The Speed of Dark

Today I gave a presentation on The Speed of Dark over the internet to a group at Howard Community College in Maryland–while sitting on a comfortable couch in Texas.  Technology has advanced to this point, and I wanted to try it–besides, I knew I would not be able to travel to Maryland in person in the time-frame they wanted.

What fascinated me, besides playing with technology I didn’t know, was the degree to which this particular setup messes with sensory input.   I had a light-bulb moment when I realized that the audio breakup (just enough of one) and the blurriness of the faces looking back at me–blurry enough that I could not see any of the usual cues of facial movement–and the delay between when I said something and when they saw/heard me say it–all made my experience more autistic than I’d expected.   I was having to put way more energy and concentration into figuring out their reactions, and what they were saying than usual.

The organizer sent email telling me that discussion went on in the hall after I “left”, which is a good sign.   I hope it was as valuable for them as it was for me.

When an autistic child, on the first day in a special needs school, gets upset and crawls out a third floor window and won’t come in, you hope for someone like this Thai fireman.

Some points to consider:  the boy’s mother (not the teachers) knew that his favorite superhero was  Spiderman.   (When in doubt about what to do with an autistic child in some situation, ask the parents–they really do know more about that child than anyone else.)   Mr. Somchai, the fireman, had the costume and clearly didn’t worry about the possibility that some adults might find a fireman in a Spiderman costume a little…silly.

Sometimes, working with children with autism, we need to be willing to risk our dignity (one of the hardest things for adults to give up–we worked so hard to get it!)    But to make that contact–to make the social, human linkage work–it’s worth the risk.

In another venue someone asked if anyone else’s child on the autism spectrum hated to hear their mother sing.

My answer was yes: when our son was pre-verbal, he didn’t much like singing at all (with the exception of a lullaby I’d made up for him early on) but he did like music…until the 18 months when he didn’t.   For about two years I was choir director for a very small church’s very small choir, and I could not have him in the church while we rehearsed–he’d scream the whole time.

Once he began to talk (a process that took years to achieve) he complained about singing.  He liked music–he liked to have me play the piano, and began playing himself very early–but singing, especially in groups, seemed almost to hurt him.   (His early ability on the piano, combined with being nonverbal, made us consider if he might be a musical savant.  Not many preschoolers will start playing along with very complex difficult classical music.)

Though he gradually came to accept some vocal music, with a single (very good) singer,  things changed again for an 18 month period.   Suddenly (as in, within one week) he could not stand any music at all, even music he had enjoyed before.   Music in the mall, music in a restaurant, music on the radio or TV–none of it.   His language  at this stage was what is called “right-brain”–the way people speak who have had damage to their left-brain auditory processor,  the main language center (Broca’s area.)  Stilted and downright peculiar syntax, little emotional expression, etc.    And music is processed (for most people) mostly in the right-brain auditory processor.  Were the two interfering when both words and music came in together?

Read the rest of this entry »

This was originally a post over at my LiveJournal, but generated so many comments that I thought it might be of even more interest here.  I copied & pasted, which seems to have preserved the LJ font size (and I haven’t a clue what to do about it…or why, when I posted this and then looked at it, only one paragraph is “that” size…)  Over there (for anyone who wants to go look and read the comments) the title is Language and Autism.   I have invited the people commenting there to consider coming here and continuing the discussion.

Our son did not learn to talk early, and for years after he said his first word (many years) his syntax was odd enough to make his speech barely intelligible to most people.   Though it has improved a lot, he still gets “tangled’ sometimes, and often “mazes” (repeating parts of a sentence several times.)   It’s clear to me that he’s constructing the sentences in chunks, and has to repeat every chunk to get the whole thing out at the end (like those songs where you have to repeat a key part of previous verses–Old MacDonald’s Farm, for instance.)

Read the rest of this entry »

When our son was just beginning to be verbal, and able to say words with a consonant on each end,  one of his therapists suggested we introduce him to rhyming words as a way of training his ear and his speech…extending the consonants he could say,  and so on.

This certainly helped, and he began to try out combinations himself (which was good) except for one little problem.   If you start rhyming one-syllable words in English…starting from harmless familiar words like for instance “bit” and “pit” and “sit”….you end up with words that are considered inappropriate for small children to say.   The child may never have heard those words, the ones that rhyme with “sit” and “bird” and so on, and have no idea what they mean…but if your larger-than-average, older-than-average-when-learning-to-talk autistic child says them,  social disapproval rains down all over the scene.   And autistic kids don’t need any more social disapproval than they get already.

So the day came when our bright-eyed little guy very proudly (and it was an accomplishment–he had just managed the /sh/ sound the week before)  went through his “–it” words and added “sh*t.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Dates and other details about my appearances this year, including links to the institutions,  are here.   I’ll be posting any additional news about these on the same site.

However,  here’s the outline:

March 31, 2009.  Teleconference with Howard Community College in Maryland.

August 18, 2009.   Visiting Clemson University,  Clemson, SC.

September 21, 2009.  Visiting Schreiner University,  Kerrville, TX

Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas invited me to come speak to them in September.  No firm date yet.

Reminder that I’ll be doing a teleconference appearance at Howard Community College in Maryland because I couldn’t make that trip (and that turned out to be lucky, as the pneumonia I had upset everything and I’m even more in crunch mode now.)   That’s March 31.   I did the equipment compatibility test yesterday.  I don’t have the right stuff at home, so Central Texas College is handling things on this end.   They have a large telecommunications program and run the local PBS station from the campus.

There’s another probable appearance in August, but I have not heard back from the organizers that it’s “for sure” yet.