Autism touches many lives
“Our children are teaching us, but we as their parents, teachers, grandparents and aides need to be willing to be open to their teachings.” -Tracie Carlos, author, educator and parent of a child with autism
April is National Autism Awareness Month. I have spent much of the past 16 years teaching and working with children on the autism spectrum.
I would have never guessed, growing up that this would be my profession. I was never comfortable in school, though I was intelligent and received excellent grades. I was very sensitive and prone to loud and emotional outbursts, from time to time.
Like many people, I felt like an outsider. I put my best foot forward in order to fit in and please the right people.
Somewhere along the line, this way of being no longer worked for me. Things started to fall apart, beginning with my grandfather’s passing, and my brother’s going away to college. I started to feel anxious, angry and depressed, more often.
In college, at the University of California, at San Diego, I sought help from the school counselors and eventually found an outstanding psychologist, Mr. Paul Pinegar, in La Jolla, California. Paul had learned under the great humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers.
My desire for authentic self-expression continued to grow as I sang for a band, called Monkey Wagon. I was seeking something that seemed elusive. I was seeking something that felt real to me.
As I moved through my General Psychology major, my own challenges with learning became more pronounced. My grades, while still passing, were just that, passing.
I attended less class, played more music and all the while, sought something that felt real. This applies to my relationship to people on the autism spectrum because in them I recognized something authentic.
It was in one of the rare abnormal psychology classes that I actually attended that I first saw a video of someone doing behavioral modification, a popular form of therapy, with a boy on the autism spectrum.
The therapist, using his mother as a model, was asking the boy to identify her emotions based on the expression on her face. When she smiled, he was prompted to say she was happy and when she turned her mouth down, he was prompted to say she was sad.
While watching the video, I noticed something that stayed with me. When the boy was asked how his mother felt, although she was smiling, he got very close to her face and shouted, “You’re sad! You’re sad! You’re sad!”
He was then corrected and then they tried again until the boy gave the desired response. What I noticed was that the mother did seem sad. Although she smiled, she seemed very sad in her heart.
I thought to myself, “How could this boy be corrected for shouting out the truth?”
A year later, after working temp jobs as an office clerk, I went to the college career center (for the first time) and searched for jobs related to my major.
Sure enough, within a week, I started working one-on-one with children with autism. It was challenging work.
The thing that kept me inspired was the sense that these children were tapping into something deeper, and more authentic, than what I had been experiencing in my daily life.
I found creative, beautiful souls, who were not concerned with social norms, and who were very sensitive to the energy of the people and environments they were in. I could relate.
My primary goal as an educator is to honor each individual as whole and perfect and shine a light on that perfection.
From there, I become a trusted guide when challenges arise and an understanding ear when things do not make sense. We make sense of things together, and somehow things work themselves out.
I am in gratitude to all those children who are on the autism spectrum and the families that give everything they have to support them in living a life of authentic self-expression and fulfillment. In the end, it is a win-win for everyone involved.
These children and adults, are a precious asset to our world, with much to teach us as we move forward as a global family.
So, as we celebrate National Autism Awareness Month, I invite us all to honor ourselves for the gains we have made as a society in providing people with autism a place where they can be recognized and heard as people, exactly the way they are.
“The best is yet to come, and won’t that be fine. You think you’ve seen the sun, but you ain’t seen it shine.” -Frank Sinatra
