Linking C2U and Research

The Importance of Curiosity to You (C2U), Your Child’s Guide

I attended the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in San Francisco in May. It was a fabulous event with researchers across the globe, 800 presenters and 2300 participants! I was dumbstruck by the sheer amount of research happening in the field of autism today.

At the meeting, there were 2 keynote speakers that particularly took my breath away: Ami Klin and Connie Kasari.

Ami Klin has studied autism for many years and is the head of the Marcus Autism Center, a National Institute of Health Center of Autism Excellence in Atlanta, Georgia. You can read more about him here: http://www.marcus.org/About-Us/Leadership/Get-to-Know-Dr-Klin

Connie Kasari has dedicated her life’s work to researching things near and dear to my heart: joint attention and symbolic play with children with autism. Her research projects can be found on her site: http://www.kasarilab.org/

Both researchers stress the importance of joint attention and it’s impact on development. Ami Klin shared that he was struck by his own research’s findings that lead him to have the existential realization that what we look at drives where we find meaning. More specifically, he found that Infants who later develop autism are fairly scattered in their eye gaze with a bit more falling on inanimate objects. Infants who later develop neuro-typically are clearly gazing at caregiver's’ eyes and mouths. The trajectory of these eye gaze patterns can later be observed to be more scattered visual attention to objects in the environment during social interactions rather than social information. If you then think about the implications of where attention is placed on later cognitive development, autism truly makes more sense, and so does our ability to guide someone to learn the value of gazing toward social reciprocity and engagement for learning and growth.

My drive for people to use C2U in their interactions with people with autism is stronger than ever. Where curiosity goes, attention goes. By simply and clearly allowing someone to shift their attention (which researchers are now calling “sticky attention”) to the more social interactive elements of any scene (you) before the inanimate objects, you are giving them a very powerful  and fundamental tool for learning. By guiding them to sustain their attention there, you are guiding them to learn from it. I call this C2U+Synchrony.

For more information and steps to gain C2U+Synchrony with your child, student, or friend, please see my blog on the subject: http://synergyautism.blogspot.com/2016/05/c2u-plus-synchrony.html

Partnering with your Child

Today I am talking about the importance of partnering with your child.  For some parents it may come naturally, for others it may feel challenging at first.  I encourage you to partner with your child at least ten times per day, every day.  It will get easier and you can start out small and always build on your successes in length of time you are partnering or ways in which you partner.

Developmentally, it is amazing how much children do in typical development that we do not talk about much.  WE seem to only talk about the end results of development.  We even call them milestones.  Think about a baby sitting up for the first time; did she do that without partnering with a guide holding her hands to pull her from lying down to sitting a dozen or more times before doing it on her own?  How about walking?  Did she just go from sitting up to walking without an occasional hand held for steadying?  Then there are those mini-moments as we grow that we learn through our parents’ physical guidance to stir, cut, move, swing, or turn.  We celebrate the achievements of the task, but what about the process of partnering that got us there?

For individuals with autism, independence can be strong and social engagement for learning and growing may be weaker.  If an infant seems to enjoy being alone we may allow him to swing alone in his swing.  The we marvel at the child’s manipulation of toys without needing assistance from us.  We are thrilled to see her watching videos and learning the alphabet without direct intervention and partnering for learning.  However, this teams that child is not getting practice with the exchange of information between two people.  She is not learning that physical touch can be helpful and meaningful.  SHe does not feel the guidance that can be modulated for her learning (not too much but allowing her to be as independent as possible.)  There may be occasions or areas of development that a child does use the physical partnering effectively, such as motor development.   But for toy exploration, imitation of parental actions that lead to imaginary play, and more, we often see very little partnering occurring for natural learning in autism.

Interestingly, most of my work is to help parents simply create opportunities for a skill to be generalized or become meaningful in a variety of contexts.  We often do not need to teach a specific skill but need to teach when to use it and why.  Partnering is one of those.  We do not need to teach your child to take a spoon you are offering and stir a bowl of cookie dough with you.  Our goal is to create opportunities for your child to use her ability to take action in partnerships with you to learn and grow to new heights of learning and engagement.

Definition of a partnership:

A partnership is one where both parties have authentic roles in a meaningful task, activity, or project.  A partnership can be a quick situation of opening a door together to a longer engagement of wiping down a table together or engaging in play.

Simple ways to partner with your child:

1. Take laundry out of the washer together and put it into the dryer
2. Stir something together
3. Make the bed together
4. Play a game
5. Read a book by taking turns or by having your child turn the pages
6. Push, pull, manipulate play dough together
7. Sweep a patio, deck, kitchen floor together (both hands on broom or one has the dust pan)
8. Sing together (both singing at the same time or one and then the other)
9. Play pat a cake type games
10. Move, dance, walk together in usion or taking turns
11. Explore and find objects to gather into one container

Make it manageable for learning to happen

Remember that our goal is for your child to learn new things from you, her guide.  If you create an opportunity for partnering and it becomes boring you are not going to be teaching anything new.  If it is too overly exciting or stimulating or difficult you also will not be teaching anything new, except maybe that she does not way to partner with you.  So make sure your partnership remains manageable.  Offer changes to keep it light, fun, yet challenging.  It is always okay to offer light teasing if it is meaningful for your child.  It can even be therapeutic for your child to see when things are not as they seem.  Challenges that are right on the child’s edge of competency are going to keep her engagement and interest.

Too boring = disengagement

Too difficult or overstimulating = disengagement

Make it physical

Be sure to have your child’s active participation in your partnership with her body involved.  Require her to use her hands to carry something or push something or manipulate something.  When your child’s body is engaged in a partnership with you her mind will be, too.

Be authentic

Think about your partnership and it’s authenticity.  If you are setting things up so that your child can reach everything need then she does not need you.  She won’t partner with you through the small challenges you provide.  If you decide to hand your child something to put in something else be sure to position yourself authentically so that your child needs to partner with you for success.

Be mindful

When you partner with your child, be sure to check in with yourself first.  Partnering with anyone takes mindfulness.  If your head is not in the game neither will your child’s.  Take a moment just prior to inviting your child into a partnership to take a deep breath and choose to be in the moment with her.  This will enable you to think during your interactive versus being triggered by behaviors and distractions.

Turn frustration into fascination

If your child or you become agitated during partnering ask yourself “why?”  Are you in the right frame of mind to be partnering with your child?  Is your child hungry>?  Tired?  Needing more direction?  Needing more independence?  These are all great questions that if you are asking them and willing to ponder them, you will know the answer of how to change or alter course.

Document the opportunities you provide

In some way that is meaningful for you, document the partnering opportunities you are offering to your child.  If you are able to video the partnering this is a great way to not only document for progress monitoring but it also will help you review what worked and did not work.  If you would like to partner more frequently, consider a simple tally mark on your family calendar or a note on the fridge.  But do take the time to document.  You will be so proud of yourself and your child when you see the progress can be seen in black and white.

Happy mindful parenting!

Barb

(revised and reposted from blog posted in 2015)

The power of moms

In celebration of Mother's Day, I thought I would take a moment to celebrate the power of moms of children with autism. I am in frequent admiration for mothers with whom I work. The determination, love, and confidence they so often bring to their children is downright inspiring. Here are just some of the wonderful things I see and hear from moms everyday:

They organize and schedule. Everything.
They comfort when their children and family members are sick.
They stay home or are the ones to be called home when a child is sick or so overwhelmed at school that they are hurting themselves or others.
They figure out how to respond when a child is upset, overwhelmed, or simply being obstinate... and they learn to truly know the difference.
They ensure healthy meals and take their children to appointments.
They research and provide the next dietary restrictions and modifications with often severely limited options (no dairy, no wheat, no oranges, no cinnamon, no, no, no, no).
They read to their children every night.
They bath, cloth, and cook meals... not to mention the clean up from each.
They yell, scream, lose it, and then apologize, regroup, and try again. and again. and again.
They drive and drive and drive to this appointment and that appointment.
They phone, email, schedule, coordinate, and videotape. all while ensuring everything above.
They connect with their children emotionally in the middle of chaotic moments even when they are feeling chaotic themselves.
...and they quietly, patiently, and beautifully celebrate others contributions to make everything work out in the end.