AskAnAspie

Fear of Animals

Q: I have a nine year son with moderate autism. He has always had an extreme fear of animals and NEVER had a traumatic experience involving animals. It can even be a newborn kitten or pup, and he is petrified. I don't know how to help him get over this fear,even a little. If there is a cat in my yard,he won't go outside.And I know he wants to go outside. But then there's squirrels,etc. Do you have any suggestions? He was once non-verbal, but through lots of therapy past & present,patience, & trying really hard to understand him, he is somewhat verbal now. Although, things are said out of context sometimes, sentences are not there yet,but he isn't using sign language anymore. He is trying to talk to us now. Anyway, he can't tell me why animals scare him so. I didn't see this question asked and I would really appreciate your input on this subject. By the way, this is indeed a wonderful site. Thank You. I do plan on emailing you again.

Angela

A: A few suggestions.  Have him draw you a picture on how he feels about
animals.  Interact with animals yourself in a safe way - i.e., play with the
neighbor's dog in your backyard while your son watches through the closed
screen door.  How does he feel about stuffed animals?
It could be your son doesn't like animals because they behave unpredictably.
  You could try nature programs and the like which show animals behaving in
predictable ways - ways that can be learned by the observant individual.
And of course seeing a specialist in phobias might be a good idea.  I hope
this helps.
-Lynn

Walking around with a Paint Brush

Q: Did you ever grow up having to hold something or shake something in your
hands? I know many autistic kids have the need to hold and shake something
in their hands. My question is Why? And then ofcourse, should I as a parent
be denying my sons desire to walk around always holding a paint brush,
pencil, or anything in his hand?

When you grew up, looking back, would you have preferred being in the
deneral ed classroom with accomodations, or pulled out to special eduction
resources, for more one on one and small group learning opportunities?

Thank you so much for your thoughts!

A: You get two Aspie answers for the price of... well... free! Two
Panelists wanted to answer your question, so make sure you read the
whole email to get both replies.

[From Brian:]
I'm glad you found my last email mind-broadening! I'd caution you against
complimenting me on how helpful I've been till you actually try my
suggestions out, though; I'm no professional, and all I can do is put
options on the table :)
Books to recommend... heh! Wouldn't it be great if there were a nice book,
leather-bound with Bible-thin pages, with the title "THE RULES" embossed
onto its cover? Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no such book. But
there are resources that do a darn good job covering these
normally-unwritten rules. The best book I know for this purpose is "How To
Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk," by Adele Faber and
Elaine Mazlish. (It's on Amazon.com for little more than
$10.) When I was quite young (ten or so?) I stumbled across a copy of this
book that my parents had bought, and just pored over it. It's rich with
rules for rewarding communication, and manages to work in rules for other
things too -- almost by accident, in the process of illustrating how parents
can communicate to their kids the socially acceptable ways of dealing with
certain situations. If you liked my examples in my last email, there's no
better resource I can recommend, for you or your son.
Not that I won't try. The other source that might be helpful is the webpage
A Survival Guide for People with Asperger's
Syndrome.
(That's http://www.asperger-marriage.info/survguide/chapter21.html, if you
have trouble opening the link.) It does a better job explicitly spelling out
the rules in easy-to-digest format than anything else I can think of
offhand. It also leaves a lot of stuff out, as any such source must, but
it's emphatically worth a look!
Now, as to your other questions. Lots and lots of spectrum kids -- and
adults too! -- habitually engage in some kind of sensory self-stimulation
(aka "stimming"). I'm one of them! I've written to parents about this a
couple times before, and I always recommend letting the child continue --
assuming, of course, that his particular choice of stim isn't physically
harmful to himself, which doesn't happen often. Best as I can figure out,
stimming is an important coping mechanism that helps us deal with stress.
Between sensory hypersensitivity, having to learn the social rules, and just
plain being different, being on the spectrum can be very anxiety-provoking.
Stimming gives the nervous energy somewhere to go, and, via creating what
I've called a way to "'turn down the volume' on all that light and sound and
information." I don't know how I'd survive without a way to do this :) Some
therapists think stimming is something that should be treated, but as Wiley
has pointed out, there are enough difficult aspects of being autistic that
the last thing you want to do is destroy an autistic's coping mechanism! You
can, however, explain when rocking, say, might not be socially appropriate.
(Sadly, a lot of neurotypicals get creeped out by rocking.)
Looking back, when I grew up I think I would've *preferred* being in a
classroom with as few people as possible; I never liked interacting with
most of my peers. But I stress the word "preferred." Ultimately, even folks
on the spectrum need to learn how to understand neurotypicals, in order to
live with them and even love them. So while at times I found it very
unpleasant, I think it was valuable to me to share a classroom and a
playground with a larger number of peers; in the end there's nothing like
exposure to something to help one understand it. That said, there are
definitely advantages to a smaller classroom; learning can go at the child's
own pace (be it faster or slower), for one thing, and there is a lot less
bullying. Does your son have an opinion?
Hope this helps! Best of luck once again!
--Brian

[From Lynn:]
As to the first, there's a reason why they call them executive toys - many
people, including Aspies, enjoy a thingamabob in hand as they work. My dad,
for instance, is a terrible pencil biter (not recommended). I play with my
hair a lot; it's long and curly and fun to tie in knots.
As to the second, I had both, really. I went to a public school which had a
program called ALPHA for gifted kids. Twice a week for 3 hours in
elementary school we got to leave class and do program activities in a
pretty small group. As I recall, one of the projects was making a full
scale model of the space shuttle living quarters (pre-Challenger) out of
duct tape and plastic sheeting. In high school, it was a daily class
period, and I designed my own projects, which included arranged marrianges
around the world, humor, and violence in the movies. Does your school
district have a similar program? Being pulled out is not necessarily a bad
thing, but neither is learning to live with one's peers.
-Lynn

Should I stop him from stimming?

Q: Hi Wiley/Brian,

My son was diagnosed with PDD at 18 months and then at 3 with ASD. He is now 5 and nonverbal, other than a few words. My son does alot of stimulatory behaviors, mostly hand-flapping. I don't try to stop him, but some of the therapist seem to think that I should not allow him to continue. My thoughts are if he is doing this behavior, he "needs" to do this behavior for his own reasons. So my question is twofold: Why does he do this behavior, and should I allow him to continue, or should I intervene and try to stop him?

Thanks for your site!

Lisa

A: There are a lot of autism-related issues about which the Aspies I know are
divided. This isn't one of them. Lisa, I think you're handling this exactly
right, and I applaud your faith in your son having "his own reasons" for
self-stimulation. For an autistic child -- heck, for an autistic adult, even
-- "stimming" is automatic and enjoyable, and it can be painful to suppress.
Once in a while I hear about a child whose preferred mode of stimming
involves physically hurting himself, and that's clearly no good, but even
then it's usually possible to deal with the problem by helping the child
change the way that he stims rather than the fact that he stims.

So, why self-stimulation? I asked this question myself at a meeting of the
Aspie group at my college campus. Opinions differed, but everyone seemed to
share an intuition that it was related to stress. Life can be very stressful
for an autistic child, for any number of reasons, many of which are
unfortunately beyond your control to do anything about. Autistic people tend
to have very intense sensory experiences -- some, for instance, lack the
ability to "filter out" noises, like the hum of the air conditioning or the
sound of cars passing outside, that most people are able to disregard
without even thinking about it. Social situations can be similarly intense;
people are *weird*, and hard to understand. Having so many words and
behaviors coming at you at the same time can be overwhelming, especially for
a nonverbal child.
So why does this stress lead to stimming? Stimming, I think, is a way of
moderating that stress. It creates a single, separable, predictable sensory
experience which is under the autistic person's complete control. The stim
serves as both a channel for all that nervous energy and as a focus for
concentration by which to "turn down the volume" on all that light and sound
and information. (Paradoxically, we can process all that stuff better when
the volume is turned down than when it's cranked up.) I don't think it's an
exaggeration to say that stimming is one way of keeping ourselves from going
insane!
This explanation is two parts introspection to one part psychoanalysis. I
don't really know for sure why I like stimming, any more than you probably
know for sure why you like, say, asparagus. But I know that if someone
leveled a gun to my head and told me to stop stimming, I would still find it
difficult or impossible to do so. Autism can cause a lot of problems for a
growing child, but stimming, far from being one of those problems, is a way
of coping with those problems. Though you should be aware that I don't have
the colorful certificates on my walls that your therapists do, I encourage
you to think very carefully about this matter before you decide to follow
their advice.
--Brian

Three questions in one!

Q: I just got an email from one of the support groups I am apart of, with a
reference to your site.

I am a parent of 3 kids, one with Autism. My autistic son is 7 years old. I
do have a lot of questions for those of you who have been there, and can
articulate what you feel and experience. My son is still young, so I hope
that as he matures, he will be able to articulate and express to me what he
is feeling as you all do. Thanks for creating this site, and trying to help
others!

A quick quick glimpse at some of the behaviors that I would love insight and
or commentary from your experiences are, and I did not see the answers in
frequently asked question (My questions are not private, so you may post
them and your answers, but please email me back as well):

My son has a phenomenal memory. Just shy oven 7 years old, he can recall and
recite anything he has heard or seen, especially when it has an order (like
birthdates, or the sequence of U.S. Presidents, songs that he has not heard
since he was an infant etc.). Should I be encouraging his odd obsession with
dates/sequences etc. (by encouraging this talent, (I mean at this age when
he is so little, do I buy the books or engage in the memory games to further
nurture the obsession, or redirect the inclination to more neuro-typical
play?)

My son lacks the interest (or ability?) to engage in conversation, just for
the sake of conversation (i.e. How was your day, what did you do today etc…
He will never be the one to initiate such a conversation, and does not
sustain in the conversation when someone else initiates it. He will just
answer your question, and then tune out, or continue what he was doing.)
How do I teach him how to have interest and sustain everyday conversation?

My son has what seems like an uncontrollable need to verbal stim (except for
when he is on the computer or drawing/writing or focusing on something like
a puzzle). When walking, standing in line, in the classroom, at the dinner
table, even during play my son is constantly singing, making some noises of
something that he might be interested in (now at this young age, the
interest is in trucks, so he makes truck noises, or he loves Gardeners, so
he makes lawn mower and leaf blower sounds). The questions I have for you
all, are is it seems his natural state of being is one that is always,
singing out loud, making out loud sounds, or saying whatever is on his mind
irrelevant of what is going on around him (i.e. in the classroom, while
everyone is listening to the teacher read a book, or give an instruction, he
has to be verbalizing something). How do I help him control his need to
verbalize everything that comes to his unique mind?

With great appreciation for your insight here! From a loving Mom!

A: Hi there! Sorry it's taken a while to get back to you; we've been trying to
fend off a blizzard of emails with a hair dryer almost since going online!
So, you have three questions, and I have three answers. Hopefully they're
answers to the right questions. Let's start at the beginning...
I think it's great that your son is so gifted in the memory department!
Many autistic kids have a talent for trivia, but it sounds like yours is
more so than most. Me, I say that if you have a phenomenal talent, you
should nurture it :) There are plenty of places where such memory could come
in handy, from winning Jeopardy to remembering the contents of his biology
textbook once he gets to high school. Pursuing such an ability at the
expense of other important things, like school, therapy, taking care of the
dog, and so on would be no good, of course. But I think pursuing it at the
expense of neurotypical play is healthy; autistic kids aren't neurotypical,
so why should they act neurotypical on their own time? (I'm in college. The
normal way many neurotypicals "play" here involves drunken parties. I like
to think that sitting in my room reading, the more Aspie option, is a valid
alternative choice :) ) You're right, though, to think about to what extent
your son should be able to mimic neurotypical behavior; this is a theme I'll
return to in the next couple questions.

Number two! Small talk and the like. I know how your son feels... my
perception, which is shared by most of us in the autistic community and many
people outside it, is that an awful lot of human conversation is more for
the purpose of demonstrating our caring about each other (or pretending to)
than for actual communication. This takes autistic kids a while to figure
out, because of what's been called "mind-blindness;" it's not until rather
late in our development that we can figure out what other people are feeling
and why they feel that way. When you say "how was your day?" what you mean
is "I care about you and want to know how you're doing," but to your son it
likely sounds more like "how was your day?" That's a question that can be
adequately answered with "it was okay," so that's what he says. He's
probably not trying to be reticent; he's just answering the question he
heard. On one hand, that's understandable. On the other hand, I for one
wouldn't be able to function socially if I couldn't read subtext! If my own
experience is any guide, this is something your son will grow out of
naturally to some extent, as he comes to understand that information is not
the only thing language can convey! Meanwhile, you can help him learn to
read subtext by explaining to him in real time why people the two of you
encounter are saying the things they say. ("I asked the teller how she was
because it's a nice way to show people that you value them.") The rules are
more confusing than you might think!
I'm pleased to hear your son is so verbal -- plenty of mothers of autistic
kids have the opposite problem :) Your son's sometimes-inappropriate
verboseness is something a lot of autistics have to deal with. I talk to
myself almost constantly when in private, as do many of the Aspies I know --
it's partly to organize my thoughts, and partly to entertain myself! When I
was young, though, the proviso about being in private wasn't one I'd learned
yet. (My first diagnosis was ADHD, because someone who insists on pointing
out what the fish in the classroom aquarium is doing while his teacher is
trying to teach arithmetic can superficially look like an ADHD patient; it
wasn't until later that we figured out ADHD wasn't the issue! To this day I
talk a lot in class, though I've redirected it to asking the professor the
many questions that invariably go through my mind as he explains the lesson
of the day.) Ultimately, the reason why talking aloud in public isn't
usually appropriate is that it disturbs others; this is something you can
try explaining to your son. ("The teacher wants to teach the lesson, and
your classmates want to learn. Being in a quiet room helps people teach and
learn. You can help them by not making noise, so that they can concentrate
better.") At the same time, you might want to be wary of sending the message
that talking to oneself is *never* appropriate; this is another area where I
think autistics are "different but okay." (And neurotypical kids are noisy
too!) Whatever rules you'd like your child to follow about when it's okay to
talk a blue streak, do your best to explain them so that they make sense to
someone who has trouble figuring out what other people are feeling without
being told.
Whew! Hope this helps you! It sounds like your son is gratifyingly high
functioning, and I hope continuing to bring him up will be rewarding for
you. Let me know if you have more questions! Thanks for writing!
--Brian

How can I get my son to brush his teeth?

Q: How can I best teach my aspie the importance of personal hygiene and teach him to tend to those tasks automatically?

Thressa

A: You know, I actually asked almost that exact question to the Asperger's LiveJournal community a few weeks ago because I can never remember to brush my teeth. The discussion about it can be found here:here

In general, I think your best bet is to have a checklist for after he gets up and before he goes to sleep at night. Personally I tend to forget to look at the checklist, but perhaps if I had been trained from an early enough age I wouldn't forget.

Wiley

Why does he watch the same video over and over?

Q: I have a 5 year old twin boy (his brother is "typical") who is non-verbal, but does better than average in the eye contact and "changes in daily life" areas.

Here are my questions; if you can't answer them or even give your opinion, I totally understand.

1) Cole (my son) loves to watch certain parts of a video over and over and over again for hours sometimes- just like a "stim". Can you tell me what he gets out of it? Is it to "organize" himself?

2) Were any of you non-verbal at this age? If any of you were non or "limited" verbals who eventually started language, can you tell me what it was that may have "triggered" you to start talking? Cole understands us perfectly (he's very, very smart and very bull-headed) and seemingly doesn't want to talk. We know this isn't true, but if he has a few words- why not more???

Thank you so much!

Courtland

A: Ok, I'll take these one at a time...
1) This is probably going to seem like a simplistic explanation, but it's probably just a really neat part of the video. I have a screensaver that I've had to take off my computer because it was just so much fun to watch that I never got any work done. Sometimes stimming is done to control stress, but other times it's just because it's really fun. The analogy I like to draw is to a bowl of ice cream. If you've had a really bad day and you're feeling upset, you might have a bowl of ice cream to cheer yourself up. But you also might just have one because they taste good and you felt like it.

2) As an Aspie, I've never really had verbal problems and I actually started to talk relatively early, but I do know what it's like to "not want to talk" when I'm stressed. Basically, it's like trying to talk with your mouth full of molasses. It's an incredible amount of effort to say anything, and it just doesn't seem worth the bother. Now, since my family and friends all know that I can talk, and trying to explain why I have trouble talking in, say, a crowded grocery store would be difficult and awkward, I usually make myself talk anyway. But I avoid it when I can and when I'm out shopping by myself I usually wear ear plugs and communicate with cashiers in writing. I want to reiterate that language is one of the areas in which Aspies and the classic Autism side of the spectrum tend to be different, and I can't guarentee that any of this is the same as what your son is feeling. It's just my personal experience.

One thing that I've found worked for me and that I've heard a lot of good things about from friends all over the spectrum is Sign Language. I can't explain why, but it just doesn't produce that same inertia feeling that spoken language does.

Wiley

Why are Aspies such picky eaters?

Q: I've heard that a lot of Aspies have eccentric eating habits. What is your experience and how can I get my child to eat a wider variety of foods?

A: Food pickiness... yeah. I tend to go through phases of eating one food at a time. Right now I'm going through a Frosted Flakes stage. For the past six weeks or so, I've been eating Frosted Flakes two meals a day (I have a slow metabolism and almost never eat lunch). Every once and a while I'll have a cookie or a sandwich instead of my bowl of frosted flakes, but only when Frosted Flakes aren't readily available. These phases usually last somewhere between two and six weeks. Then I'll spent a week or two not really wanting to eat anything, until I get hungry enough to latch onto a new food and the cycle starts all over again. Luckily I consistantly like milk and I take vitamin pills, so other than occasional bouts of anemia I've never really had problems with my bad diet.

This has pretty much been the pattern since I started having a choice in what I ate. When I was little and Mom was still trying to get me to eat whatever the rest of the family ate, there were a lot of things that I just couldn't swallow. Most meats, most vegetables, and a large number of fruits. I would start gagging and if I did manage to swallow it, I would have a stomach ache afterwards. Between taking multivitamins for so many years and having a heart condition that requires a lot of medication, I've gotten good enough at swallowing pills that I can now eat something like salad, which I would not normally be able to eat, by wadding up the lettuce and swallowing it with a sip of water. Obviously I usually just avoid salad, because eating it that way is unpleasant and takes a long time. And I usually still get a stomach ache.

Foods do sometimes move on and off the list of foods I eat, though. Over the years I developed a mild allergy to apples, which at the time was the only fresh food I ate. It wasn't the sort of allergy that caused any serious problems, it just made my throat itch. To get my mom to stop making me eat apples, I managed to start eating bananas. French Fries, baked potatos, and bacon have also switched sides a couple of times. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have very vivid sense memories, so encountering a bad French Fry means that every time I see them for the next couple of years I can remember exactly what that bad French Fry tasted like. On the other hand, when I get really hungry and then eat a piece of bacon, I will remember that feeling of finally getting food after being hungry whenever I smell bacon.

My mom worked incredibly hard to instill me with better eating habits, but as soon as I went away for school I went back to eating what I wanted. One thing that Mom did that I think was very helpful was train me to take multivitamins. Multivitamins are probably the only reason I don't have scurvy by now. In general, the trick to getting an Aspie to eat something they don't like is to disguise whatever it is they don't like about it. I actually rather like the taste of tuna with lemon, but I can't stand the texture. I had been using the swallow it whole method for years because it's one of the only forms of meat I can even do that with, until one day I discovered tortillas. If I wrap the tuna in a tortilla, I can usually sneak the texture past myself because I'm focused on the texture of the tortilla. I have similar objections to the texture of chicken, but fresh chicken nuggets from Wendy's (and only from Wendy's, it drives my mom nuts) have crispy enough breading that the chicken inside doesn't bother me. It's a trial and error thing. Whereas telling an aspie over and over again to eat a piece of brocolli is just going to lead to gagging and nausea, if you keep trying different foods, keeping in mind the reasons that he doesn't like the things he doesn't like, you might hit on some new foods he does.