For any kid, whether they enjoy it or not, school is a whole minefield of challenges and new experiences. I remember Mum saying that when we all started school we would be exhausted by the time we came home and be so bad-tempered. For kids on the autistic spectrum it seems as if we spend all of our time stepping on these mines (don't worry, any kids reading this there are no mines really - I am just using metaphors) and the whole school experience becomes a very difficult one.
How many of you AS adults reading this remember having a good time at school? If I were a gambling person, then I would bet that most if not all of you said, "No way" to that one! Many other AS people that I have talked to tell me that school memories range from being best forgotten to impossible to forget because they were so traumatic. This is all wrong and any of us who are still in any school system should set about educating teachers, other kids, parents and anyone else who can help to change such things.
When I was in the junior school I had all sorts of problems with bullying, sound sensitivity (why on earth they have to deafen everyone with a bell, numerous times a day, I will never know!), understanding exactly what I was meant to be doing, forgetting stuff, and being too slow at most things, AS kids. I am presuming that you all have similar kind of problems?
At school everything changes so often. I am not totally locked into routines and Mum tries hard to change things regularly so that Ben doesn't become that way either, but still, going into a classroom to find that we then have to join another class because the teacher is off, or move desks for no apparent reason, all adds to the hassle of school.
Everthing is so busy at school and everyone else, all the kids and all the teachers, seems to have a purpose and I never have quite fathomed out what that purpose is. I know we are there to learn but there seems to be so much more going on than that. It is like beginning a game without knowing any of the rules or passwords.
For any classroom assistants for professionals or teachers reading this, then please, please try to realize that instinctively knowing where to go and who to talk to and what to do next just isn't possible for a kid on the autistic spectrum. If a teacher says, "Now get out your books and turn to page ten," and doesn't say, "and now start answering those questions," then the AS kid is not likely to know; so to tell them off for doing no work that lesson is unfair.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been told to copy a title off the blackboard and then sat patiently waiting for what to do next, whilst everyone else scribbled frantically. Only later, as a teacher wanders around the classroom like a hungry animal, carefully selecting the tastiest morsel, do I usually become the unfortunate prey as I get pounced upon with a barrage of, "Jackson, why are you sitting there doing nothing?" and "Get on with your work, boy." Teachers and support assistants please tell the AS kids exactly what they are expected to get on with.
I used to have a teacher who helped me at school, but at the time I didn't have a clue what she helped me with. Teaching assistants, whatever level of understanding the child you are working with has got, then I reckon you should still try to involve the child so that they know what is going on.
I also used to have an occupational therapist come into school and do stuff like making me stand on one leg and lie on the floor and scrunch my toes together and then relax them and throw beanbags at boards. One minute I was sat in a classroom and the next I was carted off to the hall with a few other kids to do this kind of stuff. No one ever told me why! I was quite glad to do this kind of stuff rather than do lessons - what kid wouldn't be? It was quite unsettling, though, to get used to what I was going and then suddenly have to change.
I know I am repeating myself (something I tend to do a lot, as my sisters will tell you!), but I will say again that the key to helping a child on the autistic spectrum is to always make sure you tell them very clearly what is going on. I really cannot stress this enough. The same applies all through an AS person's life. If you explain to them clearly in terms that you may even consider below their intelligence, it really does help. I can breathe such a sigh of relief when I know exactly what is going on and why. AS people, make sure you tell your teachers and assistants this.
-------------------------------------------------
Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic
Reading
Some people on the autistic spectrum learn to read extremely early without ever being taught. This is called hyperlexia and I know nothing at all about it so all I can do is include a link at the back...
Reading was not something that I did at an early age but I did have some problems with reading when I was younger. The school gave me all sorts of extra help with reading and I couldn't even remember one letter from the other. However much anyone taught me, It just would not sink in. I had had an assessment by an educational psychologist when I was seven years and eight months old and my reading age was not assessable because I just couldn't read anything. The next day Mum got a phone call from the school asking her to come in and see them.
She told me that she was very worried as that usually meant that I was having a massive tantrum, but when she got there the teachers had something that they just couldn't wait to tell. I had picked up a copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which they teacher was using to show how plays were written. It seems that I opened the book and began to read it fluently. How weird is that? I wonder if that has a name too - "can't-read-then-suddenly-starts-to-lexia" maybe? Hypo is the opposite of hyper so it may be something to do with that.
The educational psychologist came and assessed me again on that day, too, because she was so interested. My reading age then came out at fourteen years and ten months. I am just thirteen now and my reading age was assessed at seventeen years and nine months. I haven't a clue how they decide on that kind of stuff but I suppose any psychologists reading this will know. I hope there are some!
I hope this encourages parents never to give up on a child who seems unable to learn to read. I told Mum and school that someone had "switched a light on in my head". Maybe this happens in other areas and at different ages with people, so never give up trying. Now I read lots of books and have read forty-five just this term. I won an award for that at school. How easy was that one! I read "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" in one night. I now have the electric switched off at night time because otherwise I read and read and read and never go to sleep. Strange how things work out.
Books are my doorways into other worlds. They cheer me when I am upset, they make me laugh, cry, and quake with fright. A good book should keep someone entranced right till the end. I am not sure whether mine will do that as they are factual. I will try, though.
I am afraid I cannot really give an decent advice on how to teach your AS child to read as I did it in such a strange way. I do know, though, that people on the autistic spectrum respond much better to visual stuff and may be more likely to memorize the look of whole words than 'learn' to build them. Building words with sounds was a concept I never did grasp. Neither did Joe, but he has just clicked at exactly the same age as me. Ben is nowhere near reading, he can't even count or recognize letters yet, but it will be interesting to see if he is the same age when he clicks also.
To teachers and support workers who are trying to teach a child on the autistic specturm to read: if all else fails, then leave them in a room with one book that may be of interest to the child. It may be that they, too, just have something "switched on" in their heads. Most AS people enjoy things much more when they are doing it themselves.
We tried everything to teach Ben how to use a computer mouse and to show him that moving the mouse was linked to what was going on on the screen. No way could he understand that, but at three o'clock in the morning, when Mum was tired out, she lay on the couch and left him sat up to the computer and he just worked it out for himself. He now has the most amazing mouse control and can find his favourite web page, send emails (even though they only say "44444" - his favorite number) and do way more things than a lot of people can do.
One thing I could not do is tell a story just by looking at a picture. I think this is a really stupid concept. I remember one assessment where the educational psychologist drew a man and asked me to say what he was doing. "Duh - it is just pen and paper," I told her scornfully! To me, asking me to do this is like asking a person to paint a picture but yet giving them no brushes or paint...
Writing.
Writing is something that I find very difficult. Holding a pen makes my hand ache and what I actually think never quite appears the same on paper. This used to get me very mad and I would go through masses of paper writing just one little big and then screwing it up and chucking it away. The same can be said for drawing. I suppose I like things to be perfect and my writing certainly isn't.
I know you may consider it to be a waste of paper if your child or the person you are working with is doing this, but I am afraid that the only solution may be to get some cheap paper. It is impossible to carry on working on one peice of paper whilst there is something wrong staring you in the face on another bit of the paper. Maybe you could encourage the person to turn the paper over and use the back, but that is not possible in exercise books of course.
At school I use a word processor now and that is so much easier. I know that everyone has to be able to write a bit but so many doctors and professional people write terribly, so it connot be that important to write neatly. My Mum writes like a little child and she absolutely hates doing it and she has a degree and all sorts of other qualifications.
Parents, if your child is very slow and struggling to get their work done, then buying them a word processor to use may be the answer. Ideally, the school should provide it and any teachers reading this please realize this is important and not just laziness. Most AS kids relate better to computers than people so working on a laptop or word processor will enable them to work better and faster. If you are not sure about this, then give them a chance to show you. You will be very surprised.
Any AS kids reading this, don't use this as any excuse never to write again because you do need to be able to write in life, but it will make your life easier. If you are worried about being teased and being different, then I find that strange because I am sure you are pretty different anyway. Remember different is cool!!
'Rithmetic
I don't really mean arithmetic here, but maths in general. I can't say a lot about this at all. It is something That I had loads of difficulty with when I was younger and now I just plod away at it. I am no genius in this area but a lot of AS kids are. It seems to be one thing that you either excel at or you don't. (I suppose that is a silly statement though, because that applies to most things in life.)
A lot of kids with AS love Latin, German, and definitely, information technology (IT). There may be some subjects which are better suited to an AS person's brain but, generally speaking, we are not clones and have our own strengths and weaknesses. Despite the film Rain Man, we don't all have these amazing mathematical skills - I wish!
Not to Mention Homework
I would really rather not mention it actually - in fact I would like not to think about it and I would most definitely rather not do it! Don't you agree, AS kids? However, as most of you reading this book are either in the same boat as myself (I know -there is no boat!), have kids that are in the same position as myself or are working with a kid like myself, then I will mention homework after all. If you are a teacher reading this, then you may not like what I have to say.
First of all - what do we go to school to do? Duh... schoolwork, of course! I know a lot of people will go on about teamwork and social skills and organization skills and I think I have said my views on that already, but generally the main part of school is to do lessons. We are there to do schoolwork.
Now I may be a little stupid here or schools in my area may be massively different to other areas (I actually know that they are not because I have talked to other people on the internet), but at the end of lessons the teachers tell us to get our homework diaries out and write down that we must finish the work we have started in class. If they don't tell us to do that, then we have to do. Exercise 7G questions 1-19, for example. Yes, you guessed it... all this stuff is out of our textbooks. We are told to look on the internet for stuff when we could easily do that at school. All in all, 'homework' is identical to 'schoolwork' - the only difference being that it is done at home!
Why is this? I tend to think it's because the world is full of non-sensical, illogical rubbish. Surely, if we have a certain amount of work to cover, then school is the place to do it? Are we being taught self-discipline or being tested to see if we can work alone? If so, then that is completely false because, for all the school knows, we could be getting other people to do it for us anyway. Teachers even tell us to ask our parents for help if we are stuck. What good will that do us?
... (furthermore).. Where is the logic in letting us flounder about doing work on our own when the object of the exercise is for us to learn the stuff properly? If we are to do an hour and a half in the evening, then why not make the school day that much longer? Why not make the (lunch) break shorter, rather than leaving us to hang around for well over an hour wondering what to do with ourselves?
I wonder whether this is to do with the length of time teaches want to work and even maybe the length of time the government wants to pay them. The more work they do, the more they have to get paid so it is cheaper to get us to work at home. Some kind of child labour maybe? I thought all that stopped years ago!
I think that our time at home should be just that - time at home. We have to go to school. The law says we have to go to school to at least be educated otherwise. I have written about that further on and it is an important bit for you all to read. At the moment, though, I will presume most of you or your kids go to school.
School is hard for anyone. There is a lot to remember, a lot to organize and a lot to learn. That applies to kids without any difficulties. For kids with AS or any kind of difficulty, it is even harder because we have to work at stuff that comes naturally to others. I don't think that anyone would expect someone with one leg to be able to keep up with everything that two-legged people were doing,but yet people with AS are expected to keep up with everything at school and very few allowances are made. I know I sound like a sulky kid, but it's all very unfair.. stamps foot and sticks bottom lip out here!
There are many days when I have great difficulty remembering what I am meant to be doing from one minute to the next. I get distracted very easily and things that are important to others often don't seem so to me and vice versa. For kids with attention problems it must be really, really difficult. Joe often can't remember what anyone has said to him a second afterwards, so how on earth is he meant to remember what homework to do, or even that he has got any? He cannot remember to write in his diary unless he is reminded and then forgets to bring his bag or his diary home anyway.
Once at home, Joe sits down at a table with the stuff he is meant to do in front of him. He then keeps getting up and flicking his pencil around and can't sit still. Mum ends up getting in a bad mood and shouts, "Will someone see if they can help Joe to do his homework?" So another of us takes over and so it goes on. All in all it takes literally hours. Poor Joe really tries hard too. I feel very sorry for him with stuff like this. He is trying really hard at the moment.
When Joe comes in from school he likes to run up and down the hall and shriek like a monkey and do "midgy men." This is where is does manic bunnyhops and covers his knees in bruises. He has way too much energy when he comes in and Mum just lets him go mad for quite a while before she shouts,
That's enough," and we all breathe a sigh of relief. I am the opposite. I like to sit and read or, best of all, play on the PlayStation or go on my laptop. For some reason, Mum has a real problem with that and we always have the "Have you got your homework?" and "Hang on, I will check" routine! I then get out my homework diary, look all meaningful and say, "No, I did it in the library" or "Yes, but it doesn't have to be in for another week." I am now going to let myself in for a load of trouble but when I get out that little diary I very often haven't written in it anyway.
I cannot keep up with the speed at which the teachers tell us what to write. I am too busy trying to pack away and worrying about where I am going next to do that kind of stuff too. Sometimes I do write stuff down, but I scribble it so quickly that I cannot read it or it just doesn't make sense.
I suppose I should now give advice on how to cope with having homework and how to make it easier to do. I must say that this really does bug me because I feel as if I am accepting and even contributing to something that I think is very wrong. As far as I am concerned, home is home and school is school, and never the twain should meet. So here it comes. Advice on how to cope with homework. First and foremost, go right to your headmaster and give him a piece of your mind... snicker. Don't do this really or you will get into trouble. I fell as if I want to give out tips to help all you AS kids avoid doing homework but we are stuck with it, so here are some tips that will ease it slightly. (and only slightly).
Doing homework - ways to make the best out of a bad job
1. Try to arrange to do your homework in the library at (lunch) or stay late after school to do it. This works best for me. It is schoolwork we are doing after all.
2. If you can't do the work at school, then maybe you could swap houses with someone and do your work there. I find that doing homework anywhere other than home is best.
3. If you have to do it at home, then take a deep breath and tell your parent that they are not to let you do anything else til your homework is done (and be prepared for battle when you don't want them to enforce this.)
4. Set up your own 'homework area' and make sure no one interferes with it.
5. Try to incorporate homework into part of your routine rather than sitting and feeling resentful that it has to be done.
6. Try to think of it as revising rather than an extension of schoolwork. This makes it more acceptable because, horrible as it is, we have to revise for exams. Teachers can only teach us, not learn for us.
Not Much Fun and Games
If I have succeeded in getting even one games teacher to understand anything at all about the nature of AS and the difficulties we experience in games then writing this whole book will have been worthwhile and I really will be on cloud nine. (Ha - I am getting good!) All AS kids reading this make sure that you or your parent shows at least this bit to the games teacher.
I have said loads of times that we are not all the same, so there may be exceptions to this, but I reckon there aren't many. Most AS kids genuinely have a really hard time with games - we are NOT just being lazy. I have never been any good at football or any team sports. I hate them and will do all I can to avoid playing them. There are quite a few reasons for this. I have pretty poor co-ordination and am not very good at catching, throwing, kicking and controlling a ball. Ok, Ok, I admit it.. I am absolutely terrible at catching, throwing, kicking and controlling a ball - I have enough trouble controlling my arms and legs actually!
I don't hang around in a group and everyone is aware of how bad I am at team sports so no one ever wants me in their team. The familiar hustle and bustle, murmuring and giggling that follow the instruction, "Get into teams" are alway accompanied by the predictable, "Aw, Sir, do we have to?" or "No way are we having him" as the games teacher allocates me to a random team, rather like a spare piece of luggage that no one can be bothered to carry. I tell you their feelings are reciprocated - no way do I want to be in their team either!
---------------------------