“Do you find that your child is currently not benefiting and learning from school or from his/ her therapies? Maybe you even find that your child seems stressed and resistant to them…
“We can help! A major reason why our children on the Autism Spectrum do not respond to certain educational approaches is that many of those approaches move against our children, versus with them.
“Let me explain to you what I mean…
Often times, teachers, therapists, and caregivers focus on changing our children’s behaviors. These very well intended adults focus on getting our children to stop doing their stimming behaviors, so they can get to something more “productive” – stop playing with their stimming objects, stop talking about repetitive topics, stop moving around too much, stop rocking back and forth, stop… It seems like if we could just stop our children from doing their repetitive behaviors, then our children would be able to learn. However, as you probably already realized, this is not actually the case! When we attempt to re-direct or stop our children from doing their repetitive behaviors, they often still don’t pay attention to us…
“Autism is not a behavioral disorder. It is a social-relational disorder. Our children’s behaviors are actually symptoms, not the cause of their challenges. Changing the behavior, does not make our children then miraculously able to engage and learn more from the people in their lives!
“If we want our children to engage with us and learn from us, we first need to recognize that autism is a social-relational challenge and not behavioral disorder.
Instead of asking, “How do I change my child’s behavior?” We would want to ask ourselves “What can I do to strengthen my relationship with my child?”
“Once we asks ourselves this question, our whole approach shifts and everything changes! With a child or adult on the Autism Spectrum, we cannot just force them into learning and changing. On the other hand, when we first focus on creating a strong bond and connection (building the relationship) based on full acceptance and understanding, then we are able to help our child learn and grow. However, we first need to build this trust!
“Let’s start with asking ourselves – “What can I do right now to strengthen my relationship and bond with my child?” before we invite our children to learn and grow…
“For more information on how to strengthen the bond between you and your child – learn more about Joining your child’s isms, and about the Son-Rise Program Motivation Principle.”
Written by Camila Titone, Senior Son-Rise Program Teacher