Why autism education needs to change

Thanks for clarifying Zoe, however I'm having difficulty visualising how these laudable objectives can be achieved, and one of my principle concerns lies with eye contact. From reading and observation eye contact seems to be the big issue, not so much the eye to eye information, but the ability to take in and interpret facial expression, and to reciprocate the required communicative facial expression through practiced interaction.

I'm in the mild/able category and always a bit wary of using myself as an example (though reading back through my posts I'm still habitually drawing on my own experience).  But after nearly twenty years as a lecturer, and as a public speaker, frequent participant in committees etc., I've got better and better since my 30s and since diagnosis in my fifties, at effective formal communication.  I can compensate, anticipate, play-act, and script my way through.

I still socialise badly, and one of the primary problems is eye contact.  I'm told I appear to have good eye contact but its not my own experience. As a teenager and even in my 20s I spoke to my tie, as my parents put it, and mumbled, and was embarrassingly aloof. As an adult I watch people's mouths (which seems pointless as I cannot lip read, but is better than where else my eyes sometimes fix). I don't see faces properly, cannot reliably read facial expression, and certainly from what I'm told often don't have appropriate facial expression for context.

It seems to me that what I would need to adapt to the moment in social expression, is good eye contact, and good facial reading skills. Which is another reason why I cannot fathom social stories, because it makes no odds reading cartoon faces if you cannot replicate reading real faces properly.

The barrier to mastering these social competencies is being able to assimilate the information. So it would perhaps help me comprehend your concept if I knew how you intend to overcome the eye contact deficit.

Hi Longman

What I think needs to be achieved (and what schools should prioritise for kids with autism) is the development of flexible thinking and social understanding and improvement in social communication.

NT kids come to school with all this is place - it is manifestly unfair (in my view) not to support our kids to develop these competencies.  It is tantamount to discrimination.

Social interaction is essentially a collection of a huge array of competencies that are mastered in the early years.  Kids with autism dont master these competencies (thats why they meet the diagnostic criteria for autism).

I dont know about whether or not 'social interaction issues go away' but I can tell you that I know of several families whose children no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for autism because their families have used the autism intervention Relationship Development Intervention with them.  My own son's ADOS score has decreased from 19 out of 22 (major rigidity problems) to 12, using RDI, and we still have a long way to go in the programme.

It is possible to help children with autism master the developmental steps that they missed in their early years because autism got in the way.  The upshot of this is that their autism decreases and their ability to think flexibly and adaptively increases (two sides of the same coin) - and so does their ability to communicate.  Communication is all about being able to adapt in the moment to the social situation (rather than following a set of rules), to understand someone elses perspective and to use different perspectives to inform decision-making.

Yes it can take a long time for these differences to become manifest - although its an incremental process, so you start to see results within 6 months. 

But personally I can live with the timeframe as long as I know what the goal is.  Rather that than do nothing and continue to see my child (and our family) struggle.

Zoe

Could you clarify what you think should be achieved here? My impression is that the social interaction issues do not go away (I've still got mine but I've improved my formal interaction vastly).

Can what you are proposing alleviate the difficulties in informal social situations where pragmatics are important?

Or are you hoping to improve how children handle formal communication?

It would be invaluable to be able to reduce social difficulties. However the timeframe from measures taken in childhood to seeing the outcome in teens or adulthood is quite a long one, so it would be a while before the fruits of these improvements were manifest.