royinpink
Well-Known Member
For those whose communication skills and prospects for independent living were minimal, stimming was fine and we had chewable jewellery, mini trampolines and a sensory room.
That's great! It sounds like the special ed program where you worked was a lot more supportive, perhaps involving occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and educators over behavioral psychology-influenced approaches?
I have decided I just need to encourage staff to ask why instead of just saying no. Instead of trying to stop the stim with a verbal or physical cue ask ourselves why might this student be stimming? Let's look at our surroundings and evaluate others behavior before telling them to stop. If it's something we can change, change it. I just don't know what to do if it's something that cannot be changed.
Yeah, stopping stims with a cue is very ABA-style. And that comes with its own slew of baggage. I hope suggesting they ask themselves why first makes a difference, but if they are set in this as the 'right' and 'evidence-based' approach, it may take a good deal more than that to sway them.
Any advice on how to still seem like a good employee when I can't get myself to discipline them for non-harmful stimming? Or to seem like I'm trying when I'm giving a student time to answer a question instead of getting an immediate answer?
I always explain why I'm doing what I'm doing, e.g. "I know student x heard me but has sensory processing difficulties, so I am giving him/her processing time." Otherwise you are vulnerable to whatever assumptions they want to make about your behavior. Of course, this opens you up for argument about whether yours is the right approach. It might well be good to have a couple studies/books in mind to back yourself up if it comes to that.
This is a bit of a no-win situation, because most people don't like those who are supposedly subordinate to them to know more or not follow their authority. Some are open to being educated, but many aren't. This is one of the reasons I 'played the aspie card' before. People will simply not believe you have any better knowledge than they do, being your superiors, unless you have an undeniable reason, like a PhD, or you know, actually being autistic.
So in the absence of credentials or 'aspie card', I think the best way to approach the conversation is...gently, always emphasizing that you see their perspective and share their goals (if/when you do)--maybe not the goal of eliminating stimming, say, but the over-arching goal of helping the kids to focus and learn which they feel restricting stimming is necessary to achieve. If you introduce information in this way, like, "I understand why you want to do R approach, and I agree that Q is important. Actually, I was reading X book/study and it showed how Y approach helped Z autistics to do Q," rather than, "X book/study shows your approach is wrong" (not that you'd do that), And sometimes, it doesn't hurt to ask permission to 'try something' and see how it goes. But it depends on who you're working with, always.
Later that afternoon he finally said "hi, persons name" out of the blue when that student wasn't around. I told the teacher and she didn't seem to get why I was excited.
Oh god, I know the feeling. But you are doing it right. Please know that you are doing everything 100% right for these kids. They need to have positive reinforcement for their progress just as much as any typically developing child, and are so often denied it. And when they only learn through their mistakes, the message comes through loud and clear that their effort is never good enough.
I'm also very confused about the physical aspect of things like how much force to use in hand over hand applications, but more on that another time, maybe.
I dunno if you clicked the link about Tito that I shared upthread, but she does mention the use of hand over hand there. It is not specific about amount of force applied, though. I bet that information is out there, and I also bet you can figure it out by observing the kids.