If you had a problem with your car and you took it to the most expert mechanic on your cars problems and all the mechanic did was point out how the problems your car had were similar to the problems in some other cars and that they had been called autoism. I think you would be a little dissapointed.
And then if the all the expert mechanic offered was to tell you some ways you could drive that might make the problem more manageable and also what was likely to happen to your car in the future you would be even more dissapointed.
After all the car is a set of moving parts with a computer brain and which needs fuel to run. It is also highly dependent on the person driving it. Obviously cars are not as complicated as humans and don’t have some sort of self awareness but the simple similarities can be useful when searching for solutions to human problems.
With the car we expect the mechanic to open the bonnet, make some changes and get the car working better.
Now what would happen if there was away to metaphorically open the bonnet of a human and make changes to the brain. OK, a bit far fetched but what if you were like the driver of the car and by understanding what is going on under the bonnet adapt your driving, put new inputs in, to have the car work better?
A young man taking a girl out for the first time does not treat the activity the same as if he was going to work laying bricks on a building site. His appearance, language and behaviour will all be tailored to getting a good response from the girl. As the evening progresses he will adjust his behaviour both consciously and unconsciously to achieve the best result; and she will follow suit. A huge amoiunt will be going on from the words used to their intonation, tone and speed of delivery. Body movements will change adjusting to what is getting good feedback. This is what the human race has learnt to do as society got more sophisticated.
The communication from the young man is highly sophisticated and those who are good at it get great results but they are all techniques that can be documented. What does this mean for the autistic community?
What if you were able to notice in small ways how an individual in front of you was using their brain and then by consciously using your language and behaviour be able to communicate with that individual and see a response from them that is more positive than usual?
If you had a model of how to do this you would also have a better idea of how your child’s brain thinks and adjust daily things around them to get them the best life possible.
Luckily there is a model for how this works found by studying three world class therapists; they consistently achieved exceptional results. Each was very different. Two you couldn’t put in the same room together because they would start fighting but they both agreed that the third’s hypnotherapy was bunkum!
Fifty years ago three young men at university in the USA documented what they did and found that although they all seemed to operate very differently the underlining physical and language patterns they used were the same and at the core of their results. The greatest thing that came out of this was the realisation that this was not just what therapists did; it was what everybody did, the ptherapists just did it exceptionally well.
This ‘science’ can be learnt by anybody. A simple example is the story of the mum, working at a very low pay level for Newcastle Social Services. She attended a three day course on ‘rapport with the frail and elderly’.
Asked what she wanted from the course she jokingly said to lose two stone and go on holiday but she also had a teenage daughter who was doing a Perry and Kevin act.
On the third day of the course she reported that she had used what she had learnt after the first day while having tea with her daughter; no mention of behaviour change or can you clean your room etc was made. When mum returned home at the end of the second day the house was spotless and the tea was made.
That course was twenty years ago but this extraordinary science got highjacked. The core of it has been forgotten because the science did create some processes that anybody can use. They get great results with specific issues, such as planning, confidence and personal issues. Marketing took over and now you can find businesses selling courses on it or using it in business across the globe. It is as if the science of nutrition was described in detail but the long term result was Macdonald franchises.
What is needed now for the parents of autistic children is to have an understanding of the science and an introduction to it. Like the mum with the teenage daughter results can be seen very quickly and obviously. This is not about theory it is all very practical. Following that… practice, practice, practice with good tuition.
The only warning is that learning this stuff is a lot of fun and very exciting, it changes for the better people’s outlook on life.