Estée KlarTo Get To The Other Side

I love this video. It’s just that simple. “You get rid of the autism gene and you get rid of Mozart, Einstein, Silicon Valley…” I love how Temple advocates and it’s this kind of advocacy that assists us in putting ourselves, as neurotypical parents and teachers and therapists, with outrageous expectations, under a much needed spotlight. Beyond listening to her story about “gifts” is an opportunity to consider the disconnect we create when we try to “fix the problem.”

We’ve had some encouraging messages lately, haven’t we? The HBO production of Temple Grandin played by Claire Danes shows that while (and many of us have read Temple’s books already) the world caused her anxiety, she could “see details other people are blind to,” she says. “I have a gift.”

Certainly the idea of giftedness, which happens in non autistic and autistic persons, can be yet another stereotype in assessing autistic people. Perception, on the other hand, is something to think about deeply.

When Adam was very young, we had these water blocks that were dyed different colours. Adam was mesmerized by these blocks watching the water swish and swoosh. Then all of a sudden, my wobbly toddler took them up to the window and peered through them. Ah, I thought. If only we could all stare at the world through coloured water blocks. How beautiful it would be. I know was also in part a cooing mother of a young autistic boy, so anything he did like this made me hyper-aware. But still.

When he got his “legs” and we began walking around the neighbourhood, Adam memorized his routes. To this day, if we take him to his old house and walk from there or the park nearby, he will remember how to get to that park or get back through the old “secret pathway” to the old house — which has even since been torn down and rebuilt! Remember, that was his two-three year old brain. In April, he will be eight-years-old.

Coming out soon will be a new version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton. Many people suspect that Carrol was himself autistic with his different perceptual abilities. He is often cited as a person who “suffered” from micropsia and macropsia, which is a neurological condition that changes the way the brain perceives the size of objects. When Alice falls down that rabbit hole, we get a look into Carroll’s mind.

Scientific American Mind published Extraordinary Perception by Wray Herbert this month. It discusses how psychologists at University College London “think that it might be a mistake to consider [autistic] distractability as simply a deficit. To the contrary, Anna Remington and John Swettenham and their colleagues speculate that people with ASD might have greater than normal capacity for perception, so that what appears as irrelevant distraction is really a cognitive bonus.” I added autistic to distractability as many therapies for autism as well as medications are geared at lessening it.

The test, the article shows, was for subjects to “rapidly determine if the letters N or X were present in the ring” on a computer screen. Participants had to then “hit the corresponding key on the keyboard. Some of the circles — those with more letters — were more difficult to process than others. There were also other letters floating outside the circle, but the subjects were specifically instructed to ignore those letters. Those floating letters were the laboratory equivalent of an irrelevant distraction in the real world.” In measuring perceptual capacity, researchers saw that “everyone was slower at the task when the ring contained more letters. The researchers were also measuring distractibility. When a letter outside the ring was one of the target letters (N or X), the subjects often took a longer time finding the N or X in the ring — indicating they were distracted by the presence of a target letter in the location that they were supposed to ignore.”

The researchers reasoned “that as long as the subjects’ total perceptual capacity was not exhausted, they would also process the irrelevant, distracting letters within their visual field. Once they had surpassed their perceptual capacity — once the ring of letters was sufficiently complex — irrelevant processing would stop [bold mine]. So if ASD subjects in fact have greater processing capacity, then they should process more distracting information even as the main task becomes increasingly complex.”

In conclusion, “although there was no difference among subjects in either reaction time or accuracy on the main task, those with ASD processed the irrelevant letters while solving much more complex problems...Put another way, they weren’t ignoring the main task, nor were they distracted away from it. Instead they were completing their work and moving on, using their untapped capacity” [bold mine].

This article also concludes that while this is a benefit, it also does have “real-life consequences.” They begin and end the article citing Tim Page, an author with Aspergers from his book, Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger’s. Page recounts his time in school who failed an essay about his field trip which was quite detailed in terms of his way of perceiving it, and how he was scolded for writing in that particular way. “I had noticed the wrong things,” he writes.

As a parent of an autistic child who has difficulties with verbal communication, I have to ask the question: “whose problem is this anyway?” Certainly I have been dealing with issues, at least issues for me as Adam cannot comment here yet, so I am fully aware that I need to be fair. He has very real sensory and perceptual differences, so I set up a basement full of equipment for him to self-soothe. He has even learned to “self-regulate” by going to read his own books, and I never had to teach him that. His body will completely quiet as he flips through pages of encyclopedias, dictionaries, cookbooks, among many other subjects. He may even appear to layperson as not really paying attention and just flipping pages, but I know it’s more than that. His body-jerking almost always stops, which is how I conclude that he is soothed by his books. I am imagining him looking at those books over and over again, and what he may be gleaning from them. Still, when it comes to getting the responses WE need, he using a “special” reading program at school. Indeed it is really helping with his expressive reading ability, and maybe even with his vocabulary. So I need to let him do both. He needs to learn to respond in a world that doesn’t yet understand the way he learns. He also needs to flip through pages and pages on his own. I can sit beside him sometimes also and talk about the books he is reading. We can type about what he is reading, we can draw stories and make more conclusions or assumptions about what he is reading. When we do things together calmly, we are having lots of fun.

When we teach him a new communication device, it may appear to the person who is teaching that Adam is not focused enough — indeed he appears to be “highly distracted.” On an AAC device (we are still awaiting one from a service-provider here in Toronto) his finger will go to the right picture, letter, or answer, and then he will quickly go to another one to check out what it will do. A keyguard helps him direct his finger more quickly to the correct response. He may have trouble finishing sentences (when he types) and then be reminded to “stay on task.” This is in large part what Facilitated Communication attempts to assist with if done correctly — to remind and assist with the focus. To a person who cannot detect that Adam was about to give the “right” answer (or rather the answer that was requested of him), he would receive a failing grade. Adam is very young and I believe he is not given the benefit of the doubt enough, although his team members are good with this.

It is only fair to say that we do not KNOW everything he knows. We do not fully understand how he takes all this knowledge in and we are the ones that deem his versions of knowledge as irrelevant. We have not developed sufficient ways to measure his responses or his way of learning and seeing, except for the ways we measure responses and knowledge from people who are not autistic. This brings me back to the old ABA adage, “if we can measure it, we can deal with it.” Unfortunately, the way we have historically dealt with autism is by eliminating the behaviours and learning patterns that are essential to an autistic person’s existence. Perhaps continuing to fund this research more heavily is important because as we understand how autistic people learn, we can not only develop better learning tools, but come to better appreciate our children.

Trying to understand this is a first step. As Adam’s parent, I see many of the so-called “issues” being mine, and yes, I become just as frustrated as many other parents out there. It’s really hard to see Adam in distress and it’s even harder to always be guessing what may be causing anxiety or body-jerking (Lack of calcium? Trouble at school? New self-awareness of difference? Trouble with transitioning from task to task? Lack of sleep? Seizures? A very long winter? Lack of exercise? Another neurological issue?…The guess work list is too long). Since Adam appears to be in discomfort since late last fall, I am really working hard at figuring this out (wait-lists are long here in Toronto). Sleep issues, anxiety issues — I know when I have a level head, there is more that I can do for him to ease the situation. We need science now to figure out many of our questions.

Sometimes it feels that makeshift solutions only lead to more issues. Sure, we all want things to be a little easier, but Adam requires more consideration in order to achieve that balance between helping him through discomfort as well as accommodating his needs. As I have been through a difficult year, like many of you out there, I completely understand the reasoning, but I have to keep a level head and look at what Adam has also gone through with a “broken” family. I have needed my sleep, but if Adam cannot, I have to find safe ways of letting him stay up until his body will sleep naturally. I know what I’m saying isn’t easy and there are still days I will resort to the Melatonin, even though, because of the guesswork involved, it pains me to do so. Yet I also know it’s important to stop and slow down and think about how Adam feels and perceives. When I do, everything seems a little easier. As a parent, I can even become proud of myself (it’s important) that I’ve not only managed well, but have helped Adam out too. We are still on that path to finding out if we can help Adam, but I am always wondering excessively about how I perceive the “problem.”

I’m interested in what people in science think about this Perception study. I think we have to spend a lot more time imagining what it feels like to be in Wonderland.

——-

Excerpts from:

“Extraordinary Perception” by Wray Herbert in March/April 2010 issue of Scientific American Mind, pp. 68-69.

Further Reading:

Selective Attention and Perceptual Load in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Anna Remington, John Swettenham, Ruth Campbell and Mike Coleman in Psychological Science (in press). Published online October 14, 2009. www3.interscience.wiley.com

Adam is almost eight years old. I can hardly believe how the time keeps marching by; how the year of separation from Adam’s father has also gone by. Soon, Adam and I will be living in our new house and rebuilding our lives.

Adam is changing and I reminisce from the early days — when he was diagnosed at 19 months of age, how I started this blog back in 2005. He is becoming more curious, more adept, stronger. He is always learning. He gets frustrated. He still cannot communicate with words very well. He must use a device. He does not understand, I believe, inherent dangers as he explores his new exciting world. Laundry chutes, small dark corners are inviting spaces for all little children. I teach as best I can with a firm “no,” a new rule that he can easily comprehend, and a stop sign posted to various areas of the house. It may not be “designer” but style makes no sense where safety is concerned.

Adam is also heading out into the world. Yes, he has his aides. But as a newly separated person who now must share time with Adam’s father with regards to Adam, I find myself during lonely nights thinking about how life is always about letting go: of fear, of things, of little children growing into bigger independent children (or quasi independent in our case). As Adam grows, I must learn to let him out into the world with others so he can learn more. It is a great challenge for any parent, and perhaps even more punctuated when one is a single parent. And as all things with our children as we watch them grow, it’s (delightfully) bittersweet. Adam would grow up resenting me if I held him back and did not let him explore. I have to let him do it in safe ways, in stages. When he grabs that sharp knife to cut a piece of fruit, I have to teach him with a dull knife (and with supervision of course). I have to let him explore dark spaces by creating safer dark spaces. I have to let him jump around the house, not on furniture where he may hurt his head, but on equipment set up for the task of jumping. In the case of Adam and his neurological needs, I also have to LET him be who he is and get the feedback he needs.

He needs to run, he needs to jump, explore, and yes, eat lemons. I would never be able to hold him back to change these activities because they don’t look like typical play. I need to provide him safe avenues to explore these things. Instead of viewing these things as “overwhelming” because they are not what all typical children necessarily do, I must learn new ways of helping him explore. While there are not as many programs and “how-to” books out there, common sense, time, and a deep breath help me figure it out.

It’s the same at school and we are lucky right now to have a school that allows Adam to explore safely, that allows aides, that allows us to bring in adaptive technologies and programs that help Adam learn in the way he can. But when people first meet him, I am starkly aware of how they will measure him — what “competency tests” to assess what he does and does not know that are delivered in a way that we take for granted, and perhaps that Adam would not be able to respond to. Far less effort (and money) is paid to adapting those tests so that he could respond — like visual options for answers, multiple choice. Adam is extremely visual and “performs” well when given this option. And I write this because I saw the movie NELL last night with Jodie Foster. I have been calling Adam — among many nicknames like boo boo bear, moo moo, Adiboo, Adamame… and Chickabee — the nickname Nell uses in the film. I must have picked it up a few years ago when I first saw it. I love the movie Nell because it reminds us that humans can create languages that perhaps not everyone understand easily and in the way we are used to, but how we create meaning.

And Adam communicates, indeed. He has a language that I’ve learned to, believe it or not, take for granted! But as he goes out into the world not everyone will know his language. He would be given those “competency tests,” and maybe even fail because they don’t measure in a way that addresses how he can express what he knows. So yes, my Adam now goes out further into the world. And yes, we have to teach him to communicate within it and learn the more common way of communicating. But I still believe he will and should always keep his mother tongue.

As a curator of art I have a special interest in “self-taught” art, otherwise known as “Outsider Art” or “Naive Art.” I find these latter terms unfortunate if not unnecessary and, noting my bias, degrading as terms to describe the work, typically, of challenged individuals. In the Art World, the term was used to create a category of art because it did not seek a point of reference from within the “higher” art world.

This post for me is thrilling. Today’s Parent magazine in an article called “Is It A Learning Disability?” , suggested that children with learning disabilities (LD’s) ..” don’t draw,” the caption said, “they scribble.” They is used as yet another “outsider” term, using the “they” as a foreign connotation. I retorted at how important any human marking is, a scribble or a sun. Adam’s motor planning issues makes holding a pen or pencil very difficult. He could draw letters lightly when he was very young and his first “picture” was a happy face with long hair when he was six years old. When I asked him who it was he said “mommy.” Of course that stays in my treasure chest forever.

I like to draw and I’m quite average at it. This past summer, I spent a few hours with Adam drawing what was around us at the cottage we rented, and I tried to teach him how to paint by numbers with a watercolour set — to “stay within the lines.” So counterintuitive is the paint-by-numbers set to me, but I noticed Adam’s willingness and effort to gently use a small watercolour brush, and his keen interest in painting. It also doesn’t hurt that one of his grandmother’s is a painter, his grandfather is a photographer, and his half-brother, a master at etch-a-sketch, not to mention his other artistic pursuits. Adam is interested in all of their work and I’m certain they have all imparted their own abilities to him.

I was not expecting these drawings passed to me from school the other day because I guess we can never know if or when we can expect things to happen, and it wouldn’t be anything I’d force upon him. Adam draws, as of this week, by his own motivation. He suddenly copied pictures from books and I’m utterly breathless at his line and his attention to detail. He told his aide what the pictures depicted and you can see her handwriting — a verbatim record of what he said. From a developmental perspective, I suppose you could say he is seeing the “whole picture.” His attention to detail, bearing in mind his motor challenges, seem remarkable particularly when one’s child has not been able to express themselves easily.

Art can tell us a lot about what a person sees, how they see it, and how they can express it with certain challenges. As I was always certain that Adam could “see the whole picture,” I post here, I suppose, what society needs and what it likes to chew on, which is the sad part of being a part of such an achievement-oriented society. But let’s for a few wonderful moments just savour how beautiful his lines are — how delicate and careful.

Maybe we all need to be as delicate and careful when discussing the abilities and challenges of all people. We may not all become artists, we may not all talk, but it certainly does not mean that we do not understand or have anything to say.

I’m hard pressed to ever state that Adam really can’t express himself. I mean, I find myself saying it some days in terms of verbal communication. But really, he is an expressive guy. If I were to take an accounting of his “expressiveness” and his “ability to communicate,” I might end up with something like this:

1) He is so affectionate, but not to everyone. He is discerning in who he expresses affection to;
2) He only really wants mom and dad and gives us extra special hugs and tends to shun others away as he wants us all to himself;
3) He knows who his family is because he has variants of affection for different people;
4) He cries when he knows he has broken or made a mess of something;
5) He cries when he thinks he’s upset someone, or that he knows someone is upset;
6) He dances when he’s happy (not the happy dance, but real dancing);
7) He sings what he can’t say — when mom and dad were together with him the other day, he sang Beyonce’s “I’m a Single Lady” — a song that came out at the time of the separation. Here I will add a little bit of my memory of other children I knew when they were little who dreamed of their parents back together again. I imagine this is Adam’s way of telling us the same and that he recognizes the current situation;
8) He laughs at funny things — he laughs at my jokes and he laughs when he’s trying to make me laugh;
9) He talks more and more each day;
10) He types more and more (independently) each day;
11) He reads out loud and understands what he is reading;
12) He knows how to manipulate certain people who all respond to different things. He knows how to “work it”;
13) He uses a word to describe what he is looking at (i.e.; he may type sock and then I can help him build a sentence to correlate with the work GAP he is peering at on his sock so he can type, see and say).

I could go on but it’s late and I’m tired and I’m just basically trying to say how Adam is such a Mensch to me in every way. He works really hard, he wants to do things, he loves people, and his will is strong. I see and experience how hard it is sometimes for him to stay focused and I’m still very proud of him. When his fabulous assistant (she has been with us for five years now and counting), told me that he went wild for Carmina Burana at school, I smiled. I went wild for Carmina Burana when I was young and consider it to be my foray into classical music because it’s so dramatic. Adam danced and moved his body to the music. When I see his notebook wherein Adam is struggling to draw, he is specific about what he is drawing (his assistant writes what he has named his characters that he struggles motorically to draw). And all I can do is keep trying hard with him, to learn, to keep an open mind, to provide him various modalities with which he can work and express himself.

Expression, thank goodness, comes in so many colourful forms.

I was sitting in a waiting room recently when I picked up this from the April 2009 issue of Today’s Parent magazine’s article, Is It A Learning Disability by Marcia Kaye. I turned the pages reading about “conceptual and motor problems,” and in the middle of the page was a photo of a drawing.

“They don’t draw, they scribble,” said the caption.

Who are they? I thought. Does she really know who she is referring to?

The they, is the Adam who when he made is first intentional scribble on the page, I jumped happily. Whose “motor problems,” and indeed they are challenges, in holding a pencil or a crayon seemed to be surpassed. At least the first step had been made. You see, I’ve kept every one of Adam’s “scribbles,” his effort rewarding by his marking that later turned to a happy face, a letter, a sun and a tree and one day, a happy face with long hair which he named “mommy,” at the age of six. The theyare people. They are Adam. They are individuals who are challenged but not unintelligent, who continue to progress at their own rate on the exterior, while on the inside, have many ideas and things to share.

And then there is the category of Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, which I read with great interest. For the Today’s Parent article stated that “this category encompasses non-verbal learning disabilities (NLD’s), which is a controversial area, with possible overlap into Asperger’s syndrome and mental health issues. But the LDAC [Learning Disabilities Association of Canada] considers NLD to be a bona fide learning disability. A child with an NLD may have a great vocabulary, a good memory and an excellent grasp of detail, but miss the bigger picture. He may be a good reader, but a poor comprehender…if you say ‘Oh great, I have to get a root canal!’ they may take you seriously.” It goes on to describe the social awkwardness and anxiety issues that we so often talk about with regards to autism.”

And to to muddy the waters even a little bit more, we have the discussions over DSM V [Diagnostic Statistical Manual] and removing Aspergers or what differentiates individuals along the autism spectrum:

The Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ND) work group’s discussions have focused on three areas:

8) How/where to discuss cultural influences on diagnosis (e.g., Korean use of reactive attachment disorder rather than ASD to avoid family stigmatization).

What is most poignant to me is the purpose of both the differentiation and the suggestion that the atypicalities are abnormal rather than a way of being in the world. If Adam’s way of obtaining and processing information about his environment and the people around him are respected (as they are in his household and school), then he continues to grow, mature and learn. And while there continues to be little research that truly helps us understand how “severity” has often to do more with outward “functioning” rather than intelligence, I struggle with articles that fail to discuss how society tends to want to categorize and differentiate individuals based on the severity of their learning disability rather than discussing how people with different or atypical learning needs learn and how we can better support them.

When I read the suggestions for broadening autism to emcompass Aspergers and other characteristics in the DSM V, the issue as I see it is not the damaging effects that calling Asperger’s or PDD-NOS or NLD to autism is to the person or family. For I view it as the families’ discomfort in perhaps being associated with autism. I see the issue is a continued determinism about autism and herein lies the problem. Until autism and many issues are no longer viewed as problems to be solved, but rather atypicalities that require our understanding and providing for, we will forever find ourselves spinning on the hamster’s wheel.

Many of us have read Oliver Sack’s Musicophilia and I attended his lecture here in Toronto a couple of years ago when the book was released. Neuroscientists study the innate rhythm of our brains, citing that no other species possess this capability. Apes cannot synchronize if one ape taps a stick. The other apes cannot keep up the rhythm. So this is innate to human beings and perhaps a way we have evolved. Our ability to socialize, to gather as communities have been largely facilitated by this ability.

Young babies can understand musical structure before they understand language. Alzheimer’s patients can remember emotions and early memories, as well as right/wrong notation and words of music even if every other faculty is gone. In other words, music is the last thing, the only thing and neuroscientists are looking at this aspect of our humanity.

For Sting who had an MRI done in order to study aspects of this, when finally looking at images of his brain after it had been evaluated post-testing, he became a bit undone. He said he didn’t want to know the inner workings of what is otherwise a mystical, spiritual experience for him. While interesting, dissecting his musical brain was unnerving.

It is also said that by learning a musical instrument, we may be able to ward off Alzheimers. Similarly, a child will increase their I.Q. by 7% by learning a musical instrument.

Adam is learning to play piano, and like all people, my autistic little boy loves music. He can sing better than he can talk. He tries, although motorically challenged, to keep a dance rhythm with his body, but is otherwise a wonderful drummer. Rhythm, be it through music or rhyme has composed a major aspect of our lives in just basic communication in our home, and I’m lucky because it also comes naturally to me as I have been a singer, have learned many musical instruments in my life (violin, guitar, flute, piano, recorders…). But use it or lose it. I’ve forgotten how to play what used to come so easily, although I can pick up tunes by ear very easily using the piano. We sing “home-made” opera in our house — sort of a daily dialogue in a Bugs Bunny/ Wagnerian way.

Use of music and rhythm is extremely important for any of us to use language, and it is highly effective with non verbal people. It makes me wonder why we don’t discuss and utilize this so much more. We love to make utter fools of ourselves singing our home-made opera in our house — from asking for the juice to brushing our teeth, there is no shortage of home-made songs for every occasion. And even though it is I who makes the major fool of myself the most by doing it, I think Adam enjoys it as he tweets back my silly tunes in his smaller, more cherub voice. I also think if we all did a little more of it, we all might be a bit happier as well. Music does ignite the pleasure centre of our brains.

It was a happy and a sad day, Adam’s last day of the day camp he has been attending for the past three years. I remember when he was very little — around three — when I’d drive him in for a half day. I worried so much in those early days. I worried if something would happen to him. I worried if he would be happy or upset, as he was so easily in those days. I hung on every word and report the staff would give me and I would jump if my cell phone ever rang while he was not in my care.

Several years later, Adam seems to be a bit of a bigwig at camp. I am happy that he seems to swagger on and off the bus, and this year he did his last week without an aide, except for Greg (seen on the left) who agreed to shadow Adam on his last week. I had, of course, asked permission to publish this photo.

I picked up Adam at noon so we could head up North for his last couple weeks before school starts. And what did I find? Adam was hugging and playing with his counselors and their affection for him was in no short supply. We could barely leave after saying multiple and lingering goodbyes. Alyssa was sitting with him waiting for mommy. Greg was as  well. When we headed for the car, Jeff had to stop Adam one more time. Some other counselors waved from afar and didn’t make it into the picture.

This was a phenomenal summer for Adam — Addy is what I call him at home. He rocked the rock-climbing wall. He hit the target a few times in archery and had his first forays into baseball and golf. My kitchen shelf is FULL of ceramics and other arts and crafts. I can’t even keep up with all the songs he comes home with. Today, said Greg, it was “Tonight’s gonna be a good night,” by…oops I forgot…but it’s on the radio a lot. Adam tries to talk and it’s a challenge, yet it’s coming. He picks up a lot from his friends at camp and every day, I could tell Addy was, well, a happy little camper.

The end of Summer 2009 for Adam, in this year of enormous change in our family’s life, has been a successful one. Thanks to all the staff at his camp (which I will not name for obvious reasons), for accepting Adam and letting him succeed… as he is.

By 2012, accommodating disabled persons in Ontario will become mandatory for all non profit organizations. Accommodating people with disabilities will be enforced, and this will make it necessary for all not for profit agencies — which includes hospitals, schools, religious organizations, transportation services and the like — to be able to utilize and/or make available Assistive Devices for non verbal individuals as well as other equipment, environmental provisions and the deliverance of the “products and services” (which entails what we commonly refer to as  accommodation) for a diverse population of individuals with various needs.

Under the Ontarian Accessibiltiy Act which became law in 2005, non profits will all have to comply by 2012 and other businesses by 2025. The use of such terms as “customer service,” positions the act to read that it requires to view our disabled population also as clients and consumers — the latter term which, in our current economic belief and behaviour, renders Ontario’s disabled as more “valuable” citizens.  It is true that the disabled are important part of our society and contributors to our economy, and it makes sad but true sense that our legislators have to enforce the accommodation of all our citizens by using these terms. Economic terms. We deliver a basic human right via “customer service.”

Now that it is soon to become mandatory for an area that I’m particularly interested in — schools — I wonder why there is continued resistance in Ontario to use AAC (Assistive Augmentative Communication).  Adam needs the computer in his school to communicate his understanding of the concepts being taught. It seems like simple ABC to me. In this day and age where technology is common and relatively inexpensive, and where autistic children can indeed excel, it makes little sense that we have to make enforceable the ways and means that autistic children can participate and be included in the classroom and with their peers. This argument goes beyond devices and right down to understanding how autistic children can learn and respond and how the format of the lessons and teaching styles need to be delivered. For if our children are now viewed as valuable “clients,” then one would think they should certainly be entitled to no less.

I for one am working with the act and terminology to encourage service providers unfamiliar with accommodating disabled people in Ontario to adapt and include. Once we can help others to understand that disabled children do not “pull their other children down,” but in fact propel them forward both as compassionate human beings as well as academically, we can create more just classrooms. “Research shows that for typical students in inclusive classrooms, academic performance was equal to or better than that of general education students educated in noninclusive classrooms.” (Exceptional Children, 64: (1998) 239-253) “And, contrary to the worries of many parents of typical students, the inclusion of students with severe disabilities (when there was appropriate support) did not reduce teaching time nor create many interruptions.” (Exceptional Children, 61,3 (1994): 242-253).

Yet the burden of proof will remain heavy upon us for some time. There is not really a day that we do not confront resistance to inclusion (or “barriers” which is a commonly used term), in the name of safety, medical needs, the guise of inclusion under the term “mainstreaming,” competition and more myths about why special needs children should not be included in our communities, schools and daily life. It is up to us to hold steady with this burden  to keep up the research and the dialogue about why inclusion is good for everyone.

As Adam goes to an inclusive school, it seems logical that we learn to teach by teaching and we learn to include by including. Legislation or no legislation, we will still have a lot of work to do in order to help others understand autism and autistic people as valuable and entitled in their own rite.

This month’s UTNE Reader has three superb articles on disability and design and disability and beauty. Long-time model, artist and prosthetic user (as well as designer) Aimee Mullins also writes, Prosthetic Power: Aimee Mullins redefines beauty and the body.

In this photo, Aimee is photographed with prosthetic legs which she fashioned after the hind legs of a cheetah. She runs with these legs and has a dozen pairs of differently-designed and fashionable legs, which also give her five different heights.

In the UTNE article, she discusses how she puts the legs on a table for young children to view and discuss. She asks adults to stay out of the room because “they [children] only learn to be frightened of those differences when an adult influences them to behave that way and censors that natural curiousity.” Instead of being stared at as some kind of freak, Aimee invites the children to explore. Unabashedly, they touch the legs an wiggle the toes, she explains. She says to the children “I woke up this morning and I decided I wanted to be able to jump over a house. If you could think of any animal, any superhero, any cartoon character, anything you can dream up right now, what kind of legs would you build me?” The children shouuted “Kangaroo! Frog!” and other amazing possibilities. Of this she explains, “I went from being a woman these kids would have been trained to see as disabled to somebody who had potential that their bodies didn’t have yet. Somebody who might even be super-abled. Interesting.”

As in autistic people speaking for themselves in any way or means they can, which also incites new ideas of what it means to be capable, valuable and above-all, human, Aimee raises two very important points. First, she has taken the bull-by-the-horn to invite people to explore instead of stare. The stare can be intrusive, full of, often misplaced, assumptions that the disabled person is less worthy and valuable or even capable. The stare can be overlayed with assumptions that an disfigurement is ugly.

Autistic researchers who redefine paradigms of how autistic people learn are no different than the likes of Aimee who not only redefine disability, but refuse to let non disabled or autistic people define it for them. Because Aimee’s disability is more visible, this point may be easier to absorb. Cognitive disabilities are still not understood in the same fashion.

Still, Aimee talks about becoming the architects of our identities, and this holds true for our autistic community.  As a woman who is admittedly still influenced by how I should look and behave and still tortured by it, I still have an awareness of how oppressive imposed identities have on us. She makes note how Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than she does but that “nobody [calls Pamela] disabled.”

While its true that no one calls Pamela Anderson disabled, I would argue that she is entirely disabled and entrapped in a male view of what a woman should be. We are entrapped also by what we should be as contributors to an economy, which is restricted itself in the ways people can contribute to it.  When women or any person works so hard in order to please others before themselves, they are no longer architects of their own identities, but slaves to an imposed identity.

Having visited the MIT lab when I gave a lecture there a couple of years ago now, I was a priviledged witness of astounding design for the disabled. I believe the article hits the nail on the head as it suggests that this is no longer about accepting disability or discussing potential (although it is frustrating for many of us that the question continues to swirl), but about the potential issues regarding augmentation.

In Graham Pullin’s book, Design Meets Disability, I believe we are witnessing devices and prosthetics for the disabled that are not meek and discrete, but that wears disability as fashionable as anything I’ve ever seen. And I know that MIT works with autistic people in their lab so that devices are in fact useful and empowering — not based on a model of making up for deficiency. It will be interesting, however, to see where augmentation takes us in the sense of designing humanity. Like any other kind of design, there is such potential for abuse. I would view women who augment themselves to extremes like Pamela Anderson a form of self-abuse, and I am admittedly not immune to it.

If sexiness is empowerment, I believe that Aimee is way too sexy for Pamela Anderson anyway, or for that matter, for many men equally dis-empowered by mass-media images regarding the women they are told  should be at their sides.

As a woman full of so-called flaws, can I just sneak in here that well,  I’m just too sexy for the status quo. Or at least I should, like the rest of us, keep convincing myself as such. Aimee certainly helps us all redefine beauty. And that is entirely liberating.

I’m leaving my theme of writing about children for a moment to disseminate today’s article in The Globe and Mail here.

It defintely makes a lot of sense to us as Adam has learned to play piano using visuals and patterns. He just had his first recital last week and beamed with “hey, that applause is for me?” kind-of-pride that just swells and oozes with, well….joy.