Communication Challenges with Challenged Communicators

Autism is primarily a disorder of communication.  Children with autism struggle with the spectrum of communication that includes actual expressive language to the subtleties of non verbal language.  They may not understand mom or dad's angry look, or the frustration of siblings or peers. Which is why we spend lots and lots of time working with them on how to communicate.

Yet despite this obvious trait of kids on the spectrum, so many of us - parents as well as professionals - spend agonizing amounts of time trying to teach them certain life lessons with - language - their weakest suit!  You can certainly ask: "If they need to learn language, that's how we have to communicate - what else are we supposed to do?"  And there is something to that question.  But I also think that we miss something when we spend lots and lots of time "talking" with them.  In my experience, many kids with communication issues just tune out, despite their best efforts to actively communicate.  It's a weak suit and when we spend too much time playing to that WE get frustrated that they don't keep up, even though it's likely that they can't keep up.

So we have a dilemma.  Do we stop verbal communication with them?  Certainly not.  What am I advising, then?  What I think we need to do as professionals is be cautious of parents who come to us wanting "talk therapy" with their kids who are on the spectrum or who have other communication obstacles such as those posed by some cognitive delays.  How much can the child benefit from talk therapy?  We need to be cautious of feeding in to parent hopes that this time, this therapist will finally be able to "get through" to him/her when that is sometimes an unrealistic goal.  

What do I recommend to parents?  Remember that your child's disability is first and foremost communication based.  Mixing your communication with him/her with your anger, yelling or shaming is only going to confuse your child.  (I think there's a place for anger and shame in parent - child relationships, but that's another discussion for another time.  Yelling - not so much.)  Avoid sounding like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons - a "wa wa" sound that is never intelligible.  If you've asked your child to do something, repeating it numerous times will only teach him/her that the first time doesn't matter (true for kids with special needs or not, btw.)  Enforcing compliance does not happen by endless chattering.

Sometimes less (communication/repetition/harping) is more.

What's The Weather Like?

Have you ever noticed how often we discuss the weather?  It's always on the news - sometimes it's so important it leads the news.  We discuss it with our families, friends and co-workers.  The weather report is the butt of jokes - when people have nothing else to discuss, they discuss the weather. 

Why?

I believe the reason we spend so much time discussing the weather is that we like to anticipate, we like to know and plan what's coming next.  Will I need a sweater, a coat, an umbrella?  Short or long sleeves?  We understand how important being uncomfortable is and want to avoid that.

This is similar to the need to help our kids, with or without disabilities, transition.  A lot of ink is spilled about helping kids transition from one activity to the next.  One major difference between the kids need to be prepared to transition and our desire to know the weather is that we understand how being unprepared for the weather can be a problem.  Our kids don't understand, and don't want to understand the impact of transitioning on their emotions or behavior.  They just want to have fun.  They just want to fully express their energies on whatever activity they're doing at the moment, particularly when it's a "preferred" activity. 

So when parents don't prep their kids and just expect them to turn off their electronics of choice - even if it means "pausing" the current game, or put down their book, or for their friend to go home etc. they're asking for trouble.  Kids need lots and lots of prep for transitions, even if they don't say they do, or if they don't act like they do. 

If you're unsure how important this is to your kids, try to go a few days without listening to the weather report. 

One Year Later

It's been a year since I've begun this blog - something I was told I absolutely HAD to do and which I resisted strongly.  As I don't read many blogs myself, I wondered who would?  Well, exceeding my expectations, there have been almost 1100 readers this first year.  So, I ask you, what would you like to hear about? 

Feel free to let me know at Moshe.Manheim@gmail.com.

My best to you for the coming year's reading and growth!

Moshe

Team Building and Fun

A friend of mine had an interesting reflection on his team building experience.  He was in a graduate program of about 30 people.  The group had not really jelled until one night the whole group went to a bar and did what graduate students do at bars (you can fill in the rest.)  He noted that after that experience the entire group had a much closer bond.  Gone was the distance between people.  Everyone was close.  They had a shared experience together, a fun shared experience that permanently changed the group dynamic.

So what does this have to do with autism, families or growth?  People with autism, particularly higher functioning folk, often struggle with how to establish friendships. Professional services are full of "social skills groups" and 'team building" to help these folks learn these skills.  And it is important to note that many of this HFA population very much wants to have these connections with others. 

So what about my friend's experience is so difficult for the autistic population?  I think it has to do with the sense of relationship and sharing that happens as friendships develop.  Simply put, it's how to have fun together.  Remember that one of the significant "delays" of the Pervasive Developmental Delay is that skill that has to do with social relationships - how to make friends, the give and take of creating emotional bonds - how to have fun.  So consider the essence of these activities - being social, emotions, emotional "reciprocity," including spontaneous "reciprocity of speech" or the ping pong NT's (neuro typicals) have in the course of conversation.  These are all the things that folks on the spectrum struggle with.  So it makes perfect sense, then, why a night of blowing off steam for my friend in graduate school created the emotional bonds that folks with autism struggle.

Fun.  Consider for a minute what fun is to you.  Most NT's enjoy sharing their fun - at least some of the time.  Most folks on the spectrum have fun alone, whether it's with a video game, or reading, or surfing the web.  The video game may be a fun activity that can be shared, but so often that is done remotely, so the sharing is literally on the screen with one's partner being anywhere else on the planet. 

How to help folks on the spectrum with these issues?  Practice, practice, practice.  Support, support, support.  Guidance and patience, followed up with - you guessed it - guidance and patience.  Providing opportunities for practice, the support, guidance and having the patience needed to do so is often a struggle for caregivers, a discussion for a different time - and I'll be happy to address those should you want.  But in the meantime, it is interesting to reflect on my friend's experience of the connection between fun and building friendships. 

The Missing "I" in ADHD.

ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children effecting approximately 5% of all children.  The rates among children with autism are cited to be over 50% (Leyfer et al, 2006) and in my experience, children with other developmental disabilities have a much higher rate of ADHD as well. 

The symptoms of ADHD are well known:

• High rates of distractability, inattentiveness and inability to focus or concentrate
• Hyperactivity that can include motor (fidgetiness) and hyperverbosity (chatterbox)
• Impulsivity, both verbal and physical (aggression)

The last symptom, impulsivity, doesn't get credit in the ADHD title, however.  Shouldn't it be ADHID?  My advocacy for the missing "I" is due to the frequent incidence that I've found in how challenging (frustrating, maddening, crazy making, choose your descriptor) impulsivity is. 

Kids blurting out how much they "hate" their parents, siblings, family members and teachers.  Death threats, rarely meant, but in our current world in need of stern attention, inadvertently reinforcing the behavior to boot.  Physical aggression against family, peers etc.  These are the behaviors that try parents' patience to the hilt - and so many parents end up over-responding and thus adding to the inadvertent reinforcement of what is, essentially, just a symptom of ADHD.  One test, by the way (not infallible) of whether the impulsivity is really based in ADHD is whether the child has remorse afterwards when calm.  We like remorse for bad behavior. 

So, for those of you with kids with ADHD, remember, those really challenging behaviors that make you want to tear your hair out - could they be the result of the missing "I?"  It's worth keeping in mind. 

Emotional Muscle Memory

Athletes hone their expertise through repetitive practice to reinforce what we call muscle memory.  Over and over they will throw, run, jump, catch, swim and with good coaching learn the subtleties of how to excel in their sport.  This is true for kids as well as professionals.  When my now adult son was involved in Kung Fu beginning in early elementary school, he was quite motivated and practiced his moves repeatedly until he was fluid with the movements and techniques and earned great praise from his sensei.  The focus children - and even adults - learn in working on their physical muscle memory serves them well.  (I keep on threatening to again take golf lessons to fulfill my dream of a 200 + yard drive from the tee.)

So why do we not have the same level of focus, concentration and repetition in the area of emotions, relationships and families? 

So many of us have histories filled with trauma and great emotional pain, losses that mightily weigh on our ability to cope.  These wounds result in emotional callousing and maladaptive behaviors that can so easily sabotage our own mental stability, our marriages and our relationships with our children and families.  So why not consider the reparative work in the same way we consider athletic conditioning that results in muscle memory?  We need and deserve to have coaching - whether from a professional, friend or loved one - that help us consider alternatives to the emotional patterns that we have adopted as a result of our histories. 

An example of the need for emotional "muscle" memory has to do with a number of couple's I've been seeing lately where the wives are in great pain about the emotional distance they experience from their husbands.  These men, quite successful, have come from families where there was lots of "dysfunction" such as addicted parents, distant and self absorbed parents who were uninvolved in their childrens' lives etc.  Part of what these guys are struggling with is how to create emotional closeness with their wives and kids, something they had virtually no training to do in their own families of origin.  We meet, we discuss how to get involved, things their wives can do to support their emotional involvement with the family etc. and then comes the hard part.  Practice.  It can be tedious, frustrating and the results can be slow to be seen - too slow for some.  What I'm encouraging these folks to remember is that it took years and years of "bad" emotional habits to result in their current patterns of emotional distancing.  So too it will take lots and lots of practice, gains and losses to create the emotional "muscle" memory of a new way of engaging in their relationship with their families. 

My encouragement  is to consider life a series of "training" opportunities.  Find a mentor, a coach, therapist, friend or trusted ally to help you polish and improve your emotional "style" of interacting.  Consider different strategies.  Try them, not just once or twice, but until you have some familiarity with them and then integrate whatever works into your emotional repertoire.  Work hard - as hard as you might work if you took tennis lessons, or as hard as you would support your kid to work if he or she took tennis lessons.  Create new emotional "muscle" memory to improve your game. 

What We Really Mean

I've been working with a lovely couple on long lingering marital issues and happened upon a scenario that I've been seeing a lot of lately.  One spouse  (in this case the husband) makes what appears to be a controlling request, one that seems a bit micro-manage-ish that results in the partner (in this case the wife) building up lots of resentments due to the very great efforts made by her behalf of the couple and family.  Being ignored, he resents her back and thus the cycle builds upon itself becoming ever more sticky.

It took a while, but ultimately we came to understand what the husband was really asking.  His complaints were not as much about his semi-superficial request as much as it was a request for her to acknowledge and validate his own efforts, struggles and successes made on behalf of the family.  Not really an unreasonable request.

How often is it that in the communication between couples we don't or can't take the time to understand what we're really asking, what we really mean when we make requests?  And how often do we seek to understand the deeper meaning of our partner when they make a request that we find to be unnecessary or even silly?

It can be a difficult communication exercise, whether with ourselves or with our partner, but one that is well worth it and that can bypass lots of resentments.  Remember, resentments can have a cancer like affect on relationships - just ask any recovering alcoholic or addict about how destructive resentments can be - they're the experts on this because failure for an addict or alcoholic in recovery so often leads to relapse.  That's how pernicious resentments are.  If a bit of time - even a lot of time can avoid such a destructive influence, isn't it worth it?