I have spent the last few
postings introducing my first set of resources by providing various pieces of
background, including on why I have chosen an episode in the mythical life of
Hercules – his choice between two opposing paths in life – for the activities. Now
that I am on the cusp of staring to share these resources, I am honoured to
present the following image: a logotype that has been prepared by the graphic artist
who is creating logos for the social media projects underway by the Our Mythical Childhood team. These are all in the style of modern comics in order to be as
attractive and meaningful as possible to a range of potential users. The one
for Autism and Classical Myth is this one: a puzzle with Athena’s helmet. One
piece of the puzzle is missing and yet the missing piece is close by – the
puzzle is incomplete but it can be completed. It is appropriately apparently
simple and yet complex.
This seems to me to be an
apt time to be sharing this image – just when I am about to share a set of activities
for children that involve a mythical episode that is both strikingly clear in
what it deals with and which raises issues that strike to the core of what it
is to be human, including what it is to be a human on the road to adulthood.
Over the following paragraphs, I am going to set out some of the ways in which
I hope that the resources will be of use to autistic children.
Completing the puzzle?
For all young people, the
challenges of childhood can be acute as they negotiate experiences on the path
to adulthood. These include challenges common to all such as building
identities and making choices. But, for autistic young people, the challenges
of childhood can be all the more acute as they find ways to make sense of
experiences, develop imaginations, learn to plan for the future, and try to
make sense of where they fit within time and space.
As I have been reflecting
over recent postings, there is potential in myths of Hercules for work with
autistic children – and particularly in the story of the hero’s choice between
two divergent paths in life. This is a myth with a distinguished history of expressing
contemporary concerns about children. I have picked it because of the
opportunity it offers to open up new cultural and intellectual opportunities
for autistic children specifically, including in: stimulating the imagination,
extending experience, developing social and personal skills, giving cultural
experience and aiding interaction with others.
Autistic children
characteristically experience a range of hardships over and above those
experienced by other children. They find it difficult, for example, to know
what to say or do in social situations, or to respond to the subtle cues that
other children learn more easily. It is especially hard for an autistic child
to do the kind of things that are, or come to be, innate for others, for
instance how to initiate or maintain a conversation. Autistic children will
find it harder than their peers to read body language or facial expressions –
or any form of non-verbal conversation. Interpreting things like tone of voice
will likely prove difficult too. Beyond this, developing any rapport with
others will likely be a challenge. And they will find it hard, too, to gauge
what others are thinking or feeling.
These difficulties in communication
will tend to be compounded by difficulties over processing information.
Autistic children will likely find it hard to think beyond the present and they
might well find it hard to understand that the present can turn into the
future. They will often find it difficult to understand the “bigger picture” in
any given scenario, preferring instead to focus on particular details. Autistic
children also find it hard to deal with changes in routine, preferring instead
set and repetitive patterns of behaviour. Added to this, they will
characteristically experience heightened sensory perceptions such an acute
reaction to noise or smell. For many
years, these difficulties were articulated in the “triad of impairments” identified
by Lorna Wing, these being: difficulties in social and emotional understanding,
difficulties in all aspects of communication, and a lack of flexibility in
thinking and behaviour.[1]
In
the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5),
autism spectrum disorders are categorised in terms of “communication problems”,
“difficulty relating to people, things and events” and “repetitive body
movements or behaviors”.[2]
Does the
puzzle need completing?
But
I would also like to approach the issue from a different angle. A great deal of
work into autism and autistic children has centred on how to help autistic
children function in a non-autistic world, for example by helping them make eye contact or by finding ways to stop
them making repetitive actions. However, there has also been a move – a move
that has been accelerating in the 9 or so years since I began this blog – away from
pathologised as an impairment to regarding autism as a mode of existence.
This way of conceptualising
autism is expressed, too, in the title of the film about Sue Rubin: Autism is a World. And as Rubin makes
clear at end of the film:
The
last thing I want to clarify is that no matter how much social interaction one
has, one will never be free of autism. The tendencies to be and act in certain
ways may subside but I will always be autistic.
From this recognition, in
place of trying to make someone autistic more like “us,” for example by helping
them make eye contact or by finding ways to stop them making repetitive
actions, instead it becomes viable to think, instead, about embodied
differences, and to seek different ways of understanding autistic behaviour and
recognising possibly advantageous autistic behaviours.[3]
As Jim Sinclair wrote, turning around the assumption of who is “other” and who
is “normal”:
Each of us who does learn to talk to
you, each of us who manages to function at all in your society, each of us who
manages to reach out and make a connection with you, is operating in alien
territory, making contact with alien beings.
Accompanying autistic
children on the road to adulthood, then, need not solely involve addressing the
various challenges they face – it can also involve a journey, for the
non-autist, towards comprehending a different way of being and of relating:
Push for the things your
expectations tell you are normal, and you'll find frustration, disappointment,
resentment, maybe even rage and hatred. Approach respectfully, without
preconceptions, and with openness to learning new things, and you'll find a
world you could never have imagined.[4]
I
will close for now – and when I pick this up again, I shall explore how
Hercules’ Choice can help find a place in society for people who think
differently, while also fostering their particular abilities and helping them
puzzle out a non-autistic world.
[1] See, esp., Lorna
Wing, “Autistic Spectrum Disorders,” 312.7027
( The
Autistic Spectrum: a Guide for Parents and Professionals (London: Robinson 2002, updated edn.).
[2] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5)
(2013) (last accessed 31.07.17). On autistic impairments, including on ‘the need to
impose a strict and inflexible order on…daily routine abilities,’ see Eva Loth
“Abnormalities in “Cultural Knowledge” in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Link
Between Behavior and Cognition?” in Evelyn McGregor, María Núñez, Katie Cebula
and Juan Carlos Gómez, eds., Autism: An
Integrated View from Neurocognitive, Clinical, and Intervention Research
(Malden: Blackwell, 2008), 83-103, esp. 83-85.
[3] See e.g. Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars (London: Picador, 1995); Temple Grandin
and Richard Panek, The Autistic Brain:
Thinking Across the Spectrum (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013); Thomas G.
West. Seeing What Others Cannot See: the
Hidden Advantages of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains (Amherst:
Prometheus 2017), esp. 69-90.
[4] Jim Sinclair, “Don’t Mourn for Us.” Autism Network
International (ANI) website (last accessed 31.07.17) originally published
in Our Voice 1.3 (1993).
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