I
ended my previous posting by emphasising two distinctive things that that I am
trying to achieve through my resources. These two things are complementary – or
at least this is how they ought to be regarded. On the one hand, the activities
are in response to the need to help support autistic people. On the other hand,
I would like the activities to do another thing, that can be overlooked, namely
to help foster the abilities of autistic people and engage the autistic imagination.
In the current posting, I want to look further at these issues - while also introducing one further one. The illustration with which I've begun this posting will be explained at the end.
As Rita Jordan and Stuart Powell stress, in their practical
advice for those working with autistic people, there is a distinctly autistic
way of learning. This can be hard to grasp by those who do not share autistic
ways of learning – I like putting it this way round, as it marks out the
non-autist here as the one who is deficient, rather than the autistic person. Jordan
and Powell emphasise that autism education should keep a focus not just on what
autistics lack, but on autistic strengths and abilities.
They emphasise that it
is vital to set high expectations for each learner, while providing plenty of
support as well. And as they set out, one challenge is around enabling autistic
people to pick up with others are able to do instinctively. Autistic practice
should be supporting distinctively autistic ways of thinking and behaving,
while finding ways for autistic people to operate in a world that is
“non-autistic.”[1]
With this in mind, I would
like to quote again from the essay by Jim Sinclair mentioned in my previous
posting. What Sinclair says is ‘Don’t mourn for us’:
Autism isn't something a person has,
or a "shell" that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child
hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive;
it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and
encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism
from the person--and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not
be the same person you started with” (emphasis
in original).[2]
As I have been developing this
blog, I have increasingly been convinced that there is vast potential for myth
as a means both to support autistic people, for instance by helping foster
skills in social communication and to engage autistic people, for instance by
creating the conditions for an exploration of an autistic way of being.
There is more, too - and this takes me to the third issue promised in the introduction to this posting.
Classical myth has the potential, too, as a gateway into the world of an
autistic child. I am minded, for example, of the experiences of Ron Suskind which I mentioned in a posting
in January of last year and which I shall
return to here. In his Life, Animated: A
Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism (Los Angeles and New York:
Kingswell, 2014), Suskind sets out his journey towards communicating
with his son, Owen, via Disney characters, including characters in Disney’s Hercules.
The book charts Owen’s journey
since he suddenly started to show autistic traits as a three-year-old in the
1990s and lost the ability to speak in any way that was intelligible to others.
Owen kept up his love of Disney. His parents had been told by professionals to
“tame” this love because they saw it as something that was holding back his
progress.
Yet, it was in fact Owen’s gateway to the world. One word that he
would keep saying sounded to his father like “juice” but it later transpired
that he was saying “just your voice,” which is what Ursela says in The
Little Mermaid. In time Disney became a gateway for others into Owen’s
inner world as well. He had been using a Disney film to communicate but no one
could yet understand him, until one day when his father picked up his puppet of
Iago, the villain’s sidekick from Aladdin, and started talking as that puppet.
Owen started responding. Thus
began his father’s recognition that what he had here was a pathway to his son.
It was not merely that Owen had memorised lines from the plays.[3] Owen
was using the Disney characters to communicate his feelings while also to help
him reflect on his own self and his relationship to the world. Since then, Owen
has continued to draw from films to enable him to process his feelings at key
points in his life including to deal with difficult experiences, such as a
relationship break-up.
Reading about this process,
and the role played by Hercules among an array of characters, has helped
encourage me in my conviction that it is worth developing resources around the
adventures of this figure to explore how the characters of myth, and the difficult
moments they need to negotiate, can serve as a just such a gateway.
In an interview in 2016, Owen Siskind was asked, "What does it mean to be autistic?” He
answered, “It means that you have
special skills and talents inside you.”[4] Like Disney films,
classical myth can provide a means to help bring these skills to the world
outside – and it is the aim of my project to develop resources that do
precisely this.
As I have been exploring of
late, it is the Choice of Hercules between two paths in life that I have
selected to do this. I began the previous posting with the logotype that has
been created for this blog by the Our Mythical Childhood project’s graphic artist. The artist has also devised the image I included at the start of the current posting. This image will appear when users of the Survey we are creating -- of classical themes in children's culture: watch this space -- hover over
the logo. The hover-image offers a tantalising glimpse of the artefact that
will be the centrepiece of the first set of resources. Next time round, I am planning to show the whole of the artefact and say more about what it is about it that makes it so apposite for a set of activities for use with autistic children.
[1] Rita Jordan and Stuart Powell, eds., Autism and Learning: A Guide to Good Practice (London
and New York: Routledge, 2012; updated edition, originally published 1997). See particularly the preface by Jordan (viii-x) and the “Rationale
for the Approach,” by Powell and Jordan [pages to follow].
[2] Jim Sinclair, “Don’t Mourn for Us.” Autism Network
International (ANI) website (last accessed 08.02.18), originally published
in Our Voice 1.3. On Jim Sinclair, see Steve Silberman, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think
Smarter about People Who Think Differently (London: Allen and Unwin, 2015),
432-41, 445-9.
[3] On echolalia and autism see Laura Sterponi and Kenton de Kirby, "A Multidimensional
Reappraisal of Language in Autism: Insights from a Discourse Analytic
Study," Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 46.2 (2016):
394-405.
[4] Democracy Now!
“Life, Animated: A Remarkable Story of How aFamily Reached Their Autistic Son Through Disney Movies” (27.1.16),
interviewer Amy Goodman (last accessed 09.02.18).
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