Education beating Autism

The word ‘stress’ has a negative connotation for most people. Stress is anything that thrills us,worries us, scares us or threatens us. Stress can be a strong motivator and energizer at the appropriate intensity.

With too little stress or energy, a person may feel ‘bored’. For the child with autism, if the arousal drops below an optimal level, he will likely seek stimulation from other sources to keep himself alert. It may be in appropriate or inappropriate ways, for example, he may withdraw, start chewing on his shirt or poke another child.

We all learnmost optimally when there is a certain amount of stress, stimulation and energy. Optimal levels of stress are dependent on a number of factors, including the following:

• Child’s physical state – is he well-rested, did he eat within the last two to three hours, is he feeling well, is he wearing comfortable clothing, is he warm or cool enough, is he thirsty, did he have a change in medication or start a new medication? If the child is not feeling comfortable and well, his optimal range is reduced and he more readily enters into distress. Children with autism are especially likely to fall apart if they do not have adequate sleep or food.

• Adult’s physical state – if the parent, teacher, therapist, or caregiver is tired, hungry, thirsty, or overly warm or cold, this discomfort can be sensed by the child with autism and set him off.

• Child’s emotional state – this may be related to past history or current events such as if his home life is disrupted or if he woke up feeling ‘grouchy’.

• Adult’s emotional state – children with autism are often ‘emotional sponges’ who absorb but do not necessarily understand emotions around them. Is the parent, teacher, therapist or caregiver stressed, angry or anxious? All of these will be absorbed by the child and cause him to be agitated.

• Learning environment – is it relatively quiet, is it calm? In a calm and secure environment, the child’s optimal energy range is expanded.

• Learning task – is it new to the child, is it something he has done many times in the past, is it challenging in terms of content or process, does it prompt him to use verbal or fine motor skills that are more difficult for him, is the task too lengthy, does the child fully understand what is being expected of him? If the child has enjoyed and been successful with this sort of task in the past or it is a topic area of interest, the optimal energy range is extended.

While working with the child with autism, you cannot expect to hold him at the optimal level of performance and arousal for long, at least in the early stages. I use a rule of thumb: initial goals should be to maintain the child’s optimal learning level for as many minutes as he is old. With two- to three-year-olds, this is two to three minutes in the early stages of intervention.

After each increasingly longer work period, the child needs an opportunity to ‘breathe out’. This means the child is helped to cycle through arousal and centering for optimal learning up to the edge of stress and back to a lower arousal level where he can take a breather. During the ‘breathing out’ period, he can engage in an enjoyable preferred activity before he is expected to work again.

When we work to expand the child’s optimal range of learning, there will be frequent times when you have him ‘hovering’ on the edge of distress. This is often a delicate balance that requires careful sensitivity to things that may ‘push him over the edge’. Processes for helping maintain the child within the optimal range are well described in the previous chapter on mediated learning.