Category Archives: Autistic “Behavior”

Autistic Visual Thinking Impacts Comprehension

March 10, 2016Autistic "Behavior", Communication, Growing Up Autistic, Sensory Solutions, Social Considerationsautism, autistic experience, Diversity, first person account, neurology, sensory, social, transition, visual routinesadmin

I think in colors. My thinking colors have sound and movement. When I hear spoken words my neurology automatically goes for the match – a match for the words I hear to a familiar concrete picture of something in the world outside my skin or to an internal picture I have stored in my memory..

When I was a girl I heard the saying, “I got the world by the tail.” Immediately, the matching pictures of my experience of the world popped up for me to see. I found the best match and promptly assigned the words, “I got the world by the tail” to mean the interaction of the sunlight and misty water particles I could see rising up from the earth’s surface whenever I was outside.

The phenomenon of mist rising from the earth became the visual match for the new words I imagined to be about the world’s tail. For most of my life I thought this literally was this early morning mist was indeed the earth’s tail. I thought that people were somehow able to physically grab onto this tail and when they did so they indeed had the world by the tail! To my literalness this made perfect logical sense.

I had always noticed the sun sparkles and the interaction of the sun sparkles with the earth mist. In fact, as a small child, they were often more salient to me than the people in my world. Most times I preferred them to people. I had often tried to touch these sparkles, but now I had a new mission. I wanted to actually catch this tail so I too might have the world by its tail! As a decades older person, a few years ago I used acrylic paints to paint some of these misty tails. Here is one example with many more at my website www.judyendow.com

Painting is Earth Tail Mist
available in packs of 5 greeting cards
and 3 print sizes
under the Art Store tab at
www.judyendow.com

Points to Ponder:

a. Rote Repetition is NOT Evidence of Comprehension!

People with autism are often visual thinkers. It is not something we decide, but rather the way our brain handles information. We do not know when we are little that most other people think with words rather than with colors and pictures. This makes it difficult in school as delivery of information quickly becomes language-based as pictures drop away after the first few years.

This dramatic change in materials in the United States occurs at the third grade level when text based instruction becomes predominant. For me it was hard to think about or understand ideas that were not concrete ideas. Basically, if my brain could not translate the words I heard into a concrete picture in a few seconds, as a young child I would not be able to pick up the meaning of the words being spoken. Even though I did not understand the meaning I was able to repeat the words. For example, when prompted I could repeat the teacher’s instruction to use quiet voices even though I had no idea what the words meant because no picture popped up in my head to equal those words.

Is your youngster a visual thinker?

Do you use concrete language along with pictures as needed?

b. Non-compliance or Comprehension Constraint?

When autistics are able to recite your instructions or repeat an admonition and then do not follow the instruction or admonition do not assume willful non-compliance. Instead, check for comprehension. If the autistic is a visual thinker ask him to draw or show you what the instructions or rule looks like. If a visual thinker cannot do this, he likely does not comprehend the words you are speaking even though he may be able to repeat them quite accurately. Children with ASD have been shown to perform basically normal for age in word decoding, but lower than age expectation in reading comprehension. (Minshew et al, 1994, Myles et al, 2002, Nation et al, 2006, Newman et al, 2007, Asberg et al, 2008, Asberg et al, 2010)

When your student’s behavior has the appearance of willful noncompliance do you stop to ascertain comprehension before ascribing meaning to the behavior?

How will you evaluate your student’s comprehension or lack of comprehension when his behavior looks like non-compliance?

c. Teach Idioms and Other Hidden Curriculum

People with autism don’t automatically pick up the meaning of idioms. However, they are able to learn the meanings of idioms by direct teaching. “I’ve got the world by the tail” is an example of an idiom. Sometimes an autistic will automatically assign a literal meaning to an idiom and then assume everybody else shares that literal meaning because it makes sense to him! That is what I did in the above example using the idiom “I’ve got the world by the tail.”

How will you teach the meanings of idioms and other kinds of assumed social understanding, i.e. hidden curriculum?

Do you check for shared meaning when it comes to idiom usage and understanding?

BOOKS BY JUDY ENDOW

Endow, J. (2019).  Autistically Thriving: Reading Comprehension, Conversational Engagement, and Living a Self-Determined Life Based on Autistic Neurology. Lancaster, PA: Judy Endow.

Endow, J. (2012). Learning the Hidden Curriculum: The Odyssey of One Autistic Adult. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2006).  Making Lemonade: Hints for Autism’s Helpers. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2013).  Painted Words: Aspects of Autism Translated. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2009).  Paper Words: Discovering and Living With My Autism. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2009).  Outsmarting Explosive Behavior: A Visual System of Support and Intervention for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2010).  Practical Solutions for Stabilizing Students With Classic Autism to Be Ready to Learn: Getting to Go. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Myles, B. S., Endow, J., & Mayfield, M. (2013).  The Hidden Curriculum of Getting and Keeping a Job: Navigating the Social Landscape of Employment. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

OTHER REFERENCES

Asberg, J., Dahlgren, S. O. and Dahlgren Sandberg, A.( 2008). Basic reading skills in high functioning Swedish children with autism spectrum disorders or attention disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 2, 95-109.

Asberg, J., Kopp, S., Ber-Kelly, K., & Gilberg, C. ( 2010) Reading cop Reading comprehension, word decoding and spelling in girls with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/ HD): performance and predictors. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 45, 61-71.

Minshew, N. J., Goldstein, G., Taylor, H. G. and Siegel, D. J. (1994) Academic achievement in high functioning autistic individuals. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 16, 261–270.

Myles, B. S., Hilgenfeld, T. D., Barnhill, G. P., Griswold, D. E., Hagiwara, T., & Simpson, R. L. (2002). Analysis of reading skills in individuals with Asperger Syndrome. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17(1), 44-47.

Nation, K., Clarke, P., Wright, B. J. and Williams, C. (2006) Patterns of reading ability in children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 911 – 919.

Newman, T. M., Macomber, D., Naples, A. J., Babitz, T., Volkmar, F. and Grigorenko, E. L. (2007) Hyperlexia in children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 760-774.

Originally written for and published by Ollibean on March 7, 2016.
To leave a comment at the end of this blog on the Ollibean site click here.

Fear, Anxiety and Autistic “Behavior”

December 10, 2015Activism/Advocacy, Autistic "Behavior"autism, autistic experience, first person account, movement, neurology, sensoryadmin

Throughout the history of autism many have put their efforts into changing the behavior of autistic people. It is my opinion, and that of many of my autistic cohorts, that not enough effort has been made to understand and work with the autistic who is employing the behavior you wish to extinguish.

Many autistics live with a high degree of fear and/or anxiety. We have sensory systems that often do not serve us well, delivering information too big, too small or distorted. The way our neurology processes sensory information is often delayed and/or filled with reverberation. Many of us have a thinking style that is literal, concrete and visual. To complicate everyday life, none of these things are stable. We cannot predict from day to day our experience of the sensory impacts from the world around us along with our ability to take in and process information from the people in that world.

This is the platform that supports communication. For neuro majority folks it works rather fluidly. In fact, I am told they don’t even consciously think of these things! For autistics it is quite different. Because we do not have a way to predict if, when or how our bodies will serve us (or not!) it is quite common for autistic people to have some level of ongoing fear and/or anxiety.

Try On a Tiny Bit of Autism: Imagine your TV to be on all day and both the channel and the volume were entirely random and not in your control. The volume might be nothing or so loud as to be painful. You do not know when it will change. The TV is with you wherever you go. When you are working you are expected to relegate it to unimportant background noise even if it is so loud as to be painful. You never know if you will be interested in the TV show playing and if you are interested, chances are, the TV channel will change before the show is finished. When you are not actually supposed to be paying attention to this TV, like when you are at school or work, you are not able to turn it off.

By now, you may be feeling a bit anxious. If this unpredictable experience occurred every day you might become fearful. Over time, your inability to control the sensory assault of the environment around you may become depressing. It would be understandable if you experience anxiety, fear or depression in response to this unpredictable TV. Now imagine this experience in all your sensory systems – not just auditory and not with only one auditory agent – the TV. This is often the autistic experience – but not always – because we can never predict.

Now that you have vicariously tried on a tiny aspect of autistic experience, it may be easy for you to imagine that you might develop some ways to cope with this constant, but unpredictable daily TV experience. Some of you might try to hide from the TV. Others might develop a humming noise to drown out the TV sound. A few of you would become so exasperated you might scream, throw something or try to hit a person who repeatedly tries to reason with you. Your behaviors would certainly annoy those around you. After all, they are not experiencing the TV like you are. It is just background noise to them. They really are not even aware of this TV most of the time. Because their experience of this TV is so different from your experience, they have no idea that your behaviors are the best solutions you have come up with to cope with the problem of this TV! Instead, they want to extinguish your behaviors so you might better fit in with the other students at school or employees in your workplace (if you are fortunate enough to have a job).

Autistic behaviors are solutions to the problems we experience. The behavior may not fit well into a classroom, the home, community or place of employment, but it is a solution. It does not work well for autistics when you take away our solutions even if you can rationalize why it might be a good thing to extinguish a particular behavior. In fact, if you take away our one and only solution to a particular problem, we will find another solution. We have to because the problem is still there.

Instead of trying to extinguish our behaviors here are a few helpful ideas to try instead:

Give the person credit for solving a problem.

Jack, a student I recently worked with hummed or muttered a script aloud so often that it was distracting to others. When I asked if he knew why his teacher wanted me to meet with him he said, “I tick people off. She wants me to stop.” I told Jack I thought he was smart. He figured out things for himself. He hummed and scripted for a good reason or he wouldn’t be doing it. I drew it out using cartooning, putting in our words.

Join with the person to expand his solution repertoire.

I drew another cartoon frame with Jack humming and three other students with thought bubbles. Amory’s thought bubble said, “I can’t concentrate. I wish Jack would stop humming.” Jessica and Lilly also contributed to the thought bubbles.

Jack wanted friends so I gave him the information that when he makes noise kids feel frustrated or annoyed because they cannot concentrate. This makes it less likely kids will want to be friends with him.

We started a list called “Humming Replacement Possibilities.” I told Jack he was smart to figure out humming so I knew he could figure out other things and that I would do what I could to add ideas. The ideas we brainstormed were put to the test – actually rated by Jack on a 1-5 scale from not at all helpful (1) to more helpful than humming (5). After four weeks Jack had discovered several helpful strategies to use. The function of Jack’s humming was to block out environmental noises (mainly the sound from fluorescent lights and furnace running). The function of humming was discovered by looking at the solutions that worked best for Jack – turning off the lights, using noise cancelation headphones, listening to iTunes water fall music via ear buds.

Celebrate success, underlining self-determination and self-advocacy.

Most of the time success comes after hard work. It is not easy to expand behavior solution repertoires. When progress is made acknowledge and celebrate. Underline the aspects of self-advocacy and self-determination. Knowing we can decide and figure out things in a way that helps us get what we want (friends and completing school work in Jack’s case) and gives us options to live more comfortably is a powerful thing. Self-determination and self-advocacy are important skills for all people and autistics often need to intentionally learn, think about and employ such skills.

In my life, as an autistic, I have had the privilege of having some good people along the way who worked with me, not on me. These were the people and the circumstances that changed my life for the better. Today I try to be that person who joins with, who becomes a catalyst for others getting where they want to go in life. And when that happens in my life or in the lives of others, we celebrate together, knowing the future has more possibilities because we have once again experienced our potential to figure it out!

BOOKS BY JUDY ENDOW

Endow, J. (2019).  Autistically Thriving: Reading Comprehension, Conversational Engagement, and Living a Self-Determined Life Based on Autistic Neurology. Lancaster, PA: Judy Endow.

Endow, J. (2012). Learning the Hidden Curriculum: The Odyssey of One Autistic Adult. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2006).  Making Lemonade: Hints for Autism’s Helpers. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2013).  Painted Words: Aspects of Autism Translated. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2009).  Paper Words: Discovering and Living With My Autism. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2009).  Outsmarting Explosive Behavior: A Visual System of Support and Intervention for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2010).  Practical Solutions for Stabilizing Students With Classic Autism to Be Ready to Learn: Getting to Go. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Myles, B. S., Endow, J., & Mayfield, M. (2013).  The Hidden Curriculum of Getting and Keeping a Job: Navigating the Social Landscape of Employment. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Originally written for and published by Ollibean on December 12, 2015
To leave a comment at the end of this blog on the Ollibean site click here.

Autism, Perseveration and Holding onto Thoughts

October 23, 2015Activism/Advocacy, Autistic "Behavior", Communication, Social Considerations, Visual Supportsadmin

Like many autistics, all my life I have thought visually. My thinking is comprised of pictures, colors, shapes along with their sound and movement. Given that experience, I have had to learn how to hold onto new thoughts because it doesn’t just happen automatically. This is especially true if I see a novel thought while in a slightly (or more than slightly) elevated emotional state. It doesn’t matter if the emotion is negative or positive. Here is an example:

When I am looking forward to an event such as going on a trolley for the narrated Fall Color Tour, it generates a slightly elevated positive emotional state. I want to remember to stop at the grocery store on the way home to purchase an ingredient for a dish I am planning to make for dinner. If I have no way of storing or retrieving that information I will need to hold onto that picture until it happens.

As a child, the way I would hold onto a picture – a thought that was important that I didn’t want to forget – would be to talk about it over and over until the event happened. In the above example I might repeatedly ask, “Will we stop at the grocery store on the way home?” Even though the question would be answered very patiently several times I would persist in asking it. The function of the question in this case was not to get the answer, but instead to hold the picture in place – front and center in my head – so that I would not forget it. This is because a visual thought, if not stored and therefore retrievable, is literally, out of sight, out of mind never again to be found.

Today in my practice I work with many autistics that repeat things over and over. It is often referred to as perseveration. Sometimes the perseveration is happening because the individual is thinking about something he does not want to forget and hasn’t yet figured out another way to hold onto his visual thought.

Here are some ideas that have been helpful to me to me and to others I have worked with over the years:

Visually construct a garage or a parking lot in your head. Consciously think of putting the picture thought in the garage or parking lot. Once the thought has been visually parked it will be there when you go looking for it at a later time.Many times when I first start working with someone to use this idea I will have them actually draw their garage or parking lot on a piece of paper and draw in the visual thought they want to park. Once the thought is parked they can go onto to do something other than perseverating on that particular thought picture, knowing they will be able to find that thought later even though they do not keep it front and center in their brain by repeatedly talking about it. Typically, after a few times of using the drawing and with encouragement to put the drawing in their head, individuals drop the paper and pencil garage or parking lot once they indeed have the visual in their head.
Often, a visual thought can be jotted down or drawn so as not to lose it. We all do this when we make our grocery list or jot a note to pick up milk on the way home. I needed direct instruction, many reminders and lots of practice doing this before it became automatic for me to even think of using this strategy. I find autistic individuals I work with often need direct instruction and repetitious practice before the seemingly simple idea of writing it down becomes a viable everyday strategy.
Another strategy that works well is to visually pull up a future scene of when you need to remember your current thought. Directly create that picture thought of the future scene when you will need to have the picture reminder pop up.Using the above example I would think of driving home from the Fall Color Tour around 2:30 along with onions at the grocery store. My picture would be of me in the car with my watch at 2:30. On my watch I put the words “on my way home” because I know my brain may not co-operate if the time is different than exactly 2:30 when I am driving home.Often, when there is not the exact visual brain match to reality, my brain will boot the picture out which causes me to lose the reminder. Thus, I have learned to outsmart this.When the picture of me in the car with my watch is in place I add the picture of a building with the words “Grocery Store” and an open door where I put a picture of onions just inside the door.Again, I outsmart my exacting visual brain by using a generic box building with the words “Grocery Store” rather than a specific grocery store. I know that I have a few possibilities of grocery stores to stop at on the way home and want to make sure I get to decide in the moment based on other needs. For example, I only want to make one stop so will stop when I need to use the bathroom and pick up the onions at this same stop regardless of which grocery store is at the stop.

Hopefully, if you are autistic and have difficulty holding onto thoughts these ideas, might be useful for you like they have been for many others. If you know an autistic person who is prone to get stuck and perseverate please know that if the reason for the behavior labeled perseveration is for them to hold onto a visual thought, these ideas may be helpful alternatives.

It has been life changing for me to learn to work with my autistic brain rather than trying so hard to copy and display the behaviors of typical people. The copy mode is draining and even when I do copy it often doesn’t fit in well, sometimes appearing a bit robotic. It is unfortunate that most of the folks who are teachers and helpers of autistics are at a disadvantage when it comes to supporting and working with autistic thinking only because they do not understand how the autistic brain functions. I have learned that it is so much easier to respect my neurology and work with it than it is to learn to copy the behaviors of neuromajority folks. I hope more information for autistics on how to work with their neurology becomes available.

BOOKS BY JUDY ENDOW

Endow, J. (2019).  Autistically Thriving: Reading Comprehension, Conversational Engagement, and Living a Self-Determined Life Based on Autistic Neurology. Lancaster, PA: Judy Endow.

Endow, J. (2012). Learning the Hidden Curriculum: The Odyssey of One Autistic Adult. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2006).  Making Lemonade: Hints for Autism’s Helpers. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2013).  Painted Words: Aspects of Autism Translated. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2009).  Paper Words: Discovering and Living With My Autism. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2009).  Outsmarting Explosive Behavior: A Visual System of Support and Intervention for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2010).  Practical Solutions for Stabilizing Students With Classic Autism to Be Ready to Learn: Getting to Go. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Myles, B. S., Endow, J., & Mayfield, M. (2013).  The Hidden Curriculum of Getting and Keeping a Job: Navigating the Social Landscape of Employment. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Originally written for and published by Ollibean on October 18, 2015
To leave a comment at the end of this blog on the Ollibean site click here.

Autism and Changing Classroom Strategies

August 11, 2015Activism/Advocacy, Autistic "Behavior", Communicationautism, autistic experience, Diversity, movement, neurology, sensoryadmin

The field of autism is very new – not even 100 years old yet! This means we are constantly learning new things. It also means that those of us in the field of autism will likely need to change the way we deliver help to those who seek it and change the way we teach our students. It has happened to me and to most of my colleagues in the field.

We now know that what works for most children to learn does not always work for autistic children. In fact, it can be detrimental to their learning. Here are two examples:

Requiring children to look at you when you are speaking to them
~
For most children this will allow them to better attend to what you are saying because the act of looking while listening often gives you their undivided attention.

For many autistic children looking at people speaking to them is problematic. Many autistic people will tell you eye contact is painful. Even when it is not downright painful, eye contact can be a problem for many autistics in that the information picked up is too intense, which can then trigger shut down.

Whether painful or too intense, eye contact with an adult speaking to an autistic child will not insure that child’s undivided attention. In fact, demanding eye contact of an autistic will most likely be counter-productive to your goal of having them take in the information you are saying to them.
Requiring children to stop moving about when you are speaking to them or when you want them to do seat work at school
~
Most children are able to better concentrate on the task at hand if they have still bodies.

For autistic children the opposite can be true for a variety of reasons. For some, processing information – this includes thinking – can only happen when physical movement of the body occurs. Thinking is neurological movement of ideas and facts in the brain. Autistic wiring means that sometimes it takes physical body movement to spur on the neurological thinking movement necessary to allow academic completion of tasks.

Many autistic children employ a repetitive movement such as flapping of the hands. We now know that hand-flapping can be a tool to keep the sensory system of autistics better regulated. Many report the calming effects actually allow them to be part of the world around them. Others report that hand-flapping allows excess emotion to be drained out of the body which avoids shut down from overwhelming physical sensations that intense emotions can bring to an autistic body.

Whether regulating, calming or avoiding shutdown, hand-flapping or another repetitive movement (sometimes called stims) for many autistic students, is their ticket to be able to concentrate on the task at hand. Having a quiet body or quiet hands, while helpful for typical students, is often counterproductive for autistics when it comes to hearing instruction or concentrating on academic tasks during the school day.

Maya Angelou said that when we know better we do better. I think this is an important concept to apply to the changing field of autism. As we become better informed by the children who grew into adults and are now well able to communicate their perspectives from living in a body headed up by autistic neurology, we can throw out some of those ideas and practices we once thought were helpful.

Often times I see people in the field of autism hang onto the way they always thought or the way they always did things. Change is difficult. Sometimes people get into dichotomous right/wrong arguments over things such as eye contact and hand-flapping.

I get this. For me, if I learn something new that changes what I do to make things better for children today I also think, “What might have happened for Tellis or Maddie or Carlos or Jack if only I had known?” It is hard to entertain having been wrong, especially when you know it may have negatively affected the lives of children. I think this is why some people fight so hard to prove their old thinking and old ways are right and the new ideas or new information is wrong. And yet, it often isn’t a matter of right or wrong, but instead, a matter of becoming better informed over time.

I would like to encourage all of us who feel badly or are embarrassed about what we believed about autism or about the strategies we may have tried in the past to remember to be kind to ourselves. Most of us have done the best we could with the autism information we knew at the time. Remember, relatively speaking, the field of autism is new, being less than 100 years old. Thus, we can expect to shift our thinking and change our practice strategies based on new information.

As long as we continue to update our information along with seeking out and learning from the experts – those who live the autistic life – we can know that as we learn, discover and grow we can update our teaching strategies, improve our service delivery and make better progress on behalf of those we serve who live with autism. As teachers and practitioners we will become better and better interfacing with, helping and teaching our autistic students. Together, with autistics informing us as we go, the world can become a better place for us all.

BOOKS BY JUDY ENDOW

Endow, J. (2019).  Autistically Thriving: Reading Comprehension, Conversational Engagement, and Living a Self-Determined Life Based on Autistic Neurology. Lancaster, PA: Judy Endow.

Endow, J. (2012). Learning the Hidden Curriculum: The Odyssey of One Autistic Adult. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2006).  Making Lemonade: Hints for Autism’s Helpers. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2013).  Painted Words: Aspects of Autism Translated. Cambridge, WI: CBR Press.

Endow, J. (2009).  Paper Words: Discovering and Living With My Autism. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2009).  Outsmarting Explosive Behavior: A Visual System of Support and Intervention for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Endow, J. (2010).  Practical Solutions for Stabilizing Students With Classic Autism to Be Ready to Learn: Getting to Go. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Myles, B. S., Endow, J., & Mayfield, M. (2013).  The Hidden Curriculum of Getting and Keeping a Job: Navigating the Social Landscape of Employment. Shawnee Mission, KS: AAPC Publishing.

Originally written for and published by Ollibean on August 8, 2015
To comment on this blog click here.

Autism and Processing Social Information

July 31, 2015Activism/Advocacy, Autism and Aging, Autistic "Behavior", Communication, Hidden Curriculum, Social Considerationsart, autism, autistic, autistic experience, Diversity, employment, first person account, movement, neurology, sensory, speech, transitionadmin

My autistic neurology means that I am not good at picking up typical social cues, understanding complex social situations, automatically picking up meanings of idioms, or understanding the hidden curriculum that most others automatically pick up (Endow 2012). This means I often look naïve and gullible. The fact is I AM naïve and gullible when I try to use the social constructs of neuromajority folks to navigate the world around me.

When I was younger and deemed “in need of help” that “help” largely involved others trying to teach me to think and act as if I had a typically wired brain. I was never very good at it because no matter how many therapeutic social skills situations I availed myself of, because they were taught as if all participants had a neurotypical brain and my brain was not neurotypical, I mostly failed their learning agenda for me. My brain just plain works differently.

Here is an example: I rarely remember the same details about other people that most folks do. I remember the visual perception that came to me during an interaction, whether or not I was personally a part of that interaction. I pick up much information through seeing the sounds and movements of color people generate along with changes in the air space surrounding them as they speak and go about their business.

When I match the colors of others I can carry on a conversation. When our colors don’t match, the conversation usually doesn’t go well. I did not realize this way of perceiving and understanding the essence of people was not shared by others until recent years (Endow, 2013).

All through my life when others have tried to help me it has been minimally helpful to me. They would most often try to get me to understand the world in the way they understand the world. It was helpful information to know how others were thinking because it explained their behavior. Even so, learning how typical people think does not help me to then be able to think in their way.

Now that you have read the above example of one way I think visually by incorporating the sound and movement of colors people generate do you understand it? Probably so. And now that you understand how I think can you stop thinking the way you think and start thinking the way I think? Probably not!

The way we think is important because it is how we make decisions. It is part of everyday life. In my work life I might avoid business interactions with someone because they have ugly colors with sticky tentacles moving sneakily toward me. A typical person, who’s thinking is language-based, may understand that this potential business partner is devious and less than ethical in his practices. In essence, we both understood the same thing, but I had no way to explain it unless I translated my visual thinking into words. Visual is my native language; it is how I interface with the world around me and how I innately understand people.

Just like it would not be helpful for you to adopt my ways which are foreign to you, please understand that it is not helpful for me to always adopt your foreign ways when making decisions about people. We think differently and that is okay with me. I look forward to the day that my way of thinking is okay with the rest of the world.

In the meantime, if you are a parent of an autistic child, perhaps you might find it useful to ponder these questions:

Do you know how your autistic child remembers people?
Do you know what is important to your autistic child about other people?
Do you understand how your autistic child decides who to interact with and who not to interact with?
Do you honor this, even if you may not understand it? Many autistic children will not be able to explain to you how they think because it is not word based. You do not necessarily need to understand how your child thinks in order to honor it.

Note: Here is my first attempt to translate my visual thinking on the essence of people. After I translated my visual thinking into this sketchy language I was then able to go the next step to make a paragraph of words (which is the indented paragraph above that starts with “Here is an example”}. This is how my visual thinking gets translated to words. Once translated to words I can then speak the words. Today I can do this three-part translation

visual thought,
sketchy words,
paragraph words

to be able to speak my thought. I didn’t know until recently that most people do not need to do a three-step translation before speaking their thoughts. Most of the time these days, after decades of practice, my speaking appears quite fluid, though sometimes a delay is still apparent. It is often hard to translate because the world of English words is much more limited than my visual thought. It is like being confined to a limited choice board when what I really want isn’t an available choice.