Someone's URSA Experience 2022

This week I decided to read and review Dr. Temple Grandin’s book, “Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets to Help Kids on the Spectrum”. I began reading this book instead of the others that I got also written by her because I thought it would be immediate help to both my research and my own way of learning and my outlook on life right now.

As you may know, Dr. Grandin is a celebrated animal science researcher and animal advocate who has written over 60 scientific articles/papers on the humane treatment of livestock and farm animals. She is a very successful person and also has ASD. Her book resonated with me greatly, and I will be taking her advice in my own life, especially when I am thinking about and writing up my lesson plans and my curriculum going forward. The chapters of this book are each of the mindsets that we should use and consider in terms of ASD. The first chapter is all about removing the label of ‘autistic’ from a child. This chapter goes over the harm of thinking of the label of autistic first before thinking of the child. We tend to group symptoms and a child’s personality traits to their ASD, and when we do that we forget that this child is not just ASD. We overlook other things about the child and attribute all of their traits to their condition and we then look at them very critically which leads us to leave out important things. Another tendency that is listed in this first chapter was that we try to explain away data or traits that make us uncomfortable or that are difficult to understand. If a child acts out or does something out of the ordinary, a parent or teacher may tend to group that to something completely unrelated like sugar intake or stress, when the symptom is actually attributed to their environment or something else completely. Removing these ideas and looking at who the child really is will be so much more beneficial. This whole chapter was about recognizing that labels can lead to perceptual errors, and what we see is maybe not the full picture.

The second chapter is about looking at a whole child and their environment. This chapter also looks at making sure a child is healthy and looking at any other possible medical problems. This can include physical and observing them in a natural and comfortable environment. We also should consider how the child presents themselves to you, and how do they talk to you? How are they dressed? Does the child have other tics or vocal abnormalities? Does the child understand gestures? Do they look comfortable? What relaxes them? Are they easily distracted? You should always add as much context as possible as well. Review the data that led you to your conclusions and state that clearly. Every child should have assessments customized uniquely to that child, and the child should be seen in all types of environments and data should be taken from all sources possible. Ask the parents how the child reacts to different situations or stimulants, maybe even ask and see how relatives outside of their normal family unit make the child react. Test scores and percentiles are only a piece of the entire equation, looking at a whole child and making observations on their speech and actions is going to be far more beneficial.

The third chapter goes over what steps should be taken first before an intervention or therapy can begin. Getting a team of doctors and professionals, including parents, teachers, neurologists, or whatever a child may have/need and getting all of these people on the same page and track is the first thing. Its extremely important to keep educators in the loop, and to let them know as much information about ASD and the child as possible. Most educators don’t know the ins and outs of ASD or even the different symptoms. A study in 2017 found that most people (66.7%) knew about autism through a friend or family member who knows about it, and only about a third of teachers had participated in walks and awareness activities. The most shocking number was that only 23% of teachers had obtained their knowledge through formal training or coursework/workshops, and 3.4% of teachers said they had no knowledge about autism at all. They also studied how teachers could identify symptoms and recognize characteristics, with the highest scores being in recognizing basic characteristics at 70%. With questions about interventions, almost 75% of teachers responded ‘I don’t know.

I will be back later this week with the rest of the chapters, I am very excited to see where this book goes next and to have all of these mindsets in my arsenal. I have started the next chapter and so far it is going over the other conditions that are often mixed up with or in conjunction with ASD. There are often other conditions that can mess up treatment or make it more difficult for treatment to succeed well. Some of these can include insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, epilepsy, and other sleep disorders. Because children with ASD can have a hard time communicating pain or other things that may bother them, it is important to recognize the signs that a child may be in distress or discomfort. The next chapter will go over psychological conditions that are also associated with ASD. These may include ADHD/ADD, dyslexia and depression or other mood changing conditions.

More to come soon,

-Chloe