Education beating Autism

Stressors are those things that push the child from optimal arousal with high levels of performance and learning to distress and decreasing performance. Optimal arousal is the state in which the child’s alertness and focus are such that learning is more effective and efficient. Distress is the state at which the child becomes over-stimulated and/or overwhelmed.

For people with Introversion-Sensing-Thinking-Judging (ISTJ) preferences, like children with autism, stressors tend to be those things that violate their need for clarity, precision, planfulness, logical decision-making and time to warm up to a situation. Strikingly, the stressors Quenk found for ISTJs parallel what I have observed repeatedly in children with autism.
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Before starting work with a child with autism, it is important to look after yourself. The child with autism requires the adults around him to have a great deal of patience, understanding and energy to work effectively. Ensure that you:
• have had sufficient sleep
• are not feeling frustrated or on edge.

At the least, it is critical that you can behave in a calm and relaxed manner. This does not mean that you cannot express your feelings and emotions. They must, however, be related to the child and task at hand and not something extraneous to the situation.
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