Introduction to SEND - Week 4
How to communicate with someone with ASD
—Work on skills that are one step away from where the child is at that time.
—Eye contact is an important diagnostic criteria for a diagnosis. Though it is an important part of British culture (to look at someone in the eye’s), for other cultures, eye contact is considered to be rude, in particular between a child and an adult. It is always important to take cultural perspectives into consideration for diagnosis and support.
First-then Boards
These are an important support tool to help those with ASD learn new skills and routines. It provides them with a clear, visual map of expectation of what is about to happen, as well as teaching cause and effect.
These help to reduce the overwhelm over a new situation, routine or object. It is key to start the board with a successful task, something that the child likes to do, to introduce the ‘First-then Board’ to increase the positive interaction with the reward scheme. Then, after a few successful attempts, introduce the difficult or avoidant tasks.
The aim of these boards is to hep increase the independence of the child.
The aim of any support for a child with ASD is to make the most of the child’s attempts to communicate, which will be individual to each child. Tips for communication
—Use short sentences
—Use less mature language
—Exaggerate tone of voice (be animated!)
—Encourage and prompt the child to fill in the gaps in conversation
—Ask questions to encourage a reply
—Give enough response time (do not work on your timeframe).
For those children who are non-verbal, use sign language, eye contact and body language to communicate.
A strategy to encourage eye contact
—Hold an object that the child wants in front of your eyes so they will look at both.
—Hold onto the object for a few seconds and make eye contact with the child before handing it over.
The aim for support of ASD children should always be to give them the social skills so they can function and thrive in life and society with confidence, not to make them ‘less autistic’.
I’ve been really bogged down this week around politics, legislation and commerciality of accessibility; specifically, around tools, funding and education so that all the things that we’ve been learning over the last month or so might be put in place to really help children and adults that need it.
Not least, the Warwickshire County Meeting I mentioned in the Discussion, but also I managed to get the issue of the lack of large print books in educational settings onto the agenda for next month at one of the parliamentary committee meetings (unsure which one yet). And I also attended a talk on ‘Books without Barriers: editing for equal access’, which was so informative. It was run by the IPED editorial association in New South Wales, Australia (an early morning for me!) but it’s great to see how they are implementing accessibility strategies in another country, and the rise in the importance of adapting how we communicate with the widest possible group of people.
They also touched on strategies around getting governments, corporations, and publishers to spend budget, money and resources on making these changes – aside from education, money is the biggest barrier to these things. I’ve been considering how books and other written content is another way we might be to use to communicate with those with various needs.
Things that have resonated with me particularly from our lesson last week, aside from learning the strategies we discussed:
A quote from you, “people bring their culture with them”. I've been mulling this over all week, and I’ve seen examples of this everywhere. Be it regional/geographic culture into everyday life or the culture and ideologies from your upbringing or the ‘era’ you come from – I've seen the positive and negative connotations this week. I was fascinated by the idea what some cultures don’t use eye contact as I have been brought up to do so, and so how this would complicate a diagnosis of autism and so to bring the cultural perspectives into how you approach, communicate and diagnose seems crucial.
Generally, it seems that there is so much that could be solved if people educated themselves just a little and approached all others with empathy. I think I’ve come to this conclusion every week!
I have been trying to make sure I leave more process time in dealing with my son (both of them in fact), bringing things back to their timeframe and not mine, and I hope this will nurture benefits in the long term.
[Discussion notes]
Given that we opened our class last week with a discussion 'Autism Stereotypes', I couldn't not mention here something that's happened this week in the world of politics and policy development for SEND children in this country.
It is not surprising to learn that these stereotypes, ignorance and frankly, disgusting "opinions" are prevalent in society, and it's not alarming even that even those in charge of making the policies and allocating the funding for services to allow SEND to have access to the resources they need, as well as the education for others, aren't themselves educated beyond stuff they've read in the inflammatory and prejudiced parts of social media. I often find it alarming when people are educated, understanding and open-minded.
The video (which I can send if people want to see it, but please be advised, I give this a huge trigger warning for ableism and disgusting opinions - my blood is still boiling about this video almost 2 days later) was from a Young Persons and Children Scrutiny Meeting, at Warwickshire County Council on the 25th January 2024. In this video, they are discussing funding for SEND in their county and direct quotes from this meeting include: "Let's go back to the ways of those days" [institutionalising SEND children] and '’I am not automatically accepting the plea of the mother saying that Little Willy has ADHD when the little Willy is just rather badly behaved and just needs some form of strict correction."
Given everything we learnt last week, about putting medical, scientific and researched strategies in place to help the vulnerable in society, we come across those in power who are not only ignorant to all these things, but want to put in place strategies in place that will harm these children for the benefit of budget and the 'convenience' for people like them in not having to see or interact with children or people who are different than they are.
I'll stop here before I start analysing the dangerous 'othering' language they used, amongst a multitude of other issues I have with these councillors.
Not only are the SEND children in this country fighting against themselves, their brains and how they perceive our world as they grow up and get to know themselves, but also against the prejudice and misinformation being spread by those in positions to protect them.
