Background discussion
This is the paired activity
for number 6. like activities 4 and 5, it involves making a transition – and
likely a more extreme one – between one scenario and another. For Hercules now encounters
the other, very different, woman. One goal of this activity is
to help the children feel empathy and to aid in their interactions with their
peers. Autism is a mode of existence rather than something that can be cured.
As Sue Rubin says in the film about her:
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.[1]
As Jim Sinclair wrote, in the essay "Don't Mourn for Us," 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 and a different way of being and of relating. To quote Sinclair again:
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.
In this posting, I continue
to reflect on what part classical myth – specifically one of the episodes in
the myth of Hercules – might play in discovering such a world – and in mapping
out this world.
I am not seeking to develop
activities geared towards some way to cure the children of their autism – but
rather to help them interact with others to facilitate their interaction with a
world that can be non-autistic. I do also hope that, by giving the children
sufficient time to reflect on and engage with the various stages of the myth
and to engage in play activities in the location where it is set, there will
also be an opportunity for each child to develop their own distinctive autistic
characteristics, and to experience the characteristics of their peers. As a result of the the
consultations I am going to embark on next with professionals, I hope to develop aspects of the activities that relate specifically to the
embodied differences of autistic people.
The Activity
The facilitator should
direct the children to something going on over in the other part of the scene.
This is the appearance of another woman – she is in the rocky part of the landscape.
She is standing up – in between the hero and the helmet. She holds a sword in
one hand. Her other hand points up the mountainside behind herself.
One possible activity would
be for the facilitator to place the woman in the requisite place in the scene.
Then the facilitator could ask the children what words are called up by her
appearance. It might be that the words they provide are relevant to how they
think that Hercules is feeling, or the words might be relevant to their own feelings
– now that they are transitioning to the next activity. As previously, the
facilitator can provide a prepared list of words or a list of emojis. I am considering
whether to prepare a set of these as part of the materials that will, eventually,
accompany the activities.
Next, the facilitator gets
the children to colour her in. As with the other woman, they could pick colours
on their own initiative, or the facilitator could limit the choice to dull
colours – perhaps even lead pencils. The children colour her in – individually
or in pairs, or as a team.
Then, as previously, the
facilitator gets the children to copy her pose – as they did with the other woman. Again,
they should copy her gestures and what her eyes are doing. This could be
accompanied with models or with toys – toy swords would be ideal here. These
could be added to the helmet used earlier. Indeed, the facilitator might encourage the children to use the
full range of objects now introduced. For example, they might put on the
helmet in addition to holding the sword.
Then the children should copy
Hercules’s gestures and stance – they did this in the previous activity. This
time, however, it should be in relation to how Hercules is responding to Virtue
rather than Pleasure. Is he looking at her? Is his body included towards her or
away from her? What is the significance of the pointing gesture she is making
with one hand? What is she pointing to? Then, the children could be encouraged
to list relevant words – including those for what the woman is pointing to –
such as ‘hill’ or ‘mountain’ or ‘steep’.
As a closing task, and to
lead into the final activity, the facilitator could ask whether Hercules would
have anything to say to the woman. Then, to help encourage the children to
think about how there can be more than one perspective on any social
communication, they could also be encouraged to ask what the woman might say to
Hercules.
Then, after a break (when I
consult with others about these activities, I shall discuss how long these
breaks should be) the children move to the final activity where – at last! –
Hercules will make a choice between the two women and their accompanying
objects. This will be the subject of my next posting.
[1] See, e.g., Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars (London: Picador, 1995); Steve
Silberman, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about
People Who Think Differently (London:
Allen and Unwin, 2015); 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.
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