morning when my wife told him that he was a big boy now and that big boys need bigger car seats, miraculously he happily complied and went to the school in the new car seat. Only afterwards did I realized that the poster contained a picture of him standing next to an elevator, from when he was 4 years old.



Later that day in school, the teacher gave my son a paper crown, which he could decorate to his heart’s content. Notice that my son drew an elevator, and among other words, he wrote down “elevator” and “San Francisco.” Before his 6th birthday, my son absolutely hated to wear any kind of hat on his head. However, that day he happily wore his paper crown. Not only that, from then on, he had no issues wearing hats or sunglasses.



So, elevators are not only useful for teaching skills to my son, they have also helped him to grow, mature, and get rid of sensory or rigidity problems.

- - -

In another vacation, he learned to write some Chinese characters that he saw in elevators.


And he later discovered how to use Google Translate to find out the Chinese characters for his drawings or messages.



So, elevators has motivated him to learn to write Chinese characters.

- - -

In my son’s first grade, I made a foamboard poster about the Washington Monument, with a movable elevator. My son then gave a presentation in school.



Most recently, my son had a biography project. I picked Elisha Otis for him. Elisha Otis was the inventor of modern safety elevator. I also built a wooden model of a safety elevator … it took me like 5 weekends to make it, with endless runs to Home Depot and Michaels to look for the parts. My son wrote a biography essay on Elisha Otis. For the final presentation, we recorded it in the form of a video. We dressed him up in lab coat. And we took the safety elevator model to school for his classmates and parents to see. In the following video, the house model was built by my son’s grandfather, the safety device was made by my son, and the model safety elevator was made by me.


From his passion for elevators, between school teachers and myself, we have created opportunities for my son to do public presentations.

- - -

Also, when my son was around 6 or 7 years old, he shocked us by asking strangers that came into elevators: “which floor are you guys going to?” That is, he was taking initiative in starting conversation with strangers.
Last year we had an elevator riding club a few time. Where a few kids (and their parents) would get together in a shopping plaza to ride the elevators there.

So, elevators are also good social events.

- - -

I still regularly take my son out for elevator rides. Whenever I drop by southern Los Angeles, I still take my son to either South Coast Plaza to ride elevators, or to Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach to ride elevators and/or visit the Tesla car showroom. I think our longest visit was like 3 hours, covering virtually every single elevator in South Coast Plaza, including all those ones in the parking garages. It was crazy. So, if you ask me, my son’s gross motor skills also came from elevators!

- - -

Elevators are also the best way of removing tantrum episodes from my son. I have described in a separate article on "Fun and Facts" on how I took my son to elevators, got him a blue cookie, and from there removed his tantrums on taking a bath. Whenever I take my son to elevator rides, if there are some recent bad experiences, I take the elevator time to talk to my son about them. This way, I connect his bad experiences to his good experiences. My son is always happy and smiling, for a good reason.

- - -

What I have described so far are just a partial list of things that my son has benefitted from his passion for elevators.
See, the thing is, other parents see elevator rides just as curiosity. I went much beyond just riding elevators. I got everyone involved, from my son’s grandpa, to my wife, to ABA therapists, to respite babysitters, to school teachers, etc. Everyone has chipped in with creativity to leverage elevators to teach my son other skills. Of course, the fact that I am able to make animation video clips, made a huge difference. In schools my son has drawn countless pictures of elevators, and has written quite a few essays on elevators as well. (That also helped with fine motor skills.) It’s an opportunity for him to talk to other people, and explain about his ideas and inventions. At home he would role play with respites and ABA therapists, using elevator themes. For instance, a respite generalized it to a hotel building, where they also had hotel rooms, and a store with a cashier’s machine, so they pretend-played customers buying goods items and have to pay at the checkout counter, with different prices for different items.

I still take my son to elevator rides, for a good reason.

These kids are perfectly fine the way they are. Other parents don't believe me when I tell them that. About 50% of all autistic children that I have encountered, are all elevator enthusiasts. But if you compare what I do, with what other parents do, you will realize why my son does very well, while the other children don't do well. The difference is not in the children. The difference is in the parents.

It's not just elevators. Anything that your children like, is a door into their world. It's an Archimedes' lever. It pains me to see other parents let all these opportunities slip away. They think schools are the only way to learn, they think they need to "fix" their children first, so that their children can learn from schools, like regular neurotypical children. They turn their children's lives totally upside down. I go the other way. I make school teachers realize that they need to follow my son's interests. Together, we create opportunities for my son to develop some of the school skills (presentations, essays, even math) by adapting the curriculum to my son's interests. I keep close touch with school teachers, so they can tell me what happens in school, and I can tell them my son's new passions, interests, and inventions. See, not long ago my son was into mousetraps. So the teacher asked him to write an essay on mousetraps. Things like that. We always supply the teachers with a stack of drawing paper pads. Whenever my son is bored in school, he can always draw pictures.

All parents say that they love their children, and that they would do anything to help their children. After all these years raising my children, whenever I hear the same comment from other parents, I can only shake my head. I shake my head because those parents lie. Nope, it has become pretty clear to me that those parents are very much unwilling to do anything to help their children. They talk all too much, but they don’t move a finger. Their hands haven’t created a thing to help their children. Some have never drawn a single picture for their children. Those parents are full of excuses.

So I started to wonder why my children do well and their children don’t. I guess the main difference between myself and other parents is, I incorporate the “Three-H Factor” into raising my children. What do I mean by the “Three-H Factor”? What I mean to tell other parents regarding raising their children is: “Love them with your HEART, love them with your HEAD, and love them with your HANDS.” I’ve never believed that autistic children have any developmental problems. To me, autistic children simply have a different way of growing up, a different way of learning. If you see everything that I have done and have made, it should be very clear to anyone that I have raised my children with my hands. I communicated with my children through my handwork. That is the main difference between myself and other parents. My hands are the main difference.

The truth is, sometimes using your hands is rather simple. My son learned to talk from playing with toilets. I will always remember the moment when I wrote down “Gerber” on the toilet bowel and how my son’s face just totally lit up. Some things are that simple. You write down one single word, and it can change a child’s life. If I told other people that toilets are great educational material, they would probably think I was crazy. After all, what schools use toilets as an educational tool to develop verbal skills? My question is, do autistic children really have learning disability? Or are we the adults the ones with learning disability, because we don’t learn to pay attention to our children’s interests and leverage those interests to teach our children new skills? Are school teachers more important, or are parents more important? Who can better understand the right way of raising these children? I mean, from elevators, to DieselDucy’s YouTube videos, to toilets, to verbalization … which great research scholar came up with this pathway of development? Or was it simply the route developed by my son himself? Why is it that we don’t follow our children’s natural path of development, but we instead force them to a neurotypical paradigm that is totally foreign to them? Is the disability on the children’s side, or on the adults’ side? Why do we delegate the development of our children entirely to schools? Why do parents put so much emphasis on “catching up with school,” to the detriment of developing the interests and creativity of our children? Haven’t parents realized that most of the “speech therapy” and “social skills training” arrangements out there are ineffective and harmful to the development of our children? We destroy the self-esteem of our children, and instead of achieving results, we condemn them to frustration and underdevelopment. Why is it that our society turns perfectly fine children into comatose adults? The worst part is, we create problems where there were none, and we further escalate our approach when we run into problems, to the point of needing to call the police to deal with our children’s violent behaviors, or having to dispose of our children to institutions. Who are the truly mentally ill here? And ironically, the source of all these problems comes from parents’ inability/unwillingness to use their hands to develop their children’s interests and creativity. We ruin the parent-child bonding from a start, simply because we choose to view our children as defective. What for?

Different children have different interests. Parents cannot just rely on outside toys, teaching materials, teachers or ABA therapists. Other people will never know your children as well as you do: outsiders have no access to the intimate details of your children’s daily life. Besides, parents are the best role models for their children. By using your hands to create, you are teaching them how to be creative, and you are developing their interests.

Mother Nature has had 4 billion years to do evolution. We the Home Sapiens humans are the most successful species. But unfortunately there are many people out there that don’t believe in Mother Nature’s wisdom. These people think they are smarter than Mother Nature. They think that Mother Nature is too dumb and has created too many defective humans. See, the prevalence rate of autism is somewhere between 2% to 4%, color blindness also has a prevalence rate between 2% to 4%, same with bipolar disorder which is also around 2% to 4%. Add in schizophrenia’s 1% prevalence rate, and we are basically talking about 10% failure rate. That is, 1 out of 10 humans has some major genetic “defects.” Is this at all true? Is Mother Nature this dumb? Or are we the dumb ones, because we haven’t understood Mother Nature’s message, and we instead turn perfectly fine human beings into disastrous human beings? Are we the most successful species, or the most defective species? Where is our self-confidence gone? Why haven’t we tried to listen to Mother Nature, and understand the roles and missions that Mother Nature has conferred to our neuro-variant peers?

I think Mother Nature is pretty smart. We are the dumb ones, for thinking that we know better than she does. Mother Nature did not make mistakes. We did.

So I've made this picture to illustrate the 3 Hs in raising autistic children. The idea is that all 3 Hs are necessary.



Basically, our failure in raising autistic children comes from mistakes we make in approaching our children. In particular, we have failed big time in developing our children visual-manually.

Let us put it this way: Helen Keller was blind, mute and deaf. She had severe tantrum issues. Frankly, she was very violent, before she learned to communicate by hand-spelling words. Now, what would you achieve by: (a) giving medication to her, (b) sending her to occupational therapy, (c) sending her to speech therapy, (d) teaching her how to socialize, (e) arranging play dates for her, (f) teaching her coping techniques, behavioral replacement, etc.? Of course no one would do any of that with Helen Keller, because we know all too well that what she needed was first to learn to communicate. Without being able to communicate, everything else would be a waste of time: she had no way of understanding any of the messages you wanted to convey to her.

We see it as obvious in the case of Helen Keller. Yet, we do the very wasteful things that we know we shouldn't do, with our autistic children. Before we teach our autistic children to communicate visually-manually (which is often the only channel of communication available to them), we instead start with medication, play dates, things like that. How crazy is that? And then, we end up saying that our children have behavioral issues, that they are intellectually disabled. Yeah right. That's how smart children become comatose adults, often stuck with permanent psychological damages and are dependent on medication for a variety of problems. Helen Keller would have ended up a comatose adult as well, drugged to no end for her violent behaviors, had she not been taught to communicate through hand spelling.

Many autistic adults blame on autism for their anxiety issues, intellectual disability, for their inability to get jobs or develop personal relationships. Many have additional psychological damages such as OCD, depression, etc. They blame it all on autism. But autism has nothing to do with those issues. All those issues come from underdevelopment, which is akin to the effects of solitary confinement ... not different from the case of Helen Keller before she learned hand-spelling.

Autism is a communication issue. These children need to be communicated visual-manually. Unfortunately, the adults in our society are all too lazy and insist on using their mouths and their mouths only. So, there is no surprise that their children end up underdeveloped, with a long list of psychological damages. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: you want sick children, you shall get sick children.

All the three Hs are necessary for children to grow up without damages.

LOVE THEM WITH YOUR HEART
[do] get autism diagnosis for your children
[do] get resources and services for your children
[do] get sensory accommodations
[do] handle allergies
[neutral] special diets (e.g. reduced gluten)
[neutral] take supplements
[don't] use medication
[don't] remove stimming behavior
[don't] apply fringe therapies: neurofeedback, TMS, ECT, chelation therapy, etc.
[don't] skip vaccination
[don't] avoid bilingualism
[don't] do potty training, until they are ready

LOVE THEM WITH YOUR HEAD
[do] treat them as equal-rights fellow human beings (that means don't do things that you yourself wouldn't accept. For instance, you yourself wouldn't take a candy for a correct answer, would you? Don't treat your children with techniques of training circus animals.)
[do] develop them for their personal interests
[do] allow children to throw tantrum to express their displeasure
[do] use "Fun and Facts" to approach them and teach them "sometimes life is fun, sometimes life is tough"
[do] request IEP or 504 plan, particularly accommodations (e.g. allow them to walk inside classroom)
[do] apply "modulation" to develop them and expand their interests
[do] take them to elevator rides
[do] allow them to watch YouTube
[do] establish "space-time wormhole tunnel" to connect their diverse experiences. In particular, connect their good moments to bad moments.
[neutral] arrange play dates
[neutral] socialization
[don't] use "Punishment and Reward": that's a technique valid only for neurotypical children
[don't] teach behavior replacement
[don't] teach coping techniques
[don't] use repetitive drilling
[don't] use candies for positive reinforcement
[don't] tell them to control their temper
[don't] tell them to look at people's face or eyes
[don't] do speech therapy, unless it incorporates substantial fun and visual-manual aspects

LOVE THEM WITH YOUR HANDS
[do] draw pictures for your children (magnetic drawing boards, LCD tablet, paper, index cards)
[do] talk to your children on a regular basis (e.g. bedtime) by using picture-aided talking. Learn to use "Fun and Facts" to remove all resentments from your non-verbal children, ASAP
[do] do projects with building block toys
[do] make toy models with your own hands
[do] write to communicate (speech bubbles in drawings, messages, personal letters)
[do] make personalized animation video clips, with sound effects
[do] do projects with electronic circuits
[neutral] learn sign language
[don't] make up excuses to avoid using your hands to create things for your children

This, obviously, is good stuff.

First of all - amazing kid. Very special to see that drawing on the hot air balloon.

Thanks to kraftiekortie for his input. To me that line is of the highest dignity as you started out in your own life as a level 2 autistic child and not an asperger kid. (I find it interesting reading your comments on most stuff). Huge authority.

Jason (eikona), thanks for that lesson and extreme dedication to the condition that is autism. You are also an authority thanks to that book of yours. Just curious about two things and hope you would be willing to elaborate on them.


"Don't use candies as positive reinforcement." - Is there any particular reason for that? I would prefer not giving my boy candy but he really 'ups his game' when I scramble that little magic box with goodies.

"[don't] avoid bilingualism" -Is this something that's advised? I've never heard anyone say otherwise. We use two languages in our home (I'm hoping he'll choose my language because I don't know the other one - at all.)

Yes. By using candies you are embarking on the route of manipulating your children. It goes downhills from there.

I can't repeat enough times that the thing *all* autistic children crave is to be treated as equals. Unfortunately, this is a point sorely missing in our society. When you see all the genomic or pharmaceutical studies on "treating" autism, you know we still have a long, long way to go. I mean, nowadays you don't see pharma companies developing drugs to treat homosexuality, do you?

Developing drugs to treat homosexuality is offensive ... just like using candies to teach autistic children.

Autistic children can develop and thrive without candies. The candy thing per se is not the big evil, it's the whole mentality behind it that is evil: manipulation. Frankly, if you respect your children as equal-rights fellow human beings, as your teachers rather than your pupils, the idea of giving candies wouldn't even cross your mind. What I want to say is I think people that use candies will make other bigger mistakes in raising autistic children. Self-esteem, once destroyed, is hard/impossible to recover.

There is this joke out there.

Q: What do you call a person that speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.
Q: A person that speaks three languages?
A: Trilingual.
Q: And a person that only speaks one language?
A: American.

I hang around with multiple dozens of families with autistic children. In the USA, virtually every single family I know has been advised to stick to English. There is zero scientific evidence to back up the monolingual approach. It's kind of a combination of (a) cultural bias, (b) "common sense" (if learning one language is hard for autistic children, then learning two must be harder), plus (c) the fact that there is evidence that children in bilingual families usually start talking later.

https://www.speechbuddy.com/blog/language-development/bilingual-household-speech-delays/
https://www.aafp.org/afp/1999/0601/p3121.html

... A bilingual home environment may cause a temporary delay in the onset of both languages. The bilingual child's comprehension of the two languages is normal for a child of the same age, however, and the child usually becomes proficient in both languages before the age of five years. ...

I remember recommending a family to let their children learn Spanish. The parents looked at me as if I was on drugs.

Here is a reference to back up what I have observed with my own eyes regarding to the monolingual recommendation:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-children-with-autism-multiple-languages-may-be-a-boon/

... Pediatricians, educators and speech therapists have long advised multilingual families to speak one language — the predominant one where they live — to children with autism or other developmental delays. The reasoning is simple: These children often struggle to learn language, so they’re better off focusing on a single one. ...

From the mid 2010s, a flurry of research studies came out to refute the monolingual approach. And now it is well-known that bilingualism is actually *beneficial* to the development of autistic children. E.g.:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180116084909.htm

I should know it, because I moved to a different continent with a totally different language when I was 12 years old. Today, I speak 5.5 languages. I would have perished, had I been stuck in the same country I was born.

Last edited by eikonabridge on 04 Oct 2018, 3:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

ah i don't even like, or agree upon, the repeted suggestion i must educate dogs with bits of snacks, that's bribing not educating, like dogs, children like to please, and get some attention or praise possibly,
don't convert that into a tit for a tat interaction

but i wouldn't limit your suggestions to autistc children, i don't even know that about mine, likely they're more bap then autistic, they learned reading before school as that runs in both families, they shocked bystanders for speaking correct phrases as toddlers, when we moved abroad, after the first year in school they were best of class in their newly learned language, their prim-school teacher occasionally informs about them, bc as he says, he appreciated their participation in class greatly

as i was myself put in classes with older children, i wouldn't recommend that,
better use the learning capacity by learning another language, or (and) music, or any other skills and interests