Category: My Blogs

Persons on the autism spectrum are black and white thinkers.  They prefer everything to go along expected lines and in a fixed manner. They have difficulty with “grey area thinking”. The concept of “make do with/may be/could possibly be/ lets manage with what we have/things can change with changing circumstances” is difficult for them to comprehend.

The challenge becomes more difficult for teenagers or young adults who are experiencing emotions like romantic love, infatuation, or developing crushes. Emotions like love, like, infatuation cannot be defined strictly. The type or intensity of emotion can differ from person to person, based on circumstances, etc.  A high level of grey area thinking is needed to understand and sort out these feelings. Even more difficult is understanding reciprocal emotion. What is the other party feeling about me? Does he/she also feel the same? How do I understand? 

What can one do to help people with ASD deal with this aspect of their lives?

My first advice to all parents with children on the spectrum is to expose them to grey area thinking as much as possible and in all kinds of situations. Secondly, they must work on development of perspective thinking, e.g., other people may not like the same things that I like. If I like somebody it is not necessary that the person will like me back, and so on.

But if your child is already a teenager or an adult and has not developed a high degree of grey area thinking, how can we help them navigate through such social situations? How do we help them in situations related to romance, love etc.?

I would say, it is never too late to develop grey area thinking in anybody. At the same time, I would recommend parents provide their children with some rules to deal with various situations (as black and white thinkers always do better with rules).

Your rules could read something like this:

DO remember that liking/loving someone is a choice

DO remember that the person you like/love might not like you back. You cannot assume that just because you like them, they will reciprocate your feelings.

DO move on if THEY are not interested

DO be polite and respectful

DO ask permission for any physical contact

DON’T get too personal at first

Don’t ask too many personal questions at first

DON’T discuss your relationship with all and sundry

DON’T pressure anyone to like/love you

Let these be starting point for you may have to modify/personalize it according to your child’s needs and maturity.

In order to implement the above rules, you will need to have a great deal of open discussions with your child. Encourage your child to speak out and express his/her feelings. Try not to make these discussions a question-answer session. Start the discussion with a few observations of your own, e.g., “I notice that you keep checking X’s Facebook profile very often”.  “I think you like X a lot”. Draw out responses instead of asking questions. Encourage him/her to define how they feel about the person in question, why they like the person. In some cases, it helps if you give them a choice. For example, “so what do you like about X? Is it her smile or her eyes? Her manner of speaking or how she dresses?” This will go a long way in helping your child understand how they are feeling and help them conduct their social life in an appropriate manner.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us are maintaining “social distancing”. This has resulted in a severely restricted life for all of us, particularly our children. Going out for a movie or a meal, taking walks, playing with friends in the park – they are not safe options in these times. While these are the obvious “negatives”, we need to also focus on the positives in this period – for one, it gives us more time to interact with our children and spend quality time with them.

Children are feeling isolated as they are denied the opportunity to spend time with friends or other people who they interacted with on a regular basis before we all went into “lockdown”. This may actually be leading to rusting of social skills and weakening of emotional bonding. While a lot of them are perhaps using digital media to stay connected with the world outside, that does not and cannot in any way replicate or replace the need for in-person, face to face interactions.

As parents, we need to recognise this, and compensate for it. In fact, I would say we, as parents, must mandatorily ensure that we invest a lot more time engaging with our children in various ways.

The other aspect of these times that we need to be mindful of is the excessive exposure to, and contact with, digital media. It is of course inevitable that a lot of “real-life activities” have moved to the digital world. Our children are attending school and various other activities through online channels. Many of them are also using devices for playing games, surfing the net etc. Many times, I have observed that mobile phones and tabs are used as new-age pacifiers – parents hand them to children simply as a way of keeping them engaged or entertained (in reality, it keeps them distracted and diverted).

Hence, taking a break from the high levels of digital interaction is of paramount importance.

This brings me to the question which most parents ask, “What can I do with my child? I have run out of ideas”. Before answering this question, I would advise you to first take a step back and, “start with a schedule”. Build a daily schedule – for yourself as well as your child. It goes a long way in helping stay organised and it brings a sense of rhythm to our lives. A schedule also helps our children understand what to expect and eliminates surprises and shocks that can lead to tantrums, meltdowns and resistance.

Now coming to what you can do. What you choose to do would depend largely on the child’s current skill set, areas of interest and any specific area where you think she could expand her skills and abilities. While it is a very good idea to play games and puzzles etc., you can also productively engage with your child through everyday activities such as hanging out clothes to dry, making tea, setting the dinner table etc. Such activities in fact go a long way in keeping the child connected with her environment and making her feel a part of the household.

Remember not to give them things to do that are too easy.  Choose activities in which the child can contribute productively. It is important that the child feels that she is making a meaningful contribution and not doing things mechanically, just for the sake of doing them. 

Another important point to keep in mind is – don’t just focus on the end product or goal of the activity. A lot of learning (in fact most of it) happens along the way too. Here are some things that are learnt along the way of most activities that you can do at home with your child: Planning, Anticipation, Memory, Alertness, Collaboration, Coordination, Co-regulation.

Let me explain that with an example. Let’s say you choose to fill bottles of water from the water filter to put away in the fridge, or a shelf etc.

First, you and your child would gather the empty bottles from all the rooms, the fridge etc. The next part is actually a set of sequential steps to be executed. Open bottle cap, open tap, wait for the water to fill, be alert so that the water does not overflow and spill, shut tap, close bottle. Repeat steps. Then you and your child would have to remember to put the bottles back in the intended location.

Remember – don’t just focus on the “how” of the activity, but also on the “why”. Why are we filling water? Because everybody wants to have cold water available when they feel thirsty. It makes things convenient for them. Hence, it makes people happy. They will appreciate you, and you will feel good about doing something useful. 

And what would be the child’s learning from this activity? Planning, anticipation, memory, and also learning the concept of doing things for others.

Look around you and you will see there are lots of things that you can do with your child which will not only keep them engaged, but also work to improve their skills and abilities. They will also get a sense of contributing to the running of the household. Here is a list I made which you could start with – making tea (or coffee, lemonade, milkshake) or any small snack, watering plants, washing and/or drying and/or stacking utensils, hanging out washed clothes, washing and chopping vegetables and many more. So, go ahead, make a plan, build a schedule, and have fun while your kid learns!

What do we want from our children? Don’t we all want them to grow up healthy, have a successful career, settle down and have a happy family?

If you are a parent of a child with autism, this probably seems like an impossible dream. That is because, by now, you probably know a lot about the disorder, and the challenges that confront your child and your family – you have possibly googled the subject more than anything else! Hence this article is not meant to be an introduction to AUTISM. However, before I get to what I want to communicate to you, I would like to say a few things about the underlying characteristics of the disorder and how they impact a person.

Every person with Autism has varying degrees and types of challenges: Some may talk a lot, some not at all. Some may have very high level of IQ, some low. Some may not suffer any physical challenges while some may have sensory, gross motor and/or fine motor issues. These are not observed in similar degrees or with a consistent pattern in every person with Autism. That is why it is now specified as “Autism Spectrum Disorder” or ASD, which essentially means that people diagnosed with the disorder may exhibit a range and mix of issues, which may be unique to them, just as we all have unique finger-prints.

At the very basic level however, it is a complex neurological disorder which affects social behaviour, social understanding, speech and language development and sometimes cognitive development. Thus, a person with Autism, more often than not, is found to avoid social interactions and related ‘challenges’: many prefer to be left alone and indulge in repetitive behaviours.

That’s a bit about the disorder itself. The other worrying factor – not only for families and care-givers, but also for government and policy makers – is the rapid increase in the number of cases being diagnosed and reported. In the U.S, one child in 68 is being diagnosed with Autism. In India the incidence is reported to be about 1 in 200, and rapidly increasing.

The rise in incidence of Autism has undoubtedly led to an increase in awareness about the disorder, and we now see a number of professionals employing various therapies and protocols to help children with Autism cope with their challenges. A lot of work is being done in areas such as speech development, building of skills associated with daily activities like brushing, wearing clothes etc., development of cognitive thinking by teaching colour recognition, matching, sorting, etc., coping with academic work and also overcoming physical challenges emanating from poor muscle tone, poor muscle co-ordination etc. While targeting these skills individually and directly is often necessary as they certainly help in the child’s development, such an approach, in isolation, at best repairs splinter/disparate skills which only help the child cope with very specific or particular situations in this world. For example, a child can be taught basic social ‘DOs & DON’Ts’ which could help her fit into a particular social environment (like a classroom). But targeting such discrete skills do little to overcome the basic underlying challenges that are present in those on the Autism Spectrum Disorder – they do not really address or help overcome the core deficits of Autism, which are:

1. challenges with regard to managing social communication and understanding, and the resulting inability to build relationships;
   1. incapability of flexible thinking and analysis which adversely impacts problem solving skills and higher level thinking;
   1. abstract language comprehension;
   1. lack of motivation;

It is important to target these deficits if we are aiming for a path of remediation and recovery that ultimately enables people on the autism spectrum to lead regular, self-reliant, independent lives that are based on successful professional and personal relationships.

Let’s try and understand one of the core deficits of Autism: social communication skills. Usually, lack of social communication is equated with absence of speech. Many parents think that if a child is taught to speak words, she will start communicating well and that will solve most of her problems. In thinking like that we are again looking at developing a particular skill in the child (speech) and not addressing the core problem. The core problem is not as much an absence of speech as it is an absence of social understanding. A child with Autism cannot really understand the “why” of social communication and social responsibility. Why is it important to engage with others? What is the fun in a relationship? Why do we say “hello” and “goodbye”? Teaching them how to greet others and say a few words, mechanically and without any emotion behind it, misses the fact that it is actually the emotional development of the child that needs to be targeted rather than speech.

Similarly, people on the Autism spectrum usually lack what we refer to as the capacity for “dynamic thinking” which is also referred to as “flexible thinking” or “common sense thinking”. For example, it may be possible to teach a child on the spectrum how to travel from destination A to destination by walking to the bus stop, taking a specific bus, paying the exact fare and getting off at destination B. But unfortunately, if the said bus does not ply on a particular day or takes a different route, the person may not be able to cope with these changes or take any on-the-spot decisions to adjust his plans as per the changed situation. The ability to take on-the-spot decisions, make adjustments, alter plans, think of alternative solutions is Dynamic Thinking, and this is what is found to be highly lacking in people on the Autism spectrum. Among the many therapies that seek to address the core deficits of Autism, I work with one that is called RDI (Relationship Development Intervention). In RDI, we guide parents on how to work with their children using everyday situations and activities. Through a step-by-step and manageable approach, RDI aims to correct the core underlying problems of autism, so that they no longer form an obstacle to our kids reaching their fullest potential and therefore can lead a high-quality life.