Help needed for a presentation I am doing on ASD and strategies in the classroom.

[flyingmum]

Ladies (and any gents!) I need your help.

At my school we are doing a professional development session for staff on ASD, what it is and strategies specific for the few ASDs we have. We are a mainstream secondary school. The SENCO and my boss are doing most of it but I have 'volunteered' to open it with a visualisation session to help people either get in touch with their autistic side or understand what sitting in that particular classroom might be like for someone with ASD. I am then going to talk about ASD from a parent's perspective. I haven't got long (I know I could go on for HOURS) but just want to give people a flavour.

So. Any bright ideas? We are going to be in a classroom which has just been redone because it was flooded. Therefore most of the staff won't have been in it and it has lots of new stuff in it and a new carpet which stinks. I did think of asking them to list what they notice in 15 seconds and pointing out that your ASD person would have noticed far more (new speakers, the pong, the patterns on the carpet tiles, the new plug sockets . . .)

Amber and Miss Frostgetful - I need you!!!

If either of you or anyone else Autie could possibly write me some thoughts on what their school life was like and the coping strategies that you or those with autism use I would be very grateful.

Also Mums - and I'm thinking mainly of secondary here but upper primary would be OK too. What does your child do before or after school to wind down or get psyched up. I am a bit hesitant to use my son as the example too much as 1. It's a bit close to home and 2. As we all know ASD is so different.

Any help or ideas most welcome. Many many thanks.

Just wanted to say fantastic idea, and give you a little bump

No advice really but as a Y6 teacher, I would be interested in knowing myself. During my career, I have taught 3 children with an ASD diagnosis. Two with AS, the other as HFA. All three disliked the bell and one found the rain on the perspex (sp?)roof difficult to listen to. I remember one of the children refused to participate in any art/craft work and another was fine with paint but did not like glue. I can't remember any issues with smells but of course there may have been but I just wasn't aware which is why INSET training is so important.

I also have an almost 6yr old DS who I believe to have very mild AS but as he has (so far) no sensory issues. Heis very different from the AS kids I have taught but then they were very different from each other.

Good luck.

Just to add, in no way could I have told you why 2 were diagnosed AS and the other as HFA. There weren't lots of traits that the AS boys had that the HFA boy didn't nor visa versa. Though at the same time they each had difficulties that the others didn't IYKWIM. Probably not relevant but from a teachers POV, when I was trying to read up on strategies,it was a little confusing.

also the importance of all teachers etc knowing if child has as. eg primary school class teacher great now we have diagnosis, but when other people come in to take say PE etc and athey kdont know/dont understand child is left out and confused again.

OK, a day at school.

Start of day...endure the torture of shower water, soap perfume, perfumey sprays, toothbrush taste, chaos of house.

Next, try to get to school on a bus that's noisy, smelly, jostlingly full of people, no sense of balance so I'm clinging on for dear life whilst trying to avoid eye contact from the many people (since eye contact hurts like hell, and no, I can't explain why - it's to do with the way our brains are wired directly up to the "ooo, person looking at me - are they scary?!" bit that everyone has, and because we can't find the info on who they are and what the expression on their face actually means).

Off the bus. Oh no, fellow pupils. Which ones are they? Desperately trying to remember if they're the ones who ignore me, call me rude names, or use violence against me. Hopefully it's the ones that ignore me. I don't have the skills to be able to talk to people in a socially acceptable way - I either mistime it, or can't follow the conversations fast enough, or say the wrong thing because I can't see the body language or hear their tone of voice or see their facial expressions.

Into school. Timetable...phew. I know what I'm doing with a timetable. But...this is a new classroom. Heck, double heck. No, make that a treble heck. A new classroom? Anything could happen. Anything could be in there!

In I go, ...jostling, noise...the smell of the paint, the carpet, the new equipment. So much visual information to take in - my brain is reeling from the new environment, its colours, shapes, patterns. So much noise from people around me, from the air conditioning, from the computers or equipment. Deafening. The teacher is talking to me but there's so much going on that I don't hear them. They shout. People stare...oh no, eye contact...it hurts.

Serious panic is now setting in. I need to find a way to turn the 'volume' of all of this down, to find enough time and space to balance all of this, but I can't. I'm in the classroom and I have to be able to cope with this. I try to focus on something, anything. I can feel myself starting to rock as a way to get some familiarity back into the situation, and now people are laughing at me . I want to hide under something, anything to get away from it. If I had a duvet here, I'd wrap myself in it. I pull my coat around me, tightly. I run for the door, accidentally bumping into a pupil who claims I did it deliberately and 'he's going to get me later'. The teacher is shouting even louder, deafeningly loud...and now people are running after me. They catch me and restrain me and the pain from it is like nothing on this earth. I am just SO scared. I curl up in a ball and wonder why people do stuff like this to me every day. Can't they see it hurts? Can't they see how scared we are by all of this?

Well, that's what it's like if people don't adapt the environment for us and give us a bit of warning and a bit of space and a 'buddy system' to make sure we're safe.

Except I never had the ability to get up and run away - that's more of a boy thing. I'd just 'shut down', staying in a state of absolute quiet silent panic until the end of the day, perhaps escaping into the library for some blissful silence and data-finding. Or into the garden for a quiet few moments of peace.

What helps any teacher is to know that we often sense everything at WAY more 'volume' than anyone else does, that we find balancing harder than most people, that we can't 'see' people or work out what to say fast enough, that we don't know who you are straight away so have to 'buy time' by improvising with phrases until our brains go get the info on you (takes ages). And that we need peace, quiet, our 'data time', or else we overload very fast.

In our own environment, we can often do fantastic things. In a big, noisy school environment, it's like a fish being taken out of its tank and left on the side, gasping for air for hours.

So...set up good communication with the pupil. Find out how they experience the world. Let them see a new classroom first. Get their attention first before talking to them.

Don't shout - it's deafening, not constructive. If we're unfocussed and stimming (rocking, flapping or similar), get us to somewhere quiet and let us just 'be' for a short time if you can. And educate our fellow pupils on this stuff so we are not living in absolute social hell for 5-7 years, please. If there can be a safe place for us to be at breaks and lunch, let us be there...please.

PS if you wanted to demonstrate it, you'd need 'spectacles' made out of two cardboard tubes so you could only see a bit of the environment, a big strobe light set to flicker like the overhead lighting does, a gallon of strong perfume to spray round the room in choking amounts, and you'd have to be wearing extra-tight barbed wire as clothing (because many school uniform textures feel that rough to us.) Then get two CD players and set both to maximum volume on different radio stations so you can't hear a thing.

Then try having a conversation with someone and doing some work.

We need some sort of round of applause for coping with it as well as we do. Alas, society never realises...

Thank you soooooo much. You are a star Amber. I think I might have to pick out a volunteer . . .

Except that the round of applause would hurt as hell so just as well that society doesn't realise.

Amber - I would love to print out that description, it would really help me to understand some of the issues my ds has

It may be worth pointing out that some children on the spectrum can be both under and over sensitive to sensory input. Ds ( not high functioning) would find the odd smell very upsettling even unbearable(he is hypersensitive to smells) and the strange enviroment might well increase his anxiety and hyperactivity. He may behave like an excited toddler. He might need to run about, or squash behind a chair, (his vestibular and proprioceptive systems are undersensitive) and a fiddle toy or blutac to squash in his hand - or poping bubble wrap may calm him. Ds would want to open every door to check what is behind, and may try to sniff out the smell (and other faint new smells too like those wearing soap or perfume) to work out where it is coming from. Until these things are done he would be very difficult to settle in fact it would probably take several visits to settle.

Magso, yes indeed. Or both, depending on what else is being thought about. I can be completely insensitive to pain, or very very overreactive to it. I can hear a pin drop if I'm 'tuned in' to the noise level, but can't hear the person talking to me at all if I'm concentrating on other things.

It's a bit like one of those extension leads you can buy for plugging in your computer equipment if you don't have enough sockets... if all the sockets are being used for eyes/smells/textures, the incoming information from 'ears' just doesn't get plugged in. It's not deliberate, it's just we're out of sockets!

If you have enough time, I would suggest getting hold of a copy of "Martian in the Playground" by Claire Sainsbury, it has a lot of info from her and other youngish people with AS/HFA about a range of difficulties they had with their school experience.

Amber that is brillient! I think ds is a one socket at time guy! Now he is older he sometimes has 2!
I told his teacher that he appeared to be 'single channelled' and could not listen to instructions if he was busy (he needed a touch to get his attention) and she said we cannot have single channelled children in this school!

She can't have single channeled children in the school? Why?! Seriously though, that's awful, and prejudiced.

By touching him, you're asking him to unplug his eyes from the brain socket and put his ears back into the socket instead, or vice-versa. It works. So why can't the school do the same thing (sigh).

(Well he isn't in that school anymore!)

My goodness - that description (one socket child) fits DS1 to a tee! For example, he's got a sharing assembly this afternoon, and has had his speaking part taken away because his voice is too quiet (although he's an excellent reader). I was trying to practise with him the other day, and this has made me realise why he finds it so hard to read AND think about what sound his voice is making at the same time.

He doesn't seem to mind not speaking btw - is now an animal in the gladitorial games - much more fun! Though I am a little - surely if he doesn't practise he will never have the chance to get better?

Sorry - massive hjack - to return to the original question ....there's a good Youtube clip called Christopher's Castle (Jimjams linked to it a while back) which gives a flavour of sensory difficulties in a very visual way.

proper link

Thank you very much everyone. Sphil - I'm going to try and show the Christopher's Castle thing if I can get it passed the school's blocking system.

Amber, thank you so much as always for your wonderful insights. Would you mind if I:

1. read your 'day at school' thing out

and

1. copy and pasted your 'day in the life of Amber' as a handout for any interested collegues to take away with them.

I will refer to you as A and say, as I think I have gleaned, that you run a successful business with your husband who also has ASD. Am I right in thinking you have 3 children? . If you would rather I say nothing about you or not do this then of course I won't. I won't mention that this is via mumsnet much as I'd love to in a way.

Your visualisation thoughts are very useful - I'm going to get them to make goggles out of their hands. I'm also off to find some nice pictures of volumn buttons.

It sounds as if it's going to be brilliant - I wish DS2's school would run something like this. I did an hour once on an INSET day, but I barely scratched the surface.

Flyingmum, yup, use whatever you like from my ramblings on mumnset as far as I'm concerned. Only the one teenage child for us, though, unless we count the dogs .

Making 'binoculars' out of their hands is certainly a quick way to understand how difficult we find attention-switching. If they make it so it's a really small field of view, then try having a group conversation, I bet they feel really uncomfortable in a really short space of time, as they can't see the whole context/body language etc any more. They could all try shouting a conversation to each other at the same time, too, to see how unsettled they find a really loud environment and how difficult it is to just pick out one shouty voice from the rest.

Thank you all so much and particularly you Amber. It went brilliantly. They were all bored witless by a very dull power point from county first, then my boss did a session on teaching strategies which was really good and then I did my bit. I used a lot of your stuff Amber and gave out what you wrote for me and your previous thoughts on your days as handouts. They loved it and although we went over the alloted time by quite a bit at the end of a very hectic school day, loads stayed to ask us questions.

I couldn't have done it without mumsnet!

Sorry, I know this is after the horse has bolted but just in case of any other professionals reading this, I thought we could still add a couple.

Visually... Makes me think of a few that affect my DS .... That car advert where they use their fingers to move the cow in the field - he thinks this is actually possible because he saw it on tv. Those bloomin' BBC ads with flashing lights whizzing round in circles - makes him feel sick and in / out of school?....

Can't recognise any fellow pupils unless they are both in uniform and in their right form-room because facial features aren't actually that easy to recognise - Try identifying photo's of colleagues with their faces blanked out.

Physically compulsion to 'figit', flap arms or hum is impossible not to do for a prolonged period of time - like sticking your head in water and not breathing. "Don't breathe!" Said the teacher, how many pupils will manage that for an entire lesson? A teacher telling you NOT to do any of these further upsets you because you must have broken a rule/law and that's really not good.

Certain security issues too - Only convinced all is well if the senior children are all registered, if the head teacher is at their desk and gives a reassuring greeting, and the caretaker is present in case something goes wrong. Only if all these are in place can a school possibly run for the day.

Hide your mouth / face so they don't know if you're smiling and mean what you say, then ask them to trust you. How does an ASD child know if another child is a friend or just humiliating or bullying them? How will they know when to tell a teacher?

A day in the life of Amber - This should be a training book or public awareness blog at least. Amber?