Seeing Things Anew

It’s amazing what you can learn about your child by watching a videotape with a professional who points out things that you see with own eyes every day.

We had a meeting with our son’s psychotherapist the other day and she showed us video from a recent therapy session with Kai.

The session that we watched was one where the therapist and my son were doing a science experiment together. As the video started playing, the therapist was trying to get my son’s attention. She was reading him the instructions for the project and he paid no attention to her. He was goofing around and not listening. I know the feeling well.

After a little while, however, he became focused and ended up happily working on the project. How did that happen?

We watched a second time, but this time, instead of viewing it uninterrupted, the therapist paused it at several points along the way so that she could explain what she observed.

During the beginning of the session, when Kai did not appear to be following along, the therapist had given only verbal instructions. But, as soon as she began gesturing with her hands, he became clued in to her. She explained that Kai is a visual learner and that it is helpful to give visual cues in addition to the verbal ones.

As they began the science experiment, my son again appeared to lose focus. The therapist reached out her arm and lightly touched her hand to my son’s shoulder. She also brought her face into his line of sight as she spoke with him. He got back on task right away. He had needed a little visual reminder that she was talking and that he needed to listen to her.

Another time, she read his body language and could tell that he did not understand what he needed to do. She pointed at a particular object and he immediately caught on to what he needed to do.

It was illuminating to see all this.

There are many times when I am working with Kai on his homework, just to name one example, when he seems to lose focus. I get frustrated and may raise my voice. I realize now that, since he is such a visual learner, I need to give my son more visual cues, and that increasingly loud audio cues do not help the situation.

Seeing this also helped me better understand why my son had so much trouble learning in a regular classroom even though he is a bright kid.

The therapist went on to explain other situations where, by looking at Kai’s expressions and behaviors, we can see the cues he is giving off. Oftentimes, he will be communicating to us non-verbally because he does not yet know how to express what he is feeling.

For example, when he becomes disregulated when asked to do a more complex problem, he may be saying that the situation is too much for him and that he cannot take in all of the information.

We see things like this every day but until someone points it out, you sometimes don’t notice it.

We appreciated the feedback and will practice reading our son’s non-verbal cues and trying to be more visual with him.

Now if only we could record all of our interactions at home and have a professional analyze what else we can do.

No Escape for Uncomfortable Feelings

My wife and son have a session with a child psychologist every Thursday. The primary purpose of these sessions is for my wife to play with Kai while receiving coaching on the DIR®/Floortime method of play therapy so that she can better engage with him and help foster social interactions.

Lately, every session has had the same pattern. Kai would pick a toy, play for a little while, but then, invariably, something would cause him to get upset. He might get frustrated that he can’t do something, or be told that he is making too much of a mess, or just run out of time. After awhile, he would try to hurt the therapist, my wife, or himself, and would need to be physically restrained while the therapist tried to peacefully get him calmed down.

As this continued week after week, my wife has grown frustrated. What good is all this? What progress is he making? When he gets upset and tries to hurt someone, why don’t we just yell at him? At least threatening him gets him to stop trying to hurt us; why do we need to do all of this therapy instead?

We met with the therapist the other day to address our concerns and gain a better understanding of the direction she was headed.

As she explained it, many kids with autism, like our son, have certain feelings that are uncomfortable for them and they just want to make these feelings stop. Kai’s tendency is to avoid feelings of disappointment and sadness. Before, when those feelings arose in a session, he would play with the numbers on the toy or real telephone in the room, or draw numbers on a sheet of paper. Withdrawing into his own world, particularly one filled with his beloved numbers, was a form of escape for him.

However, rather than letting him continue to escape from his uncomfortable feelings, his therapist has been trying to get him to actually feel the disappointment or sadness. Toward that, she moves the telephones and everything else with numbers out of the room before Kai gets there. Now, he has to face his feelings. But, because they are so uncomfortable for him, rather than feel sad, he will often go straight to anger instead. I think there is a fine line between anger and sadness. Anger is easy. Sadness is hard. And so, he seems to explode every week.

But, where is this going?

The thought is that as Kai gets more familiar with these feelings that he has been avoiding for so long, he will become desensitized toward them. Eventually, he will not go straight to anger. He will learn to tolerate sadness and disappointment.

To help build his tolerance, the therapist wants us to empathize with his feelings and express them in an appropriate way. So, for instance, we may say, “I know you wanted to finish that project. Oh, it’s so disappointing that we ran out of time.” He may not be able to express these feelings himself, but is comforted by knowing that we can relate and are expressing his feelings for him. Over time, he will be able to do more of this on his own. And, as he does so, he will stay in a regulated state rather than immediately getting angry.

She also explained that while yelling and threatening him may have a short-term effect of stopping his immediate bad behavior, it does not have the longer-term benefits of teaching him how to cope. Instead, what he learns is that loud voices and threats are used to get someone to do something you want them to do. And that is certainly not the lesson we want him to learn.

This method that we are trying works slowly. It takes patience. Sometimes it is hard to tell if we are making progress. But, a quick fix usually isn’t best for the long term. We’re looking to build a strong foundation for our son’s future. And so, we will stick with this.