AEE conference- Professional Development

About a month ago I ran across a reference to the Association for Experiential Education.  I had heard of it before, but this time was "closer to home".  The international conference was to be held near my parents' home, on a weekend that I was already free from parenting responsibilities.  It just felt like an opportunity that could not be missed.  

So, I didn't miss it.  I was able to go for only one day, not the whole conference, but that's still something.  So, I had new business cards made, cleared the calendar days, changed the oil in my car, and drove down.

Funny thing about professional development - it's more than just professional.  Maybe it has to do with my own sense of connectedness and synchronicity, or maybe it has to do with this "experiential education" industry, or maybe it's that your "professional" self is just an expression of your divinely designated responsibilities to humanity... but I certainly had personal development as well as learning a whole lot about this profession.

So I am going recall, to reflect, to try to process...

The closing event was an award to the "facilitator of the year" - who (naturally) turned out to be an interesting character.  What struck me is how he described that he "trusted the process" of experience, of letting time and experience work together to teach, to let the learning happen.  He told some stories to sum up his experience, and said that while he hadn't figured out why these stories were important yet, he knew that time would show him why...

I trust...

Experience IS the best teacher...

The night before the event, I had an odd dream, about changing jobs, about working in a prison undercover (I had watched Magnum P.I.), and just before I woke, as my body struggled to pull my mind out of that reality into the stretching and bodily awareness of my bed, I literally ran back into the "room" I had been in and yelled, "I have an idea!  We need to establish a Family Adventure Therapy Program!"  My head visualized it as some Big Key, Primary Component.  I woke incredulous.  I am not a therapist.  I am a teacher.  I have no experience, background, or reference for that idea.

I had scoured the website, seeking this details that would allow me to negotiate the space of the event successfully - maps of classroom/ meeting rooms, mention of registration hours, where to park... didn't find it.  So I went over an hour early.  Turns out it was a straight shot, easy to find, clearly marked, and Starbucks was open.

I perused the workshop listings.  I had made the final emotional commitment to coming because one workshop was specifically about working with Autism.  There were 2 other time slots to fill.  I found one about assessment.  I feel like assessment is the key "sticking point" that makes schooling ineffective.  I also feel like we need better vocabulary to describe what we see when we assess.  At the very end of the listing a workshop was listed: "Family Enrichment Adventure Therapy: FEAT".  Was that really relevant to me?

Assessment workshop: VERY useful, very insightful.  Made an immediate link with Sensory Processing language, found a new resource.  Also gained insight into how those decisions to "read" a group and choose a good catalyst for change (the next challenge activity) were made.  The assessment had to do with the facilitator goals (the end objective), but it also was about what classroom teachers call "ongoing assessment" - figuring out where a student is "at".  It also was clear that the language they used to assess is similar to what I do with sensory awareness with swim students.  I speak to my observation/ feeling, suggesting a vocabulary for the learner, and then invite them to share their differences in perception (allow myself to be wrong)... letting the learner own their learned experience. The instructor was specific about not using the word "why", but instead "how would you describe" or "what do you think happened".  He felt "why" was too big, too open-ended... I have always felt like "why" is the elephant in the room - the one thing people won't ask.  I also learned 2 new activities.  I also was called out on being an "autism mom" and trying to facilitate surprise and re-label risk.

ActivatEE session: it was unclear what that would be, but everyone was invited.  It turned out to be EPIC.  5 general members were invited to have their 5 minutes of platform, their 5 minutes to inspire, their 5 minutes to be heard.  It was moving.  Gender equality, authenticity to self, authentic assessment, finding motivation in disaster, inspired insightfulness...  great storytelling, great stories.  It makes me want to be heard too!  I know what I have to say is important, even if I am not sure what needs to be said yet.  I even ran into (by chance?) the organization's CEO while getting directions to lunch, who agreed that my passion for learning outside the classroom would be well met in the ActivatEE format.

Lunch: found a pub in town, got to see a community taking care of itself - playing old country music for a regular customer, watching the dynamic of people caring for people...  and good fried pickles.

Autism workshop: one of the presenters was one of the pediatricians who helped to rewrite the DSM and define what autism is.  He spoke of the spectrum, of outliers, and providing adequate supports without functionality labels.  He has been running a camp for autistic people for 10+ years, and kept his organization at a state level out of the political debates that rage in the Autism Community.  He just helps people.  The co-presenter demonstrated exactly how common challenge activities can be used to facilitate exactly skills and norms that we (neurotypical people) value in behavior (commonly called Social Skills).  I feel so strongly that I want to be a PART of THAT!! I do not understand how, but again, my passion for stopping the pounding of square pegs into round holes, for embracing the infinite diversity of humanity, for inclusion and understanding is loud enough to be recognized, visible to others.  I did feel like the conversation about sensory processing can be approached from different angles that generate more of a sense of identification, of shared experience.  I also think that we are still down-playing the actuality of the "6th sense"/ psychic intuitiveness that people with autism experience.  I can also see that I am not researching or discovering "new" ideas, but I am putting them together is new ways, seeing pictures others don't, and those insights are helpful to others.  After the session I spoke to a participant about "islands of information" and redirecting obsessive concerns to constructive ends.  I am not even sure what I told her, but it resonated with her about a challenge she was facing.

3rd workshop: I had talked myself out of going to the FEAT workshop, but in the Autism workshop I heard someone talking about how great the presenters were.  I followed my intuition.  Valuable lessons. For whatever reason, I was very insecure in this workshop.  I guess I felt very out of my element. I was called on mothering and teaching behaviors that I reverted to instinctively and unconsciously.  I felt ashamed, but grateful to be taught.  I was reminded to let other people keep their struggles. I was reminded that I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make him drink... and that a good facilitator creates thirst.  I learned some new activities with new tools, and was reminded of my own abilities and skills with ropes.  Somehow the presenter recognized that I was drawn there by intuition, and he made a point of connecting with me personally at the end of the session.  I do not know yet why this is important, but I know I was overwhelmed to the point of tears when he spoke with me. He reminded me that he is not a "therapist". There is something I still need to "find".

I am still confident that I needed to BE at that conference.  I know that I was rattled by the observations about my parenting and teaching.  I know that I was overcome with passion to make the world a better place.  I know I met people that will prove to be important connections.  I know that for me, like many there, the organization will be an emotional "home".  

I do not understand yet how.  There are more pieces that need to settle in... 

but I TRUST THIS PROCESS...

On rebooting...

"This day I will dry my wings in the sun like the cormorant, and leave footprints in the sand like the piper, before I too dive back in to the work of living..."

- Facebook post 2/3/2012

And so I began my day.  At 7:45 am I went to the beach and watched world wake up.

I am VERY lucky.  My husband and my mother have both given me emotional permission to take 1 whole day to just be at the beach in Florida after the ACCT conference.  I love people, and I love learning, but I also need to have time to process & reflect.  Don't get me wrong.  I have checked facebook all day, even responded to some emails, spoke warmly with the hotel clerk, talked to many artisans along the pier, and had a conversation about the weather and dogs with a lady from Maryland resting on a bench.  I will never be a social recluse...

But I also just sat and watched and rested.  I saw the cormorants posed along the tops of poles and rocks, drying their wings in the rising sun.  I watched the gulls frantically gather when they thought someone had a tasty morsel, and then nap on one leg until beach goers unconsciously walked over them to set up chairs.  I watched pelicans use their size to bully gulls off the poles, and then sweep their great wings open as they dropped off the pole to the water in search of breakfast.  I watched the sandpipers scurry and search through the crashing surf for tasty yummies, fabulously intent, yet multi-tasking;  it was as if I could here their minds running at ADHD speeds as they tried to be negotiate the delicate task of finding the critters rolled up by the tide but not let the water catch them.  I watched the locals, mostly elderly, take their morning constitutional, occasionally passed by joggers, along the water's edge where the sand is firmer.  I watched several older gentlemen deeply involved in treasure hunting with their metal detectors and sand-sifting baskets.   I watched as all those people along the beach stopped and directed their attention to the water, and followed their gaze to the pod of dolphins galavanting in the surf between the beach and the poles.  I watched the lifeguard come on duty, and set up all his equipment and tidy up the stand area.  I watched a large fish (maybe 6-7 inches) with big sweeping wings come very close to my feet, and then realized he was stalking a much smaller fish who was hiding in my shadow.  I have never in my whole life seen live fish within arms distance in the water of a beach.  I relished the heat of the sun on my skin, the cold the water in my legs, the grit and cool heaviness of the sand on my feet.

And I collected shells.  I did so because as I watched all these people on the beach, they were all collecting shells.  Even those who were clearly locals or were intent on exercising would stop occasionally and collect shells.  The only people I did not see pick up shells were the lifeguard and the metal detector guys.  It occurred to me that it might be a good way for me to find something to take home to my children.  The thought of my children, of course, made me think about what I could teach from a shell collection, so I wandered around for a while trying to find shells that inspired a teachable moment.

I found many with different vibrant colors and shapes (diversity), and others beached white (solar power discussion).   I found some with a pearly sheen and others more like procelian (chemical composition).  I found a chunk with barnacles on it, and one large one that had circles where the barnacles used to be (ecosystems & erosion).  I found some that had holes or grooves where rolling through the surf had started turning them into sand, and others broken into pieces (erosion).

And then I reached a point where I realized that every single shell had a teachable moment in it.  Each one of those shells and shell fragments housed an animal, told the story of a life.

And there were SO MANY of them! So many that even though every body was taking them, the beach was not diminished...

I had a little epiphany... As I looked and looked, and was overwhelmed with the breadth of options that laid on the ground before me, I suddenly realized I couldn't see it anymore.  I realized I could not complete my task (finding shells), because I did not know what to look for.

You have to know what you are looking for in order to find it.  Without knowing what you are looking for, you will not find it, even if it is in your hands, because you will not have a name for it.

In teaching we call this "setting the objective".  That is why the classroom teacher is required to write the objectives on the board each day, and that is why you can't write the lesson until you know what outcome you expect, and that is why you can only assess after you've determined what you have taught.  It is about INTENTION - doing things purposefully.  That is not just "on purpose" but also "with purpose".  It is the difference between wandering and traveling, between industry and productivity...  

This resonates with me because challenge course work has such an emphasis on student driven outcomes, or letting the participant define what a "successful" experience is, because very often the outcome of these intense learning experiences is not what we originally intended.  Very often there is a process of discovery involved, not just of the challenge and the environment, but of the self.  I cannot help facilitate communication skills if the participant does not know that they are communicating, or what they are communicating.  It is one thing to describe for them that the challenge activity involves lifting others and moving them safely, it is another to enable them with the tools to ask one another for help, or provide help that is not judgmental.  They may feel they are asking clearly, but for another that clarity can come across as "not nicely"... I then need to change the focus of our "outcome" to diversity, before I reach a place where we are communicating and can be physically safe.  The power of this work is that the participant has an emotional and galvanizing experience, but we cannot neccesarily predict which aspect of the experience will be pivotal for each particular participant.  There are certainly "rules" and theories of group dynamics that shape how we do what we do, creating shared experiences (forming, storming) before establishing rules (norming), and only then testing their mettle (performing).  But these play out in very different ways, because we are dealing with humans, and people are diverse.

There is a basic conflict between the way I currently teach and "traditional" classroom teaching (the way I used to teach), specifically in this idea of intent/ purpose.  Because of this need to "know what you are looking for", all teaching is considered "outcome specific".  The educational profession spends LOTS of time talking about "measurable and observable" outcomes - meaning that what ever I am "grading" has to be something I can actually observe and that I have some way of telling "how much" of it I have.  This is where the IEP langauge comes from about "Bob will raise his hand to be called upon instead of blurting out 5 out of 7 times".  The idea here is that I can't "give a test" on it if I didn't teach it in the first place, or give a grade based upon some criteria the student knew nothing about.  Of course, that sounds incredibly reasonable, but the application leaves a sense of falseness and artificiality.  Can't a child demonstrate understanding of math by running a register rather than completing a worksheet?  Can't a child demonstrate understanding of language by making a film with dialogue instead of writing an essay?  Can't a child demonstrate an understanding of history by reenacting instead of answering 90% of a multiple choice test "correctly"?  Doesn't the child demonstrate an understand of the process of life science by taking appropriate care of the guinea pig?  How do we find that place where we can let kids learn how their brains work and then demonstrate that understanding (growth) in such a way that we (the adults around them) agree that we "saw" it?

This gap between "measurable outcomes" and meeting neural diversity is at the heart of the experiential education philosophy.  In the Autism community, Neurodiversity and Nuerotypical are charged words, indicating those people that are not diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum - with the connotation being that NT people are in some fashion closer to the mathematical center in a statistical analysis of the function of human brains.  I do, in some ways, mean this definition, but broader.  In my experience, we are each and every one diverse - not only within our selves (our experiences over time and in particular situations), but also from one to another (we each "handle" stresses differently and show evidence that we experience the world in a distinctive manner).  Really, I mean "nuerodiversity" without the use of a mathematical analysis, only with the recognition that the body of data points is VAST, with little to no overlap.  We are each and every one a separate and unique entity, with some variation of the possible outcomes to be had when nurture is combined with nature.  How do we respect that we all have to know what the people around us are talking about (or communicating about) while respecting that each of us is biologically (and, I would argue, divinely) designed to be a singular manifestation of energy?  How do we all "get on the same page" when we are in different books?  In experiential education, our answer is that the learner (participant) gets to decide what they got out of it.  The participant decides that the outcome is in some way measurable to them selves.  "Grade" themselves?  That is pretty blasphemous in a traditional educational setting.  Of course every kid will give themselves an A!  The grades would be meaningless if they were given by the student, right?

Many of the workshops I took this week looked at how to cross these differences.  3 of them were specifically titled with verbiage about getting schools and camps to work together, but a large part of the industry is about how to teach more effectively, and how to help academics see us as teaching more effectively.  Somehow we must breach this chasm between self-assessment and "objective" assessment, between internal motivation and external motivation, between student driven learning and objective based learning, between "I know I got better" and "you can see that I got better".  Many critics of education (myself included) like to point out how articificial the school environment is - that students will not be working with same-aged peers in the workplace, that they will be assessed by performance not written tests.  But ultimately, adults in the workplace still need to achieve tasks (outside assessment) while growing their skills (self assessment).  We, as a society, and educators, as a profession, need to be opening dialogue on these ideas.  I think the simple answer may be "respect diversity - live an let live".  The answer maybe that we need all of us, in all our great variability, to make the world as a whole "work".

The second lesson I took from shell collecting today was about history.  I returned to the beach in the afternoon (I was trying to be smart and avoid a sunburn, for once).  My afternoon excursion was shaped by the fact that a dense fog rolled over the island, obscuring the beach almost completely.  The lifeguard tower was invisible from the pier.  While I was disappointed by the sun's "disappearance", the limited visibility forced me to look at what was right in front of me.  I got to watch a sandpiper almost run into me, and a gull pull a tasty nugget from the surf (I got to see the shell it was in).  And I looked again at the shells rolling in the surf.  I thought again about the great many little lives that are cummulated in that pile of sand - and then scale overtook me again (funny how that happens at the beach).  As I took photos of the shells, I was struck with what you see when you get close versus when you step back.  The grains of sand on the beach are not little pieces of rock, they are little pieces of shells.  As you look at the sand you see shells in various states of decay.  Each life is lived and ended on the bones of its ancestors...  History is written in each grain, and the present is too.  The sand is shaped by the footprints of the birds, the sandcastles of the children, the depth of the waves.  It is as if the past and present are in the same place at the same time...

If past & present can be simultaneous, can the future be too?

My articulation is exhausted for this night.  Revelation and insight chase each other around my thoughts.  I think I'll solve this one another day...  

Hopefully I will reboot again.  I called this post "rebooting" because none of these ideas are novel to me, they have crossed my mind before, but sometimes you need to turn the computer off to get all the systems to reengage again.  Sometimes you just have to rest and reboot.

the Bigger Autism Picture

I'm gonna cover a LOT of ground here, so stick with me people...

Autism Speaks has lost its credibility with the Autistic Community.  Those adults on the Spectrum who have found their voices are adamant that Autism Speaks does NOT speak for them.  The heart of the argument is around a single ad - a message from the director of Autism Speaks that focuses on how bad it is to live with Autism.  

This outlook, of Autism as "bad", is the core of the "seeking a cure" mission of Autism Speaks - a mission that all Autistic adults active in public discourse find repulsive, insulting and threatening.  (Note that this cannot inherently include those "low-functioning" adults who are not active in public discourse.)  The argument from Autistic adults is that Autism is NOT separable from their identity.

Here are my insights:

EVERYONE, on all and any sides of any discussion about Autism advocate that the MOST IMPORTANT thing an autistic person needs is EARLY INTERVENTION.

Certainly, the medical community identifies Autism as a tragic condition, and it is a fight to get a diagnosis because doctors are so loathe to weight a child with the finality and terminality it carries in the medical field.  By medical criteria, we are dealing with an incurable condition.  Historically that diagnosis has meant institutionalization because the "victim" is a total dependent.  

So once you finally get the diagnosis, there is HUGE amounts of pressure to make up for all the time you've already lost getting that diagnosis so that you can intervene as early as possible.

Now the debate becomes not IF the patient is sick, but WHICH therapies will be effective with the patient.  A long process of trial and error begins.  Everybody chimes in with their expertise.  The Neuro will advocate from their perspective, the OT will advocate from their perspective, the Speech Pathologist will advocate from their perspective, the Psychologist will advocate from their perspective, the Teachers will speak from their experience, the Old Ladies will suggest from their... accumulated wisdom.  If you are very lucky, someone will finally send you the the Developmental Pediatrician who will try to tie all of these perspectives together.  And not all these people will agree with each other.  You will receive LOTS of conflicting information.

And the parent is trapped in a vortex of insanity.

Ultimately, it is the parent who will be the trigger on all this.  All these experts will make their suggestions based on the accumulated observations of the parents.  And the effectiveness of any strategies is entirely contingent upon the parents' willingness and ability to follow thru with the act.  The effectiveness of a therapy will be determined by the parents' observations. Solicited and unsolicited advice will bombard.  Comparisons will be sought in an effort to define through the confusion.  And there will be LOTS of people who provide you all kinds of resources to help you.  The medical establishment knows it has set up this vortex of confusion, so it will tell you to find a parent group.  The educational establishment will try to make you "part of the team" in the IEP process, to greater or lesser success depending on your locality.

Everybody KNOWS you are overwhelmed, so the next thing you'll be pressured to do is "get services", apply for "the waiver".  You'll be connected to an advocate group that will "walk you through" that process.  The idea here is that your kiddo is DISabled, so they ARE entitled to what ever they need to be successful.  Everything from in home therapy, to the hardware of the therapists, to respite caregivers in your home.  Everyone will tell you, you NEED this!!  And they are here to help you get it.  

The very FIRST thing that any advocate group will tell you is to be prepared to fight.  As you start looking at others' stories, trying to come to grips with which of the various outcomes and realities might possibly apply to your situation, you will see LOTS of verbiage about warriors and difficulties and legal rights.  The first thing you find out is that you are gonna be fighting up hill "the rest of your life".  The doctors want to "fix", so you will search and search for the "fix" that works.  The teachers want to "improve", so you keep trying to meet that measurement.

And the very SECOND thing that advocate will tell you: only list the deficits.  You are trying to convince the government that your child is DISabled, UNabled.  Sure, you may have seen growth in your child in the past 3 months, but be sure you tell the social worker about how far behind your kid is on "milestones".  As fellow parents, we celebrate that your kid only ate grass 3 times this week instead of seven, or that the obsession topic is slowly broadening, but you need to make sure that the social worker knows that 95% of the words that come out of your child's mouth are lines from movies - don't mention that they were relevant to the discussion they were used in. 

And then comes the big quiet admission.  Filing for "the waiver" or "disability" really is an admission that your child needs institutionalization, and you are asking to meet that need in the home.  Some advocates will be vehement that they are NOT allowed to ask you that, but most parents will admit that they were asked exactly that, and those that said no were denied...

The other route to those services is through the educational system.  Ideally (and in some places) those 2 systems work together, with the school using the resources of social security to pay for the aides and equipment your child uses in the school and at home.  But they are NOT the same systems.  Docs who who work in the school system are no longer practicing docs, they are references for the school - they can label, but they cannot diagnose.  But the school will tell you they their experts are better - "they know children better" - because they have to be sure their expert is an expert.  

The school is required to keep you informed, to let you be "a part of the team" through the IEP process, but it is a process, by committee, and it means that your voice is inherently outnumbered by the educational experts on the committee, and decision making is slow.  So they will press you to rush to action since committees are inherently slow.  If you are incredibly lucky, your IEP team will work together well, and your wishes will match theirs, and things will be awesome - you won't need that medical stuff anyway (until they are 18 years old).  

But luck does not run high in this pursuit.  The vast majority of parents find that at some point they are bullied into signing the IEP so that the desperate teachers can do *something*, *anything* to help your child, because what is going on is unmanageable, and they can't make changes without a committee meeting.  The experts on the IEP team are threatened by each other (politics playing out in their system), so an informed parent is a threat too.  They cannot afford to lose face in front of each other by letting you "run" the meeting.  Worse you may have been so thorough in your research that you threaten their "expertise", and now they fight to retain a shred of their professionalism.  If you are REALLY unlucky, you'll be dealing with a systemic culture where this need to prove expertise underlies every meeting and the IEP players will come into the process on the defensive - and make you feel like your small limited knowledge of just one case is inconsequential.

SO you do "whatever it takes!"  - because you are the parent, the grown-up, the warrior, the protector.  Those early interventions are the BEST CHANCE you have of giving your child the slimmest possibility that they will be able to function just well enough to avoid that institutionalized "group home" in 18 - 16 years...

Under these circumstances, you can see why it is difficult to "celebrate" the successes, to see the "gifts" of Autism.  It is clear that Autism IS in fact a burden - and it gets carried around everywhere, because there are therapists, and respite caregivers, and caring teachers, and designated aides, and judging neighbors EVERYWHERE.  It is desperately obvious in your child's gait, flapping hands, vocal stimming, sensory sensitive clothes, fidget toys... this kid is ... "special".

So you buy into your own hype.  You tell the social worker the worst.  You celebrate with the therapists, but not too much or their job will be "done".  You cry when the rude people in line at the store make comments.  You research like mad, and then gird yourself for IEP meetings.  You read as many blogs as possible to try to work with the school staff more effectively.  You observe very closely, trying to figure out EXACTLY what environmental sensory experience triggered the overload.  You manage the daily environment and routine to create "functionality" for your child.  That's your JOB. 

You dwell in that place of bleak hope, and wear yourself out meeting all those expectations.

You work so VERY VERY hard to connect with your child, to come into their world, to "figure it out"...

And then you find that community of Autistic adults who are saying that all these therapies are a punishment.  You find a group of parent bloggers who are saying that Autism is a window into the future, a new humanity.  You finally look at the remnants of your couch one day and think, "REALLY?!?!?!?!?!?  THIS is the BEST it can be?!"

And then you look at your kid, pacing the floor thru the 780th consecutive daily showing of the same episode of Thomas, and you see with your heart.  You realize that you have a choice.

Either I can look at where we are and look backwards, or I can look at where we are and look forwards...

And THEN you realize that the secret is... you have to start by looking at where you are...

Once you start listening to your heart instead of your fears, you know that you CAN connect with your kid - you HAVE BEEN connecting with them.  You have had instincts driving you this whole time to do exactly what needed to be done - and you were overridden by the "experts" and your guilt.

The first time you realize that Disney movie lines out of context really DO effectively communicate what he'd like for dinner, or that the arrangement of the shoes actually looks like continents, or that she brought you her favorite security object because you were sick... THEN you start to TRUST those instincts.

And it builds over time.  You allow yourself to watch more closely, to fall into their rhythms... you start to actually meet in the middle, not just wait for your child to come on over...

Then you can actually start to understand the adult Autistics, and the blogging parents who blow sunshine up everybody's butts.  You DO have a choice about whether is a DISability or a DIFFERENTability.  You start to see how a "cure" would deprive your kid of the creativity they found in mashing up Dora with National Geographic.  You start to see the secret genius of obsession with minutia.  You start deciding that there are roses, not just thorns...

And it DOES become a larger spiritual question.  Am I going to seek the Good over the Bad?  Am I going to value the intention over the delivery?  Am I going to listen or demand? 

Will I have faith that everything happens for a reason?  Or will I accept success only on MY terms?

Once you see the awesomeness that had been hiding behind the tragedy, once you focus on the loving child inside all that struggle, change starts to happen.  Maybe your perspective changes, so you can accept different as equal.  Maybe the kid actually develops better because they know they are loved.  Probably both happen.  The sum becomes greater than the parts, and fabulousness happens...

It isn't a "miracle cure".  The world is not "suddenly changed", except that it is...  Everything is not "just put back to rights", except that it is...  The hardships continue, except that they get easier...

And now comes the part where I have to "prove" to you that my kid is autistic "enough" for my insights to be valid... where you who are walking through the depths of these Early Interventions can find that shred of similarity that lets you believe that my experience can be reflective of yours...  where those Autistic adults can measure whether or not my kid "qualifies" to be a part of their community... where I can commiserate with others who have been to the ER for poison mushrooms, or spent un-spare pennies on sensory tools, or have learned what it is to be insulted in "dinosaur"... where we can all admit how tired we are, of ALL of it...

But I am not going to, because THIS day I am making a choice. I am walking through a door.  My child's story is HIS own.  He will tell it in his best fashion.  I am his mother, his teacher, his coach, his friend... I will play my part in his story...

But I have my OWN story - the one I am living.  It includes my kids, my family, and the Work God Has Created Me For...

You will read this and know it is True for you too, or you will read this and know you are not here... and the words will find you again when you get here.

Rest assured, that Autism is a gift, a unique path, a piece of the Master Puzzle - and it WILL all fit together correctly, eventually.

...and you need to get really good at eaves dropping and observing, buddy...

St Patty's Day...

On this day of O'Ness... we have celebrated Irish culture with a discussion about the Holy Trinity symbolized by the Shamrock, whether or not leprechauns will tickle to the death, Guinness Stew & Colcannon...

And some BIG insights of the "Gift of Gab".

We awoke to pinching and tickling as we decided who had green "on" (my kiddo wasn't letting me get away with green nail polish, but he was naked, so he was on the defense...)  Then we settled into Irish traditions like the shamrock (being the Holy Trinity) and the kissing of the Blarney Stone.  After pretending to be a leprechaun for a little bit, we moved on the to Gift of Gab!

We talked about how we (the family) have the Gift in different ways.  For some the Gift of Gab has to do with Woo (from the Strengths Psychology - the idea that everyone is a friend  like a politician or salesman has) while for other the Gift of Gab is about story telling and dramatic narrative, but it can also be just having lots of detail and information to share, saying things n a way that people can understand, "words they can hear" so to speak...

my Aspie wandered off for a second, and then came back and said

"I don't know why the children at school said 'alert' every time I sat down to eat"


Ah - this has been haunting him a lot these few months, trying to come to grips with the bullying just before we started homeschooling, but he has not been so clear in his expression  declaration of the events or his concerns, and he was not agitated, but thoughtful.    Just yesterday we had discussed the Native American story in which the the elder tells the young brave that there are 2 wolves in each of us, Love and Fear; the one you feed is the one that "wins".  He had tried to show me he was "feeding" his Fear Wolf by looking for things to break. Time to think carefully, Mom.

"Well, I think that some of them thought that it really was a joke.  A____ clearly did it as a joke, but X____ clearly did it to be mean.  You knew that.  That's why you hit X____."

"But I was the one who was mean! I hit X____!  I was supposed to tell a trusted friend!"  NOW he's agitated! the high pitched screech, the shaking...

"Yes, that was mean, but X____ was mean first, so we know you had a reason to be mad. 
And you could have used your gift of gab. You could have looked at X____ and said 'Don't say that to me!'  You could have said to X____ 'Please stop, it is NOT funny.'"

A HUGE, deep genuine smile beamed across his face, his eyes continued to look far away, his body got still, and he slowly, quietly said, "yeah...."

Then he moved in for a cuddle.

I think this indicates that he forgave himself, and I am sooooo thankful!

Then he said, "I could use my Gift of Gab to come up behind them ,and then"

I interrupted him, "God loves you just as much as he loves those other kids.  The Gift of Gab can also be called self advocacy.  You have the ability to tell them that they should be nice to you, to please stop, and to go tell an adult. The more you talk, use your gift of gab, the more you be a friend, the more they can see your Love Wolf, the less they can hurt you"

He just kept beaming that smile, and his body was stayed STILL, and he muttered "yeah"...

I watched that smile, and for the first time in 2 years, I started thinking, "he'll be OK to go back to school.  He will be able to tell them to treat him with respect and not feel forced to act out"

If only we kind find adults he can trust. He did NOT say that he should have told a "trusted adult"....  

We have told him before that part of the reason we homeschooled is because we don't feel like the adults at the school were doing their best job to protect any of the children from bullying, but he has carried guilt about how he was bad, and how he had hurt others...  

And he is right to feel bad, but only within the context of forgiveness.  

And it is the Gift of Gab, that thing that pushes us and allows us to communicate with others, that will help us build forgiveness...  we have been discussing all this in different terms for over a year, and only now seem to have hit on the vocabulary that enables forgiveness...

I will readily admit that a lack of verbal skills/ ability would be a significant "handicap" in using your Gift of Gab - but I have studied abroad (just can't meet the vocabulary), and struggled with strange cultures (learning about new families, moving across the country), and communication is NOT always about words.  (usually it's about food when words can't be found - wink wink)

Genuine, True Friendliness is clear across whatever barriers.  If that Woo is there, that drive to connect, that faith that there are no strangers, only friends not yet made - then connection will occur!  But you have to be OPEN to it - because the format can be surprising.  I think this is the essence of the "intuition", the "collective consciousness" that psychics are talking about... the unconditional love, the magic moments, new awareness that Autism brings...

Maybe the Gift of Gab isn't about words... maybe it's about self advocacy.  Maybe it's about acknowledging the magic/ divine in you as much as you do in others... maybe it is about finally being brave enough to love yourself as you love others, not just love your neighbors as yourselves... expecting miscommunication and misunderstanding is part of the process, but it seems like that faith in humanity is part of it too.  

I have worked from the time my children were infants to help them believe the world is their Friend, to automatically assume the best of people. Apparently It is working?

Adequate?!?

So, like many parents of ASD kids, I have reached out to the internet parent support communities who seem to understand what we are better than the people we live with and near.  One such site engendered a discussion about IEP's and how to help the educators see the value of particular supports and get schools to provide them.  Specifically, since I have one diagnosed Aspie, the discussion was about social supports for Asperger's students.  It seems pretty clear on most of the support sites that many parents are having trouble helping the educational community take the leap from state mandated socialization to applying specific supports for specific students.

Obviously that statement makes my stance on the socialization of schools pretty clear, but some background would be useful context for you.  I was born in California, the southern, sunny part, but my parents are both from Tennessee, the eastern, Appalachia part.  My father spent 30+ years as a public servant for the people of Los Angeles, and my mother spent 20+ teaching in Orange County.  They came to CA after the Vietnam war, because CA is a place of opportunity (has been since 1859!). Like most, their intention was NOT to stay, but life intervened, so I was born in CA.  I lived there during the school year, and spent summers in TN with grandparents, extended family, and my roots, my past.  As I aged I found myself an interesting hybrid of Southern CA individualism and Southern "breeding".  My experiences of being with my family in Appalachia directly belied what I saw in California. 

As high school passed, especially as honors and Advanced Placement (AP) English classes became literature classes, it was clear that the material we were being given was designed for one purpose.  The curriculum we were forced to regurgitate in class was about "honoring" ethnic "diversity" - and belittling American history.  Now it is possible that I had a set of teachers who were small minded, but as an adult who's been in the classroom, I am willing to bet they were teaching what they were required to.  It became crystal clear to me when we studied Mark Twain's works.  Having been in redneck trailer parks and generations old family cemeteries and knowing 2 grandfathers who worked on the atomic bomb (one a chemist, the other in a foundry), I recognized the patterns of speech & behavior Twain described, both as an accurate description of a dying culture, of the legacy of the War Between the States, and as a mirror in which to evaluate the base values that drive American culture.  That is NOT what was taught in class though.  The teacher impugned the integrity of Twain by forcing us to recognize the works as disgusting testaments to Southern depravity.  Granted, I was young, but I felt very wronged.  Further, there was a movement in history classes to villanize the atomic bomb that ended WWII (the movement that started the counter resurgence that named the WWII generation "the Greatest Generation"), and I had family members who spoke to a different reality.

As my education continued, I learned more about educational psychology and history, gained experience teaching in public, private and parochial schools, in inner cities (Washington DC) and rural moneyed areas (Boyce, VA).  The shadow of "political correctness" is vast, and permeates every word that is taught in every classroom, for the purpose of shaping the minds of our youth so that we can apply our newest program to "create a better future through our children" - in other words we keep experimenting on them in an effort to make them "avoid our pitfalls" or "erase our prejudices".  The very basis for modern American education is about instilling (forcing) "middle-class" mores & values on immigrant children (the Jane Addams Hull House of Chicago creating the precedent), an effort to organize and quell the threat of unsupervised children roaming the streets (labor laws took them out of the mills & factories, but all adults in a household had to work long days to earn a living... hmm, sound familiar?  And whether the "threat" was perceived or real?... Well, I wouldn't want roving bands of teenage boys in the streets today either - they are most often "profiled" by police as "trouble-makers" for a reason - so gather them up, make them learn - after all it will improve the economy because they will all be able to read, follow directions, and everyone will know the base/ core values & history of America - create a common culture when the country was overwhelmed by ethnic diversity - hmm...)  My conclusion: American Education is about socialization, as in: socialist socialization that subverts diversity in the effort to "create" unity.

So in comes my Asperger's kid.  Well, the diagnosis itself is based on him being socially inept, since to be Asperger's you have to have at least "normal" IQ and communication abilities, not to mention the "comorbid" peculiarities manifesting as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).  WOW... that's a kid who will not be easily fitting into the socialist efforts of standard educational practices!  And we have misled kids for tooooooo long.   We have let kids think that high school will be the "best years of their lives" and that "being cool" is acceptable, instead of being responsible.  We have created a culture that separates us from our children, and teaches them that they have to accept the dictatorship of the teacher (I am not accusing here, I have done the same myself) and then create an unsupervised culture amongst themselves (at recess, at lunch). And you betchya! - my Aspie received horrendous bullying, in 1st grade, ostracized at the cafeteria table every meal for at least 3 months (2x/ day), until finally hitting back, in an effort to stop the harassment.  I have been "warrior parenting" for 3 years, since my child was 3 years old and the neurologist told us that there would be problems on the playground, that social isolation that would change the diagnosis from PDD-NOS to Asperger's.  I researched, I read, I talked around, I offered tips for activities, I asked for specific accommodations, I called or emailed or showed up at school every other week. We got a prescription/ recommendation for socialization supports from a university pediatrician.  IEP meetings always ended with social support "not being necessary".

SO here's where the question of ADEQUACY comes in.  In order to cover their butts, the educational laws are written so that ANY medical information is only to be "considered", not in ANY way binding to the school.  The schools have created laws that clearly state that what is "educationally" necessary is NOT what is "medically" necessary.  Because the public system cannot possibly meet all the variations it will meet in a public, inclusive population, they have to be sure the laws are written so that they do NOT HAVE TO meet anyone's specific needs, they just have to TRY.  So if they can document that the most measly effort was conducted, then their butts are covered, they have followed the letter of the law, they did something, even if it wasn't the best thing for that kid; 'cuz they are not there to help each kid, they are there to subjugate the masses.  So every parent strives to create a best, improved future for their child, as God intended us to, but the system we have created to support us only has to be "adequate". 

The specific advice I read on a support site regarding socialization supports urged parents to be sure to only ask for "adequate" supports in order to get the school system to cooperate with you.

Yet, our school argued with us in IEP and eligibility meetings that they did not NEED to provide social supports because his "ACADEMICS" were not affected.  So being in in-school-suspension one day a month is not affecting his academics?!  So even though "social deficits" are diagnostic criteria for "high functioning autism"/ Asperger's, they are irrelevant to discussion in how to help him succeed?! There is no recourse for us, except to continue negotiating with the people who have failed him for 3 years already?  Just because my child has a label that makes it easier for them to even try to help the problem does not mean that he is the ONLY student with a problem.  When the sped kids are set up to fail, ALL the kids are set up to fail... sped kids are just the "easy" targets for bullies - every kid in that school sees clearly EVERY DAY that personal value and difference is punished, that the best they can hope for is to be "just enough" - mediocre.

ADEQUATE?!  That is a ludicrous word.  OF COURSE PARENTS ARE NOT GOING TO SETTLE FOR ADEQUATE!  Is there any other business in the world that keeps itself going by striving to be ADEQUATE?... The educational system as a whole continues to settle for adequacy and mediocrity in every child they serve, not just sped kids, and then businesses are having to reinvest in training on basic courtesy (customer service skills) and communication (inventory, money handling, etc.).  Just look into the training for ANY retail job. When you go to work, does your boss expect you to just be adequate? Or is the reality that in today's collapsing economy that excellence secures your position? That you are trying to make yourself indispensible to the company?

When we stop short changing ALL the kids? 
When we start expecting EXCELLENCE, Personal excellence?

"Adequate" is NOT enough, for me personally or for society, or for my kids.  How much pride can one possibly take in one's self if the pinnacle of achievement is mediocrity?