What Humility Has to Do with Autism

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~ Lord Acton

Some friends and I were commenting on an article which states that people in power are less sensitive to social cues. "Studies have repeatedly shown that participants who are in high positions of power (or who are temporarily induced to feel powerful) are less able to adopt the visual, cognitive or emotional perspective of other people, compared to participants who are powerless (or are made to feel so)."

People in power are less able to mirror the emotions of others. It explains why politicians seem out of touch the longer they stay in Washington. Why the people who suffered at the hands of the monarchy and the czars committed cruel acts after they won revolutions. "When people experience power, their brains fundamentally change how sensitive they are to the actions of others." It causes me to appreciate people like George Washington: the people would have given him honors, titles, rank, and lavishness worthy of a king, but he remained humble. He went back to farming after his eight years in office ended.

If you have a special needs child in your life, this article becomes personal! The world views our children as weak — less than human. Their vulnerability makes others feel powerful. A friend's husband is in a wheelchair due to a recent accident. Although she works with special needs students, she didn't understand what it's like until now. People don't look her husband in the eye: he's beneath them. He communicates well, yet one waitress didn't leave a bill until my friend had returned from the bathroom.

Even in fleeting encounters, power lowers resonance with social cues. "For those participants who were induced to experience feelings of power, their brains showed virtually no resonance with the actions of others; conversely, for those participants who were induced to experience feelings of powerlessness, their brains resonated quite a bit. In short, the brains of powerful people didn't mirror the actions of other people."

Whether we are parent, teacher, or therapist, power can go to our head, especially when a task is vital. For me, that hot button was potty training because diapers shut down many opportunities. Pamela was six years old and still in pull-ups. No matter how often we headed her to the bathroom, she never realized it was time to go. Fortunately, I had read that a benefit of a gfcf diet was improved bladder control. I quit potty training until we started homeschooling Pamela and took her off certain foods. Fortunately, I had never pushed Pamela to the point of causing me to regret my actions. Had I not known about food connection, it could have happened.

Certain kinds of therapy puts the adult into a powerful role. Think about what a person might do to a child, even a well-intentioned adult who only wants the best for that child, might do because of the power differential. Even an intelligent, loving adult might overstep boundaries because power has shut down the mirror neurons that promote empathy. We know what can happen when a low-verbal or non-verbal child is put in the hands of someone with too much power. We see the awful stories on the news all the time!

I prefer Relationship Development Intervention and Charlotte Mason because adults are viewed as encouragers and guides. Children are valued for who they are, whether they are brilliant or a bit delayed or far, far "behind." In this "must-see" video on being the father of someone with autism and apraxia, Matt Oakes put our roles as parents and teachers very well.

"I don't think it's my job to force Liam to be the kind of kid, the kind of person that I want him to be. It's our job as parents, it's my job as his dad, to help him find who he is."

"Is." Not "will be."

"A child is a born person." ~ Charlotte Mason

The view of ourselves as persons in authority must be accurate as well. Matt appreciates the importance of humility.

"Instead of being this sort of superhero for their kids, I think that a good dad is someone who just humbles himself in front of their kids and finds ways to reach to their kid where they are and say I see you and I love you."

"I think to help kids unlock who they are you have to realize as a dad, as a parent, that it's really not about you. But, to make it about the kid, you have to be vulnerable and you have to be humble. You have to let that stuff go."

Mason cautioned us about our view of ourselves in this way, "Our deadly error is to suppose that we are his showman to the universe; and, not only so, but that there is no community at all between child and universe unless such as we choose to set up." She kicks this view of humility up a notch by recognizing authority properly.

"When we learn to realise that––God is, Self is, the World is, with all that these existences imply, quite untouched by any thinking of ours, unprovable, and self-proven,––why, we are at once put into a more humble attitude of mind. We recognise that above us, about us, within us, there are "more things . . . than are dreamt of in our philosophy." We realise ourselves as persons, we have a local habitation, and we live and move and have our being in and under a supreme authority." ~ Charlotte Mason

Humbling ourselves forces us to trust in the Teacher, the Holy Spirit, to work in our children what we cannot do. Like Matt said, our role is not to force our children to be what we want them to be. Only the Holy Spirit knows who they are. In our humility, we can help them find out. Since God already knows, the more we trust Him, the less we get in the way.

"When we recognise that God does not make over the bringing up of children absolutely even to their parents, but that He works Himself, in ways which it must be our care not to hinder, in the training of every child, then we shall learn passiveness, humble and wise. We shall give children space to develop on the lines of their own characters in all right ways, and shall know how to intervene effectually to prevent those errors which, also, are proper to their individual characters." ~ Charlotte Mason

I attended two Charlotte Mason retreats in the past two weeks. Clockwise invited me to assume a humble posture, that of a child, where we immersed ourselves in a typical school day. Living Education Retreat gave me three verses on humility:

"Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'" 1 Peter 5:5

"Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves." Luke 22:26

"At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, 'Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'" Matthew 18:1-4

Happy Mother's Day Eve!

This morning I burst out in a sweat, taking care of laundry, ironing a shirt for a Mother's Day banquet, and cooking a package of bacon to put together a brunch box for Pamela to take to said banquet (Van's gf/cf mini-waffles with syrup and vegan butter, lemon soy yogurt, and bacon). Steve, of course, remarked that, if I did not procrastinate so much . . . then again, David and I spent the evening in Sumter and did not arrive home until 11:45 last night! That's my excuse, and I'm not backing down!

Pamela, my mother and I dressed up somewhat for the banquet. My mother is awesome and it seems like God gave us completely different attributes: I sing and learned to play the piano and recorder; she does not sing and learned to play the harmonica, violin, and accordion. She is an awesome cook and gardener, and I have a black thumb in both venues. She loves to sew and makes the most gorgeous quilts, but sewing makes me cry in frustration. We both knit and crochet, feed the birds, read living books and love the smell of laundry hung outdoors, and we both love the Lord. Her mother was such an awesome woman, that we got her story published in the anthology, My Mom Is My Hero in a chapter called "My Mietze." (In case you don't believe me, my mother spent her childhood escaping bombs in eastern Germany, Russians advancing toward their border, and deathly conditions in a Danish refugee camp during World War II.)



The women of my church put together a wonderful program with the theme of mothers being a light for their children. They decorated all of the tables with oil lamps! The foods was delicious, the music inspiring, and the message a reminder of how much God has taught me since becoming a mother through this journey with autism: the importance of relationships both vertical (with God) and horizontal (with people) which form the shape of a cross, the need to stay in the word and in prayer, referencing God when I feel uncertain, and the joy of friendship with fellow believers (and are surprising hard to find at times).



When we arrived home, Steve surprised me with some lovely presents! If you haven't figured it out already, I avidly watch birds. The latest caper that cracked me up was the brown thrasher taking a bath. After watching it madly splash away, I figured out why they are called thrashers! Later I snapped a shot of a fat mourning dove and an elusive blue jay who is much shyer than I expected and skittish around cameras.






And, what thoughtful gift did Steve buy for Mother's Day?

Well, it wasn't flowers!

It was not chocolate (which is always appreciated) either!

He bought a gorgeous seed tube and a bluebird box! And, yes, I am Snoopy dancing!


My favorite portrait of motherhood is by someone who was never a mother herself: Charlotte Mason.

It is not for nothing that the old painters, however diverse their ideas in other matters, all fixed upon one quality as proper to the pattern Mother. The Madonna, no matter out of whose canvas she looks at you, is always serene. This is a great truth, and we should do well to hang our walls with the Madonnas of all the early Masters if the lesson, taught through the eye, would reach with calming influence to the heart. Is this a hard saying for mothers in these anxious and troubled days? It may be hard, but it is not unsympathetic. If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would be able to hold herself in 'wise passiveness,' and would not fret her children by continual interference, even of hand or eye––she would let them be. (Volume 3, page 34)

NOW, GO OUT AND PLAY!

Grace in Geometry

Lisa Cadora's blog post on Grace and Learning got me to thinking about David and his checkered past with math. She described the frustrations of teaching herself to crochet a cool, hip accessory and how much more gracious we are with ourselves than with our students. She concludes,

Charlotte Mason said that the only education is self-education. Did she see that grace is necessary for learning, and that we are most graceful with ourselves? If so, maybe it’s not only that we as teachers must create gracious, grace-ful conditions, environments and relationships in which our students can learn, but that we must bring them to be gracious to themselves.

My husband has two engineering master's degrees, and I have one in statistics. For many years, I thought the math gene had skipped my fifteen-year-old, neurotypical son, David. His temperament is very much like that of my father, who has never met a math problem he liked. Teaching David elementary school math frustrated us both. In hindsight, I think I was part of the problem. I think sometimes, if I had shown more grace, we would have shed fewer tears. Fortunately, he finds algebra and geometry a breeze. Was it maturity and a leap in abstract thinking or a more gracious attitude from me?

I think grace in learning might be related to masterly inactivity (wise letting alone). Elements of masterly inactivity include "authority, good humor, confidence, both self-confidence and confidence in the children," which I lacked because I assumed David would always struggle with math like my father. I stopped looking him as a unique person and saw him as a mirror image of my father because they have so many personality traits in common.

Charlotte Mason believed that we should be gracious enough to let children take personal initiative in their work (page 37-38):

In their work, too, we are too apt to interfere with children. We all know the delight with which any scope for personal initiative is hailed, the pleasure children take in doing anything which they may do their own way; anything, in fact, which allows room for skill of hand, play of fancy, or development of thought. With our present theories of education it seems that we cannot give much scope for personal initiative. There is so much task-work to be done, so many things that must be, not learned, but learned about, that it is only now and then a child gets the chance to produce himself in his work. But let us use such opportunities as come in our way.

On the flip side of this coin, we hurt our children by letting them get so frustrated that they develop the habit of tears. I think we also must keep in mind scaffolding, being alert when to step in and support the child and when to step out a la masterly inactivity. The geometry problem above is a great example. David had to figure out the measurement of each angle in the problem, based upon the diagram and information provided. He had to apply the definitions of bisected angles and right angles, the relationship between vertical and supplementary angles, and the sum of interior angles for triangles (180 degrees) and quadrilaterals (360 degrees). What made this problem difficult is that one wrongly calculated angle would create a domino effect of errors.

Applying masterly inactivity, I left David to his own devices. He worked his way through the calculations and figured out the angles for about five shapes before coming to me because the problem stopped making sense. Then, I switched to scaffolding and congratulated him for recognizing when he was stuck. I studied his work and noticed an error. I erased all of the mistakes and highlighted what was correct, and he went back to work. He went back and forth with me several times, getting frustrated at himself for his errors. Rather than joining him in his vent, I told him about Lisa's blog post about giving yourself grace when making mistakes. I even emailed it to him later in the day. I reassured him that the problem really was challenging and got him back on track.

In the last round, he made another little mistake and I decided to put all of the formulas into a spreadsheet to make sure I was on the right track, too. As I built the spreadsheet, I realized how complicated the problem was. At that point, I was so thankful to have read Lisa's post that morning and let grace win the day.

Pamela's Poem Marathon

I thought I was too tired to blog today, but then Pamela goes and ruins it for me by doing something wonderful. She was upstairs and I called her to come down, so we could finish reading. She sneaked off to the porch very mysteriously while I got out the books. I walked over to her, sitting in a rocking chair, writing intently. Without my asking a thing, Pamela looks up and announces, "I'm doing a poem marathon." I had no idea what a poem marathon was. After she finished, I learned that a poem marathon is copying all the poems you learned last year on one sheet of paper. She had gone through the trouble of going through her language art's folder from 2006-2007 to find all of her copywork sheets! She wrote the following ten poems for her celebration:

"Growing Up" by A. A. Milne
"Daffodowndilly" by A. A. Milne
"The End" by A. A. Milne
"Cradle Song" by Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Pirate Story" by Robert Louis Stevenson
City by Langston Hughes
"Big" by Dorothy Aldis
"Two Friends" by Nikki Giovanni
Acclamation
Psalm 117

By the way, we started The Story of the Trapp Family Singers today, and Pamela is thrilled for she adores The Sound of Music. We came across an interesting word combination that reminds me of how the brain learns. At the 2006 ChildLightUSA Conference, Dr. Carroll Smith said something that has stuck with me. For knowledge to be stored into long-term memory, the child must connect it to previously learned knowledge. Clearly, Pamela will be connecting new knowledge about Maria von Trapp to what she knows from the musical. While whistling and running up the stairs were familiar troublesome behaviors, Pamela narrated that Maria slid down the stairs [bannister] and jumped over chimneys on the roof! Near the end of the passage, Maria talked about carrying a guitar and leather satchel. Up until a month ago, the words leather and satchel meant very little to Pamela. We have learned a great deal about the making and uses of leather from The Brendan Voyage and the meaning of satchel because of a chapter by that name in The Winged Watchman. To take the whole thing full circle back to the poem marathon, we came across the word afloat when Tim got his leather boat, The Brendan, afloat for the first time and both of our minds leaped to "The Pirate Story." This is why we have not done formal vocabulary lessons.

For a better view of the poem marathon, click the pictures.

Teddy's First Birthday

Pamela is amazing! Yesterday morning, she walked in the kitchen and studied the drawer where I store her gluten-free, casein-free baking mixes reserved for special occasions. She said, "I want a cake." When I promised to bake one, Pamela excitedly bolted out of the kitchen.

A few minutes later, she came back with a teddy bear given to her by her Oma about a year ago. Pamela announced, "Teddy is one year old. I want a candle."

How could I refuse the chance to indulge the desire for pretend play? Since I was planning a shopping trip anyway, I asked, "Pamela, would you like me to pick up some ice cream and sorbet when I go shopping?" She answered in the affirmative, of course.

After we finished our routine for the day, we headed to Wal-Mart and made an exciting discovery! They carry Van's Gluten-Free Waffles, Alexia Food's Gluten-Free Waffle Fries, and Turtle Mountain's Organic So Delicious Chocolate Velvet Dairy-Free Frozen Dessert. Pamela and I high-fived each other and Snoopy-danced down the frozen food aisle. Wal-Mart's selection will never compare to that of Earth Fare with Pamela's special foods, but I might be able to spread out our bi-monthly trips to the health food store an hour from home!

After dinner, we celebrated Teddy's first birthday. I was so glad that my dislike of baking did not kick in when Pamela quietly asked for an impromptu cake earlier in the morning. A grouchy "No!" on my part could have halted the whole experience. By taking her request in good humor and letting masterly inactivity be my guide, I followed her whim down a delightful rabbit trail, illustrating what Charlotte described,

The next element in the attitude of masterly inactivity is good humour––frank, cordial, natural, good humour. This is quite a different thing from overmuch complacency, and a general giving-in to all the children's whims. The one is the outcome of strength, the other of weakness, and children are very quick to see the difference. 'Oh, mother, may we go blackberrying this afternoon, instead of lessons?' The masterly and the abject 'yes' are quite different notes. The first makes the holiday doubly a delight; the second produces a restless desire to gain some other easy victory.

Masterly Inactivity and some Autism Therapies

Years before I became acquainted with Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education, many of her ideas made sense to me. Back in 1994, when I was teaching Pamela skills and academics through Discrete Trials Training, I balked at drilling play skills as outlined in Chapter 12 of The Me Book. I thought, "Play is play. If you have to teach a child to play, then play becomes work." Charlotte Mason had written something eerily similar a hundred years before my time, "There is a little danger in these days of much educational effort that children's play should be crowded out, or, what is from our present point of view the same thing, should be prescribed for and arranged until there is no more freedom of choice about play than that about work."

Breaking down pretend play into a series of teachable steps seemed too contrived and controlling. Pretend play is an outward response to the mysterious inner life of a child. Charlotte Mason wrote,

There is an idea afloat that children require to be taught to play––to play at being little fishes and lambs and butterflies. No doubt they enjoy these games which are made for them, but there is a serious danger. In this matter the child who goes too much on crutches never learns to walk; he who is most played with by his elders has little power of inventing plays for himself; and so he misses that education which comes to him when allowed to go his own way.

Although I was not familiar with Charlotte's concept of "masterly inactivity", I waited to see what would happen. My passivity toward pretend play lasted for two years! In the spring of 1996, Pamela began what appeared to be a bizarre ritual. During her free time, she plopped herself in the same spot near the nightstand in my bedroom. She always held a yellow Duplo window and a small baby blanket. I drew the line in the carpet after she added the vacuum cleaner to her odd circle of friends! Because I was so curious about what she meant by her odd routine, I stepped aside and let her be. After about a month, spontaneous language blossomed, and she began to say, "Blankie!" and "Loudmouth!" These exclamations lifted the veil to the mystery: Pamela had taught herself to pretend play, imitating The Brave Little Toaster, her favorite movie! Incidentally, our vacuum cleaner was a Kirby, and an orange reading lamp and clock radio sat on our nightstand!

Pamela had not only figured out pretend play by using concrete objects, she also understood symbolic play, substituting the Lego Duplo for the toaster! She continued her forays into the world of pretend play, jumping off the top bunk wearing a blue dress (imagining Alice tumbling down into wonderland). She did the same in a Pocahontas outfit, imagining the canoe going down the waterfall. The following Christmas she put a Choosy Baby All Gone doll on her wish list. As soon as we pulled the doll out of the box, Pamela began to feed her baby like any doting mother. She started telling me what she wanted to be for Halloween and asking for Barbie dolls, which she truly played with like any other little girl. Her younger brother taught her to cross swords with him. What Pamela needed was not me teaching her how to play but time and, in my humble opinion, a gluten-free, casein-free diet. Charlotte Mason thought time, not adult intervention, was a key ingredient to play too, "Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make."

My second experience with restraining myself was when Pamela began cutting up her beaver Beanie Baby named Bucky. One day, while I was processing email, Pamela waltzed up to me with Bucky and asked, "What animal?"

Distracted, I replied, "A beaver."

After Pamela vehemently exclaimed "No! That's not a beaver!" I inspected it closely and noticed she had ripped off the beaver's teeth.

Pamela was a walking encyclopedia of animal names, so I had no idea what she expected me to say. I turned the tables on her and asked, "So, what animal is it?"

She smiled and announced, "Squirrel." I think she enjoyed teasing me with her little prank for, the next day, she came back with a tailless squirrel and asked, "What animal?"

I said the first thing that popped in my head, "A chipmunk."

She danced away happily because I nailed that one. With a tied score, she headed back to her room, where she spent several minutes contemplating how to best me with a new animal. Finally, she skipped up to me with the Beanie Baby formerly known as Bucky scrounged up into a squat and its muzzle pushed into its face. I was clueless this time and begged her for an answer. She smiled, "Frog!"

"Wise passivity" allowed me to witness Pamela's creativity and imagination in action. Had I intervened and stopped her from mutilating any more of her toys, I would have missed a golden opportunity to see her mind in action. Doing less with Pamela through masterly activity allowed her to do more! Except for snipping Barbie's locks, this was the one and only time she ever maimed one of her toys. Pamela never became a toy serial killer due to my lack of action. Charlotte Mason observed,

But the fussy parent, the anxious parent, the parent who explains overmuch, who commands overmuch, who excuses overmuch, who restrains overmuch, who interferes overmuch, even the parent who is with the children overmuch, does away with dignity and simplicity of that relationship which, like all the best and most delicate things in life, suffer by being asserted or defended.

My third encounter involved Pamela allowing a television show to get in the way of her schoolwork. The minute Blues Clues debuted back in 1996, Pamela was hooked! I was a bit miffed when she demanded stridently to watch this half-hour show twice a day. While she lacked the oral language to explain why, I stepped aside and bowed to her wishes because the show seemed important to her. I decided to file paperwork, do the dishes, or zip out some emails while an episode aired.

By the end of one month, I was glad I caved! Steve and his clues mesmerized Pamela so much that she began to fill pages and pages and pages of clues. Drawing like her hero improved her handwriting just as much as my carefully conceived writing plans. Charlotte Mason encourages parents and teachers to permit personal initiative in their students' work,

In their work, too, we are too apt to interfere with children. We all know the delight with which any scope for personal initiative is hailed, the pleasure children take in doing anything which they may do their own way; anything, in fact, which allows room for skill of hand, play of fancy, or development of thought. With our present theories of education it seems that we cannot give much scope for personal initiative. There is so much task-work to be done, so many things that must be, not learned, but learned about, that it is only now and then a child gets the chance to produce himself in his work. But let us use such opportunities as come in our way.

Encouraging children who show personal initiative does not preempt a parent's authority, Charlotte writes,

Authority is neither harsh nor indulgent. She is gentle and easy to be entreated in all matters immaterial, just because she is immovable in matters of real importance; for these, there is always a fixed principle. It does not, for example, rest with parents and teachers to dally with questions affecting either the health or the duty of their children. They have no authority to allow to children in indulgences––in too many sweetmeats, for example––or in habits which are prejudicial to health; nor to let them off from any plain duty of obedience, courtesy, reverence, or work.

She assumes parents have established a series of habits that accomplish schoolwork with time left in the day for children to direct themselves. Every school day, Pamela is in the habit of reading and narrating living books; language arts through copywork, studied dictation and recitation; math lessons; speech therapy; self-care (including fixing her own breakfast); and keeping her room tidy. Pamela understands why she ought to maintain a special diet. My tool box of autism techniques allows me to be "gentle and easy" rather than "harsh or indulgent": Discrete Trials Teaching to clarify confusing academics, Social Stories™ to explain sticky situations, Sensory Integration to promote calmness, etc. When she was younger, we scheduled Pamela for Auditory Integration Training to help her manage noise with less stress. We try to live up to one of Charlotte's mottoes, "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."

I could list example after example of masterly inactivity, but I will close with my favorite. During Auditory Integration Training, Pamela overcame her fear of escalators, but was still terrified of elevators. She would throw major tantrums if we tried to force her to ride one. We decided not to push the point. We figured it is not a health issue because taking the stairs is great exercise. Near every elevator, you can find a flight of steps. We applied masterly inactivity on this issue and waited for ten barren years for it to bear fruit.

Unbeknownst to us, Pamela's attitude began to soften by watching the elevator scenes in Toy Story 2. We lived in Alaska at the time and, because the island lacked the fell beasts, she lacked the opportunity to test her courage. When we moved to Minnesota, we began going to the library several times a week. The library was large enough to house three floors and an elevator for the carts. One day, we approached the stairs, located next to the elevator. Pamela commented, "Elevator, just like Toy Story 2."

Sensing that Pamela's love of all things Disney might be at work here, I asked her, "Would you like to push the button?"

"Yes," she replied and Pamela hesitantly walked up to the door and pushed the button. She stood there for a while.

I didn't want to rush her, so I said, "Would you like to ride the elevator some day?"

"Yes."

"What day would you like to try?" That was followed by a long pause.

I clarified, "Would you like to ride the elevator today?"

"Yes." Not only did Pamela get on the elevator, but she actually rode it. She was extremely nervous, but she did not scream or cry. She was so frightened when she stepped on that elevator; her body quaked! However, she faced it on her own terms and in her own time. Her effort and her resolve led her to that elevator.

After she survived her first trip on an elevator in ten years, her smile was so big. Her pride in accomplishing such a big feat showed on her face. Ever since that day, Pamela has had no issues with elevators. Pamela's initiative throughout the years strengthened her ability to choose to face a major challenge in her life. Charlotte's reflections on initiative describes what we have witnessed ourselves,

The child who is good because he must be so, loses in power of initiative more than he gains in seemly behaviour. Every time a child feels that he chooses to obey of his own accord, his power of initiative is strengthened. The bearing-rein may not be used. When it occurs to a child to reflect on his behaviour, he should have that sense of liberty which makes good behaviour appear to him a matter of his preference and choice.